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Article History

Received: 25 November 2022

Accepted: 27 June 2023

First Online: 10 August 2023

Competing interests

: Data for this study were provided by Unity Technologies. Unity Technologies played no role in the design of the study, its reporting or its execution. No funds were disbursed to the research team for the work incorporated into this manuscript. This includes data access fees for the serverless data warehouse from which the data under analysis were accessed, which were paid by the lead author out of a research stipend he receives from his host institution. Access to the data used in this study was contingent on a data-sharing agreement between Unity Technologies and D.Z.’s host institution. Legal approval was sought from Unity for the sharing of the data in this paper before its submission for peer review. D.Z. has never received any form of funding from the games industry. He has worked as a paid consultant for governments seeking to understand the effects of video games and gambling. He has worked as an expert witness in cases relating to the video game industry, but has never represented the games industry legally or been formally affiliated with any games industry body in any way. D.Z. has been involved in brokering data-sharing agreements with industry stakeholders in the past. He acknowledges that such data-sharing agreements constitute a conflict of interest as important as financial awards and wishes to highlight that he has used such data brokerage in ways that are likely to give him indirect financial advantage: he has used them as evidence for excellence in promotion applications; he has used them as evidence in grant applications. No such applications have been funded at the time of writing this manuscript. D.Z. is a member of the Advisory Board for Safer Gambling, a statutory body whose remit is to provide independent advice to the UK Gambling Commission. D.Z. is the recipient of an Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling Major Exploratory Grant that is derived from ‘regulatory settlements applied for socially responsible purposes’ received by the UK Gambling Commission and administered by Gambling Research Exchange Ontario (GREO). He has no further conflicts to declare. C.F. has received funding from the Tides Foundation on the recommendation of the Unity Charitable Fund (grant number TF2201-105180) for a separate project. A.D. has previously worked in a paid capacity within the video games industry as a game analytics consultant. He has worked on multiple industry-focused projects with a focus on knowledge transfer. He has received funding from the Tides Foundation on the recommendation of the Unity Charitable Fund (grant number TF2201-105180) for a separate project. L.Y.X. was employed by LiveMe, then a subsidiary of Cheetah Mobile (NYSE:CMCM), as an in-house counsel intern from July 2019 to August 2019 in Beijing, People’s Republic of China. L.Y.X. was not involved with the monetisation of video games by Cheetah Mobile or its subsidiaries. L.Y.X. undertook a brief period of voluntary work experience at Wiggin LLP (Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) number: 420659) in London, England in August 2022. L.Y.X. has contributed and continues to contribute to research projects that were enabled by data access provided by the video game industry, specifically Unity Technologies (NYSE:U) (October 2022 to Present). L.Y.X. was the recipient of two AFSG (Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling) Postgraduate Research Support Grants that were derived from ‘regulatory settlements applied for socially responsible purposes’ received by the UK Gambling Commission and administered by Gambling Research Exchange Ontario (GREO) (March 2022 & January 2023). L.Y.X. has accepted funding to publish academic papers open access from GREO that was received by the UK Gambling Commission as above (October, November, & December 2022). L.Y.X. has accepted conference travel and attendance grants from, inter alia, the organisers of the 13th Nordic SNSUS (Stiftelsen Nordiska Sällskapet för Upplysning om Spelberoende; the Nordic Society Foundation for Information about Problem Gambling) Conference, which received gambling industry sponsorship (January 2023). L.Y.X. has received an honorarium from the Center for Ludomani for contributing a parent guide about a mobile game for Tjekspillet.dk, which is funded by the Danish Ministry of Health’s gambling addiction pool (Sundhedsministeriets Ludomanipulje) (March 2023). The up to date version of L.Y.X.’s conflict of interest statement is available via . EP has previously received funding from the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling (AFSG) Postgraduate Research Support Grant that was derived from ‘regulatory settlements applied for socially responsible purposes’ received by the UK Gambling Commission and administered by Gambling Research Exchange Ontario (GREO). The remaining authors declare no competing interests.