Games

There two big differences to me are scale and value. A ccg has rare cards, but they aren't actually that rare compared to loot boxes. Loot boxes tend to have both lower drop rates and pollute their drops with lots of garbage, even for rare drops. Secondly, physical cards have value, you can sell or trade them, you can buy singles of cards you want. You can use them for things other than the game as well.

CCGs hasn't had a massive, massive Epic Games-paid astroturfing campaign against valve/steam like 'lootboxes' has. That's the difference.

From my POV, there isn't a difference, other than a CCG gives you physical objects so wotc can't just up and decide that they don't want to run magic anymore and make all of that loot disappear.

But from the gambling perspective, it's exactly the same. Oh, actually one other difference, electronic gambling can fuck with the odds in real time while physical cards need to be determined when the pack is assembled. But it's still based on false scarcity.