Loot Boxes in Poland: Poland’s top administrative court rejects appeal in Counter-Strike loot-box case
On 5 November 2026, Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court (NSA, II GSK 1341/26) dismissed a cassation appeal concerning a website offering randomised virtual items for Counter-Strike.
The dispute concerned a redirecting domain kept on Poland’s register of domains used to offer unlawful gambling.
The Warsaw Voivodeship Administrative Court (WSA) accepted that the virtual cases and their contents were prizes in kind: they had a specific value and could be used in Counter-Strike, where obtaining them would otherwise require a purchase. That reasoning covered both case purchases and upgrades.
The WSA accepted that the site offered online gaming-machine games and roulette-type games, both covered by Poland’s state monopoly. This was a ruling on the particular service, not on loot boxes as a product category.
The operator’s comparison with FIFA Ultimate Team packs did not change the outcome. The judgment records the Ministry of Finance’s distinction between the two models, but gives little guidance on where that distinction lies.
For the register proceedings, the WSA considered one unlawful gambling game sufficient. It did not require the authority to classify every game on the site.
Pending the NSA’s written reasons, the substantive conclusions in this case should remain attributed to the WSA, not the NSA.
For operators, the point is that a reward’s virtual form does not, by itself, prevent it from being a prize in kind. Whether a particular loot-box mechanism is gambling still depends on the requirements of the relevant statutory category.
