The lawsuit aims to “stop Valve from promoting gambling features in its games, disgorge all ill-gotten gains, and pay fines for violating New York\u2019s laws.”
On the one hand, good. Valve needs to be held responsible for this.
On the other hand, steam has the best parental controls of any platform I’ve ever seen. You can just not let your kid play those games. Parents should take responsibility for their kids. Games already have ratings and warnings and such.
On the third hand, I forsee this as being yet another means of forcing ID checks and face scanning into the platform. I don’t trust our government not to fuck this up in the worst way possible right now.
ID checks are a solution used when there are different rules for both adults and children. I don’t see how that would apply here, since the rules in NY appear to be the same in this case.
I am not physically walking into a liquor store.
I am not physically walking into a casino.
If I am a legal child, then I am supervised by my parent or guardian. Otherwise, I can do as I want.
I get that online casinos are a thing. Parents are supposed to parent their children.
I actually would be in favor of id checks at the OS level IF AND ONLY IF I could trust the government.
I’ll admit I have marginally more trust in steam for ages verification than a lot of the other options.
As a parent of a small child, I’m very impressed with the options available via steam. Just the fact I can let them play games from my personal library surprised me. I don’t need to buy them a copy.
The gambling thing is definitely something that needs addressing. It’s one of the few black marks I have against valve.
How is this valves problem? Shouldn’t the NY state government be banning shit like this? This is a policy thing
Well they are suing Valve, so obviously the NY Attorney General’s opinion is that it is already banned according existing policy.
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This similar thing happened in Belgium and the Netherlands nearly a decade ago.
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-49674333
While the court case was ongoing, the real world effect was that games with certain lootbox features could not be released in the Dutch or Belgian market without restricting its sale to adults. In practice this just meant that game publishers either disabled the feature in the Netherlands and Belgium, or didn’t release the game at all.
To my knowledge lootbox mechanics in games are still banned in Belgium
https://www.scl.org/12540-loot-boxes-are-not-gambling-under-dutch-law/
However, in the Netherlands, lootboxes were eventually found to not be gambling. The courts went along with EA’s argument that while lootboxes are a game of chance, the game around them is a game of skill. And therefor videogames with lootboxes should not be considered gambling under Dutch law.
Since the US has a similar requirement for something to be considered gambling (that is how people argued in favour of pinball machines at the time), I would suspect that companies that make money on lootboxes will defend themselves against this lawsuit with a similar argument.
Well here in the netherlands I couldn’t download the mobile pokemon trading card game. And I can’t bet points on twitch either when someone does a prediction. So there are still sometimes restrictions.
I live in Belgium and the law is there, but it seems pretty much ignored. At the time there were some games that were changed (battlefront II 2, overwatch, FIFA, etc…) But it seems like everything after just ignores the law. CS2 still had lootboxes, genshin impact, rocket league, apex legends, league, etc…
They changed the loot boxes in e.g. dota2 to always show what’s in them, the argument being that you’re no longer gambling then since you see what you buy. This of course conveniently ignores the fact that the gambling aspect just moved to the lootbox you buy after the one you see
With digital drivers licenses starting to roll out now, it doesn’t have to require a scan anymore.
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Finally a lawsuit against valve I can support.
If this will be fixed i have nothing against Valve. This lootbox gamble situation is really the only bad thing I can think of that steam does. For the rest Valve feels pro-consumer.
Moderation on their platform and in any of their self-published titles is basically non-existent, to name an issue that’s imo more important than the item gambling.
Good
country finally starts cracking down on gambling
oh no wait nevermind they just want to sue a videogame company
They’re not wrong, it is gambling.
A good few years ago now, I watched as my two cousins, Steam voucher in hand (and he didn’t even have a gaming PC btw), faffed about with one of those sites promoted by shady Youtubers.
Codes went in. Buttons were pressed. Glances were exchanged.
“Now what?” asked the younger one who’s Steam voucher it was.
“Oh nothing,” said the older one. “You lost.”
I think it was only teenage emoism that stopped him bursting into tears right there.
He’s an accountant now, so I assume he learned an important lesson about gambling that day.
He’s an accountant now, so I assume he learned an important lesson about gambling that day.
Or it fully broke his spirit…
Why not both?
I’ve never been a gambler because I’ve only ever lost. I’d say I’m down ~$30 in the last 30 years.
I’m not really a gambler either. I’ve been to the casino a few times in my 20s with friends, but either for one of their birthdays or they were celebrating something. I only ever brought like $50 to drink with and another $50 to play with, knowing full well the most enjoyment of that hundo I was getting was the beers.
I did however win exactly once. Turned my last $10 of the 50 into $900. And that was also the last time I ever gambled.
I did once have someone give me a roll of quarters and I walked out with $70. I figured the only reason I won was because it wasn’t my money.
I mean, that’s pretty sweet!
It’s like me and lotto tickets. If I buy one, I lose every time. If someone buys me one I win either a free play or the value of the ticket…then lose on the free play
Gambling is pointless.
I enjoy low stakes gambling. I’ll walk into a casino with $20-40 bucks for gambling, buy a few drinks, and see what I can get. If I win enough to break even and pay for the drinks, I came out on top. I’ll throw 5 bucks down on a parlay during Football season once a month or so. Outside of that, I couldn’t imagine the stress of higher stakes. I do it for fun and maybe turning 5 bucks into 30.
Not for the House. It’s sort of their bread and butter.
I quit playing games with loot boxes. Having said that my experience and valve with loot boxes were they were cosmetic only. I may be wrong about that.
Cosmetic or not, they are still mechanically the same as a slot machine.
Not mechanically the same at all. The reason they can skirt by and have not been considered ‘gambling’ is largely due to the fact that you always win something, even if the player to player market dictates that item as worthless.
A slot machine literally just takes your money and you are left with nothing but having pushed a button for the pretty lights and fun noises.
A slot machine literally just takes your money and you are left with nothing but having pushed a button for the pretty lights and fun noises.
What do you think video game cosmetics are if not pretty lights and fun noises?
I mean, fair, but it’s a digital item that you get to keep.
It may be problematic but I see it as less problematic than non-cosmetic items like Magic card packs
Not same lol, trust me, not even close…
Maybe not to you, but you don’t speak for all of humanity.
And you do. God damn people are stupid comparing tramadol to heroine
I never claimed to speak for all of humanity.
Them being cosmetics doesn’t change anything. People want cosmetics, they made a gambling system to get them, easy-as.
They are only cosmetic, but absolutely still gambling. That said, the design and use of the market and operations did mean it was far easier to avoid and far cheaper. For example, you could get basically a full loadout of skins, without ever opening a lootbox, for far less. Doesn’t change the fact that the lootboxes in CS (and everything else) need to be regulated though.
It’s content you unlock by gambling with real money. Doesn’t matter what the content is.
KELSHI LITERALLY HAS SUPER BOWL ADS. WHAT DO YOU MEAN GOOD SIR.
People never cease to amaze me.
I’m assuming you mean Kalshi? Polymarket too, of course.
Games are all rigged, btw. But the spill-over has been eyebrow raising.
Finally someone standing upto Valve for the right reasons.
please would anyone think of Gabe‘s yachts?
They should sue Epic Games because Fortnite greatly popularized loot boxes and Microtransactions. Also other games which are the real culprit such as Overwatch, League of Legends, and more. Though granted Valve did make CSGO which was one of the first big games to popularize buying and selling video game skins. But of course lots of other games do it much worse like Gatcha games and mobile games.
Can start with the OG loot boxes of Magic the Gathering amd Pokemon? So much gambling & its targeted at children.
The fun part is that a lot of trading cards have their roots in the early movements for cigarettes. Same idea for the most part, except it was typical for pinups instead of monsters or magic. You bought tobacco to get the cards, so tobacco became popular amongst kids. If you wanted to collect em all, you would buy more boxes of cigarettes, so imo it’s even more of a parallel than just calling out TCGs
The fact that the idea swapped to hooking kids on gambling is honestly a no brainer, especially since the cards were the things helping sell the cigs anyhow.
For some reason, even though I have been using Steam for a long time, I am not privy to the “lootboxes” they talk about. And my account was never parented. I feel like I would actively need to look for what they are talking about.
disgorge all ill-gotten gains
Why is this the only lawsuit where I see this phrase?
Why do other companies go away with a few million $ in fine?-> Now I want to know how much Valve has “ill-gotten” out of this thing.
I definitely prefer GoG and being able to play all my games with the internet off and don’t consider Steam as some angel. But from what I see, the very fact that so many Gaming companies are trying to destroy Valve, tells me that Valve is giving value that these others don’t want given to the customer.
So, using what laws to sue a group of companies for the malicious use of court to attempt to reduce the overall quality of product options available to the consumers?
The lootboxes are a Counterstrike thing. They’re like Labubus except with digital guns and knives.
Ok, so I looked into it further and looks like they also take a tax on every trade, meaning they are actually profiting off of people’s auctions after they run their slot machines.
Seems to be quite a bit of ill-gotten gains to be found here.
Gabe might have to pass on a few of his future yachts.
Didn’t read the story, but how are loot boxes different than trading card game booster packs? I don’t like the consumerist nature of both, but just curious.
They aren’t. I’m sure if it went to court that lawyers would find a way to convince a jury otherwise, but we all know that’s bullshit. Booster packs are gambling.
They aren’t different. Both are a form of gambling. Same with blind boxes.
In this thread: a complete lack of moral clarity as gamers simp for one of the most profitable companies in the industry. Valve was a pioneer of loot boxes. When they got in trouble for CS:GO skin gambling, they did the minimum to make it look like they didn’t allow it and allowed it to make an easy comeback. They sit back and make 30% off the sale of every game on the platform. People should be saying that Valve is very bad and Epic is even worse. Instead gamers feel this strange need to pick sides with a giant company that controls almost all PC gaming. No, we can easily say they’re all bad.
They need to get rid of Steam to begin rolling out cloud computing. They’ve already started the phase were people can no longer realistic build the rigs they could build a year ago.
You are right, they are all bad. Singling out any company isn’t helping out. That’s the problem with this lawsuit, it is not legislative, it is going only after one company under the telltale of politicization “it’s for the children” with a fair amount of false accusations that “CS2 and other FPSs are causing kids to become violent”. This is to build up Leticia James’ political career by going after an easier target that does not have the political ties other marketplaces have and it will not fix the system, but just allow the competitors to thrive.
Now that doesn’t mean she’s doing as part of some conspiratorial shift to cloud computing, it just means that the parties interested in that shift generally encourage and do nothing to oppose this sort of intervention whereas in the past it might have been opposed to because of the hurdle of precedence they could help to establish - which no longer matters as much because half the Supreme Court is corrupt anyway and can just hallucinate the precedence away in an exercise of mental gymnastics in their opinion.
You don’t think it matters, just look at the shitshow YouTube is increasingly becoming, because that’s what a lot of rich assholes want to appropriate and coerce Steam into becoming. Fear the day Steam goes public.
I think you’re probably right. I still think it’s important to point out that this lawsuit, even if successful, won’t take down Valve. Steam and CS2 will still be around. If it is successful, it might force other platforms to change how they handle lootboxes too. Singling out Valve won’t mean that steam is down and we all need to use the Epic store. The flaws of this lawsuit and it’s motivations don’t mean that we need to excuse Valves bad behavior. You aren’t doing that here but many people feel the need to pick sides. We can call out the lawsuit for being largely a political stunt and call out Valve for profiting off of child gambling.
Not everyone has loyalty to Valve or any company.
Not everyone, but plenty of people in this thread do. And plenty of gamers in general excuse their bad behavior.
That’s true. I’ve gotten pushback for criticizing Valve and there is a lot to criticize.
They might be better in some way than other US tech companies, but that’s doesn’t mean much.
You’re a citizen in a village. The Nazis have come to your village and decide to destroy you. You attack the friendly village toymaker for hosting gambling nights for everybody.
Yes, it’s wrong.
No, it’s not the time.
Nuance is dead.
Village toymaker? Wow.
What do you think would be a more apt analogy, then? Maybe I’m painting them in an unfair light. But, my point is that they’re a toymaker that makes and distributes entertainment for everybody, but also do this thing that kinda sucks.
Billionaire owned tech companies that controll a market so tightly they pretty much have a monopoly shouldn’t be anthropomorphized so fondly. I want you to vomit up that Kool aid.
Reminder most vg marketplace charge 30% on sale on they’re platform. Steam isn’t charging much different then it used to.
Again, those other marketplaces are bad too. Saying Valve is bad isn’t saying another company is good and calling another company bad doesn’t mean I have to say valve is good.
