Actually the way they got around so it wasnt gambling was that you always won something, that is every loot box give you something ... lets take the game at hand, Battlefront 2. You always got something and you turned duplicated into points, you never lost money but the system was set in a way that you had to grind for a very long so you could unlock.
They all do it, I still play STO kinda and Lock Boxes give a minimum of 4 Lobi Crystal (a currency type to buy exclusive items) so they can claim players always at least got 4 Lobi Crystal and some shitty idea, I have been playing since it gone F2P in 2012 and I always read some story of someone that wasted over $200 opening then so he could get the grand prize a exclusive ship ... the ships on the Lobi store? they cost 900 Lobi Crystals, I could go on about STO model but that is kinda unique to that game.
How is this damaging to MMOs? because eventually all they produce is around loot boxes, mechanics are introduced around then so you cannot really progress, because they dont fucking care Gold Sellers step in and just sell you the contents, this causes the economy to tank and you either are a whale, a bitter vet that was just ahead of the curve or you have to be a gold farmer to get anywhere.
What EA did was well beyond crossing the line, Overwatch at least its smart on it being just skins and emotes ... you dont need then to unlock characters, you also dont need then to unlock gear and because they are cosmetic they can get away with it, iBattlefron 2 wasnt even a fuckiing F2P game but a $60 one, it was greed and that greed been for a long time now, they were just the first to go over the line and how they gone over the line.
Well its not gambling, RMT been something around for a long time, I know it existed in EverQuest as I remember ... people even sell accounts, its not regulated because its regulated, its against the Terms of Service or in Diablo IIII it was allowed by Blizzard under specific rules (AKA, in their own store) but Second Life allows the selling of user created content.
In the end the issue bogs down to this, they could sell it for $9.99 but they make more money if they put it on a Loot Box and sell then at $0.99 ... its a disgusting way to sell content by making people gamble for it.
The thing is, EA is not even the one that crossed the line the furthest. One of the worst I have found?
This one, which is why I harp on it.
Super powered exclusive items. Items so powerful that it increases your power rating by hundreds of thousands of points each (note that starting level 1 characters have power ratings <500). Items that you MUST pay over $600 for in order to get and costs you several components that each requires you grind for months to get, or you can pay for those components as well. That has probably gone up with the next tier of upgrades by now for even more money. I walked away years ago after seeing what kind of game it is.
Exclusive items that ONLY appear in lootboxes that you MUST buy, BUT! There is only a <0.2% chance of it dropping from a lootbox.
Chance based upgrading of items. To upgrade to the next tier, you need two of the previous tier. Base L1 items costs $20 each and there is a limited number of different types you can buy and they have low max bonus limits. In order to get other types that give much higher stats, you have to buy lootboxes and hope for the drop. And if you FAIL to upgrade (remember it is chance based?), you LOSE one of the items. There are 10 tiers of upgrading per item. That's right, on a failed upgrade, you can lose an item that cost you $20*2^8 (=$5120) to make, assuming that you somehow avoided failing even once before.
In-game minigames that you "roll dice" for that requires you use real money (to buy their equivalent of Lobi Crystals which you spend for dice rolls).
And EVERYWHERE, and I do mean EVERYWHERE, they are tempting you to spend money. "Oh, you need one more roll to get to the end of today's weekly minigame? You can have it, if you pay $2. It is only $2, right? No biggie!" "Oh you are out of looting attempts for the day, but this guy attacked you? Well, you can have more attack attempts, just pay money." "Weekly arena and you are out of attempts, the ranking is about to be finalised in 1 minute and you got kicked to 100 spot because the ranked 100 guy won against the dumbass AI version of you? You can get back your position if you pay money."
Everything is chance based. It is horrendous. And that is not even including the fact that they merge servers every other week, forcing newbies who have become the top of their server to suddenly compete with people who were months older with more time and legacy items under their belt to encourage spending, knowing the top guys would all have invariably spent to get to that position in the first place and would hate to have their positions lost. Even worse, they have regular "Who is the most powerful by power rating" competitions, which encourages spending even more, and even more regular "If you spend X amount, you get FREE stuff! Time to spend it BIG!" events complete with a table of spend thresholds.
And the paid trolls and shills that are put in-game to enrage other players to get them to spend. And more. You can write a whole novel on the ways and means they use to get people to spend and gamble.
They have multiple servers dedicated to America, Europe, etc., and have been operating for at least 6-8 years, and yet nothing have been done about them, even though I have seen 14 year old kids running around in the game. Where are the politicians screaming their heads off about this kind of games, most of which are out of China?