Claw machines: A game of skill or gambling?

Like the little green aliens in Disney’s “Toy Story,” people — often kids — may find themselves obsessed with “the claw.”
Claw machines, also known as crane machines, dot arcades, malls, even grocery stores, tantalizing kids with the possibility of winning a prize.
Kids quickly find out the odds of snagging that stuffed animal are not in their favor.
At least that’s what police in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, claimed as they carried out 16 search warrants last week, seizing claw machines that they say are games of chance, making them illegal. Brazil law has prohibited “games of chance” since 1946.
This is the second such operation targeting claw machines this year. In May, police seized 80 claw machines “stocked with counterfeit plushies” and programmed to minimized winning pulls, The Associated Press reported.
Various claw machine instruction manuals reveal that owners can adjust the claw strength to make it more or less difficult to grab an item. Owners can even set a profit rate, “which in turn determines the frequency of the claw grabbing prizes at full strength,” a Vice report found. “This means that some lucky people would get to maneuver the claw during a payout round, when the claw strength is kept strong enough to drop the prize right into the chute.”
Though the machines can be “rigged” against its users, “it’s in arcades’ best interests to have customers win so they’ll keep playing,” industry officials told The Associated Press.
Since one’s success with a claw machine can come down to various factors like preprogrammed claw strength, it is widely considered a game of chance. But most states and countries that regulate gambling carve out exceptions to allow claw machines and similar arcade games.
Take, for example, Utah.
Gambling is illegal in Utah. Under Utah’s criminal code, gambling is defined as “risking anything of value for a return or risking anything of value upon the outcome of a contest, game, gaming scheme, or gaming device when the return or outcome is based on an element of chance.”
The exception to this? Amusement devices.
Claw machines, pool tables, pinball machines and other arcade games are not considered gambling if the rewards are a toy, novelty or other non-monetary prize with a value of less than $100.