Aussie Senate Powerbroker wants first-person shooter video games be classified as gambling

Australia’s anti-gambling warlord Sen. Nick Xenophon has locked on a new target after announcing his plans to push for gambling reform in Australia: first-person shooter video games.

Xenophon, a habitual gambling scold, now wants to define the multiplayer first-person shooter video games – such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2 – as gambling in an update to the current Interactive Gambling Act of 2001.

He claimed that children are “being groomed for gambling” through first-person shooter games such as Counter-Strike and Dota which he describes as “incredibly misleading and deceptive.”

“This is the Wild West of online gambling that is actually targeting kids,” said Xenophon, according to the report of Sydney Morning Herald. “Instead of shooting avatars, parents soon find out that [their children] have shot huge holes through their bank accounts.”