mabrookes: It is regulated, and comes with rules depending on if it starts becoming gambling. "Carnivals" are not banned here (quotation just because they wouldnt be called that here), but they are
supposed to mark very clearly what the percentage win is of any machine that is considered gambling. This wouldnt apply to a claw machine as far as I know, because that is more supposedly a game of skill (we all know that is bs, the claw is designed to not actually grip properly everytime, but it is supposed to be a game of skill) - although if they did admit the claw only grabbed properly a percentage of the time, this percentage would need to be visible.
All I am saying is it is possible gog would have to be careful how they operated these things so they dont get caught up in anything like that - most of the examples people give of why it is gambling and a lottery are just plain stupid, im not supporting them or anything.
Yeah, I looked it up online and frankly, the laws in most countries don't really apply to this. It's used for gambling and sweepstakes. While it "can" and some lawyers have blogs discussing "grab bags" it seems as long as the bags have "similar value", its no big deal. Now if one of them contained a diamond ring or something, that becomes a different matter. So the question becomes whether a retail value $44.99 game is similar value to $9.99 games. But they have done these sort of promos before.
Furthermore, it gets cloudier. Does GoG advertise this sale to Canadian citizens for example? Because for online gaming, as long as the site doesn't specifically "advertise to Canadians", they are not violating Canadian law when Canadian citizens gamble on their sites.