Tech company is doing an evil practice
Government wags finger and collects a 0.02% net profit fine
Spends the money on anti-homeless grenades.
I can’t believe that I side with a corporation but that just shows how immensely idiotic this is. We have so many straight up evil companies but they’d rather pick up on the one which is somewhat beneficial to our freedom and digital rights. Until we get a good competitor I’ll stand with steam even if though hate corporations. Lesser evil
What’s wrong with making valve stop an actually bad thing they do?
This is how we got refunds lol
100%
This is a mess. I’ve rewritten this a bit of this and added sections and removed sections. The gist of what I think is just that I have a lot of mixed feelings about all of this, and it’s a very VERY complex topic that I just want to be done with…
In addition to asking Valve to modify or eliminate its loot box system, the New York suit asks for Valve to make “full restitution to consumers” for the disgorgement of “all monies” received from its gambling system, and for fines of “three times the amount of its gain.” Ars Technica has reached out to Valve for comment.
Lol.
Okay, so,
- Loot boxes, like other forms of gambling, can lead to addiction and result in real harm. But Valve’s loot boxes are particularly pernicious because they are popular among children and adolescents, who are lured into opening loot boxes by the prospect of winning expensive virtual items that convey status in the gaming world. Research has shown that children who are introduced to gambling are at a significantly higher risk of developing gambling addictions later in life.
I read the “nature of the lawsuit” part of the lawsuit, as I think it’s enough to understand the gist of what’s going on. The lawsuit is like 50 pages long and I’m not a lawyer, I’m just laying in bed with my eyelids getting heavy.
Basically, 1-11, and 13 are entirely THIS IS GAMBLING with sprinkles of GAMBLING IS BAD. Like, yeah, no fucking duh. 14 states:
- As described further below, Valve’s actions violate Article I, Section 9 of the New York Constitution, and Sections 220.05 and 220.10 of New York’s Penal Law.
Looks like article I section 9 is ‘gambling is illegal in ny’. It doesn’t immediately say what 220.05/10 are, but going off the really big focus on THIS IS GAMBLING AND GAMBLING IS ILLEGAL trend, I can guess what it says.
So, why the fuck is ny going after valve NOW? Why not… I dunno, a decade ago? This is so weird! And why not sue ALL the companies that have been doing it for many decades now? Niantic, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, the hoards of gacha games and trading card games? It can’t really be that the valve definition really just hit some specific conditions, like being otherwise useless skins, most crate opens are worth basically nothing, etc. can it?
And then mixed in is a pretty heavy amount of protect the children. Which… Yes, virtue signal, but yes. Valve shouldn’t allow children to be gambling. But also, I think this is a case of a mean-well situation that developed in the wrong way. Valve needs to check themselves and fix this, 100%.
If you don’t know, the skins thing developed over probably more than a decade. It was a way for modders and skinners to legitimately make money, rather than be barred by copyright. Valve would share in the profit, everybody would see your custom skins rather than just you, it would give everyone a sense of uniqueness, and wouldn’t unbalance the game because it was just cosmetics. Then rarity and logistics, and then it spiraled out of control. It was never meant to be “hey let’s give kids gambling addiction and steal their money”, Valve is one of the very few companies that that ISN’T their goal, as is very evidenced by anybody who knows anything about them. They aren’t EA. It’s unfortunate that it ended up this way, with other companies only seeing the dollar signs, with valve landing on it where they have, with the building hate for them.
I had a bunch of other stuff written out, mostly thoughts as I went. I have many thoughts on this. I think Valve should stop lootboxes and set an example as a leader of the industry.
I’m sad to see Valve get kicked so much, and would be devastated to see Steam and Valve fall (muh library!). They generally do try to serve consumers well, it’s very clear. They single handedly saved pc gaming by offering a quality service better than piracy. Always on DRM was the trade. I hope they can innovate and do better without further dark patterns. Maybe this lawsuit is just what they need to get their shit together. Maybe it’ll destroy them and a bunch of actually shitty companies will continue to be the shittiest companies to ever grace the earth in Valve’s place. I have a very bad feeling about this.
Valve, for all our sakes, do better, plz fix. Before this gets worse.
There is one core difference to most other lootboxes, and it’s that the skins you get from them have a tangible real world value. It is actually, in every way, resemblant of a slot machine. Put in money, receive an amount of money that is less than what you put in on average (though I guess it’s never 0).
I’d have far more support for this if we didn’t have something matching this entirely for decades, completely legal for kids, with the only difference being that you get a physical item instead of something digital. Of course, I’m referring to trading cards. By all means regulate both, but regulating the digital version while not touching the physical one is insane.
Trading cards are arguably a problem too, but one that becomes much less prevalent due to their comparative inconvenience. The internet can gamify immediacy around them, and the cards of that store will never run out of stock.
The implications and nuances of this lawsuit are so incredibly deep and ripple so far, that anybody on here or anywhere else that says they strongly feel one way or the other is either completely full of shit, has an ulterior motive, or has a personal stake somehow.
This lawsuit, when deeply thought about, is the opposite of simple. The more you know, the messier it gets.
I should’ve clarified, with “this” i mean more the general sentiment about regulation of these lootboxes that I’ve seen in other contexts as well - other than the general topic I don’t really have an opinion on the lawsuit other than it seeming a bit ridicous to reimburse every customer in full.
Why now? Because they just got a new mayor and administration that cares
So are they going to do the same thing against EA, ActiBlizz, Epic Games, etc etc? Or is this just “Valve has the most money and we want money and dont actually care about this issue” yet again?
There’s a fundamental difference between what Valve does and what other companies are doing. In most games the things you get from a lootbox have no monetary value. You can’t sell those things to make money. You could get around it by selling the whole account but that is pretty much universally against the TOS so companies get a free pass when that happens.
But even if it did have some monetary value as long as it’s a value set by the community and never acknowledged by the company the company gets a free pass even if they unofficially acknowledge the value (see how WOTC manipulates the secondary market of MTG cards).
And this is where Valve is different from the others. Valve acknowledge the monetary value of an item, because the trades happen on their platform and Valve takes a cut from all the trades. No other lootbox or lootbox-esque game does this.
As for why it’s a lawsuit now, I’m guessing it’s related to what was said in the article. I’m guessing previously Valve could hide behind the fact that the outcome of the trades is essentially Steam credit, which technically has no monetary value because it can’t be cashed out, at least not through Valve. But supposedly now with the Steam deck, in a roundabout way, it is possible to cash out through Valve.
Valve lootboxes have always been the closest iteration to gambling and Valve has been hiding behind technicalities for a decade to keep their gambling ecosystem going. Just because Valve does a lot of good shit doesn’t mean we should be defending their bad shit when it’s obviously bad.
This isn’t true at all. A lot of games now allow you to sell the boxes on their platform.
Give some examples.
Two that I have played off the top of my head, war thunder and Diablo 3…there is an entire gatcha industry. The amount of f2p mmos as well. EVE online has had a way to sell it’s currency for I’m thinking a decade+ now.
Diablo 3 has no real trading. You have only limited time trading of things you find while playing with other people. Maybe you meant Diablo Immortal but I don’t know enough about that to talk on that subject.
As for War Thunder and EVE. Yes, they have lootboxes and yes there’s a perceived monetary value to the boxes and things in the box, but they’re not the same as Steam because those games do the common thing (which IMO should also be banned) where you stick a premium currency between real money and the thing you want to purchase and obfuscate the actual value of things. I don’t agree with what they’re doing but they are making sure value of items is not directly translatable to real money. It’s one of the tactics companies hide behind (while also manipulating players to spend more). Steam doesn’t even do that. Steam literally puts real money value on the market. You want to buy a Factory new Marble Fade talon knife you know the starting price is exactly 732,98€.
I’m pretty sure in EVE and War Thunder you also get to open some of those lootboxes for free which is another difference from Valve games, where you literally have to pay real money to open the box. I imagine that also plays a role in how companies defend their practices, by saying it’s not gambling because you don’t have to pay to open lootboxes, you just pay to get EXTRA lootboxes to open.
And to make it clear, I’m not defending the gatcha industy. IMO that should be struck down the same way Valve’s gambling machine should be struck down.
Diablo 3 had a RMAH (real money auction house). I didn’t play the game long so it was still up when I stopped playing it. Since fuck blizzard.
WT requires you to buy keys to open the boxes, and you can sell the boxes you find on their store.
Eve has a full blown cash economy.
I honestly don’t care about any of this. I think if a fool wants to waste their money on digital skins for a game. Let them.
But I’m not a prohibition type. Blackmarkets pop up because people are shouting “think of the children”. It’s not kids buying this shit, it’s adults with jobs.
Diablo 3 had a RMAH (real money auction house). I didn’t play the game long so it was still up when I stopped playing it. Since fuck blizzard.
Which got removed roughly when the expansion launched due to there being huge backlash on this bullshit.
WT requires you to buy keys to open the boxes, and you can sell the boxes you find on their store.
For premium boxes. You still get free boxes that you can open, but fair enough. That said, being able to sell premium boxes is not the same thing as being able to sell the things you got from the premium box and it changes nothing about the rest of what I said in the previous comment.
Eve has a full blown cash economy.
Not even going to bother with this one because who know what the fuck you mean here. Don’t bother explaining, I don’t care.
I honestly don’t care about any of this. I think if a fool wants to waste their money on digital skins for a game. Let them.
So why comment in the first place? Because now I have to waste my time correcting your vague bullshit and I’m pretty pissed off about it because this is something I care about and you’re here just talking shit about things you don’t understand and don’t care to understand. Good for you for not knowing how damaging addiction can be for addicts and the people around them, next time do everyone a favor and stfu when you don’t give a shit.
It seems as if someone has been lobbying against Valve recently… Probably Epic for failing to compete.
Bingo. It’s also widely known across the industry that Valve has had these crates and keys for nearly a decade. No lawsuit.
It’s all about the Benjamins.
While I certainly agree with the “competition fails at being a competitor and sues instead”, it is also false to say that because of Valve having lootboxes for over a decade, we should let it be.
Well, if Valve loses the case and this would force EA, Epic and all other bunch of shitty companies that utilize FOMO and gambling mechanics to stop doing so - I see it as a enormous W.
You are technically correct, except no one will try to enforce it on the lobbying companies, who probably kickstarted the lawsuit in the first place.
So they should be left alone with their online gambling business because they’ve been doing it for a long time and also there are other companies doing it too? Valve glazing is really out of control.
Hope Valve loses and something changes. Valve has been getting away with this bullshit for way too long because people like them and therefore give them a pass on all of their shitty behaviour.
It isn’t always that simple. It could lead to age verification requirements which might be the goal as opposed to banning loot boxes. Then what has people upset about discord wanting face scans or IDs could end up becoming a legal requirement for online gaming accounts that want to play games rated T and higher.
And this age verification thing has been getting pushed throughout the world with attempts at chat control in the EU and what’s already happened in the UK.
I wonder if they ask everyone for ID. My account is old enough to drink.
It isn’t always that simple. It could lead to age verification requirements
You seem to be under the impression that gambling is illegal only for children in New York, but that’s not what’s happening here, gambling is illegal in New York for all ages.
It’s more I’m skeptical of government intentions these days. And not like the US government venture into the area is going to fill me with confidence.
When it comes to social media for example I’ve seen more comments and headlines of people saying stuff like it should be banned for younger people, which of course would mean the need for verification. Something companies like Palantir or links to it like Persona see money there is to make from it. And pushing for government contracts not just in the US but in the EU.
And think of the children has been a go to strategy to try to get people onboard with general push to collect more information.
Ideally straight up banning loot boxes and classifying it as Casinos would be ideal to kill it off. I’m just worried that it’s going to instead turn into a justification used to require ID collection, since what people see as a solution and the actual goal of governments don’t often align.
Well, not all forms. The State of New York runs a lottery itself, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Lottery
On November 8, 1966, New Yorkers voted to approve a constitutional amendment authorizing a government-run lottery.
implement age verification on games with loot boxes. watch sales crash. stop making loot box funded games.
At the expense of everyone’s privacy even if you don’t participate in the loot box economy, because you know the laws won’t be written for only if you access them it’ll be a blanket requirement. That’s not the way to get rid of loot boxes.
What is the way to get rid of loot boxes?
Straight up ban them. No age gate, no nothing. Just no more loot boxes. It’s worse than a fucking casino and those should be banned too.
The line between banning loot boxes and banning games like Balatro is a very fine one, with a need to specify that what is being banned is monetary transactions to access lottery pools.
That kind of accuracy and genuine intent is not what is currently present in lawmaking in most countries.
I hope I’m wrong about this, but I don’t think I am.
I don’t think the line is that fine in that case, considering all random mechanics in Balatro give ephemeral rewards that only last until the end of a run, which is an isolated instance of a game with limited playtime, those mechanics cannot be paid for with real money, the resulting rewards cannot be sold for real money or traded with other players, and generally cannot affect any other players in any way, not even visually through cosmetics.
As far as I know, Balatro is only really being targeted because it’s stylized after poker, with the enforcement having no actual understanding of what the gameplay looks like.
I think at bigger risk from actual laws would be MMORPGs where you can get random loot drops from enemies/chests, and those also tend to have markets where people grind valuable drops and use in-game trading to transfer them to other players in exchange for real money.
Well that applies to far more than this subject.
By legislating them to be illegal and then fining developers that don’t comply. Sliding scale fines that wipe out the cost benefit of the loot boxes in the first place would suffice.
Don’t know. That’s not my specialty.
But it’s definitely not by compromising everyone’s privacy and forcing them to identify themselves because the government wants to be able to identify everyone everywhere at all times and uaing children as the excuse like they always do.
Yeah, I didn’t think about that. That is kind of a nightmare scenario. I still stand by what I said. Now the question is, do I trust legislation to make a good decision that doesn’t fuck over everyone in the end? And if so, do I trust a multi-billion dollar company to not do some horrendous malicious compliance?
… and I’m not going to answer these questions. :|
Another scary thing is Palantir who’d be all for the push for verification with them positioning themselves to make money off of it, and wanting to be responsible for collecting data on everyone. They already turned out to be a partner of Discord through Persona.
They’ve already pushed for government contracts even in Europe. And with how things look like with the US government how much confidence is there in the US government.
I’m not sure government involvement will lead to the type of outcome people think it will.
What shitty behavior? A new version of Counter Strike? Literally having a platform that sells games and isn’t beholden to shareholders? A platform that isn’t selling our data or purposely made to game more money out of people?
You click buy, that’s on you. Have an addiction then go get some fucking help and stop blaming everyone else.
If loot boxes are illegal then send Valve a cease and desist for selling games that have loot boxes and be done with it.
Because you can do the same thing by buying the required hardware from any of those companies and selling it with the digital items on it for cash. That’s not really supposed to be allowed (plenty of companies including steam do crack down on selling accounts). But while I agree that lot boxes are gambling there really needs to be a hard line that doesn’t require the ability to convert assets to cash. Otherwise the loot box problem will persist and we will have shittier resulting services with no real added benefit.
People were selling animal crossing residents on eBay. People have been selling accounts for things like WOW and Call of Duty. I believe there was even a market for Destiny accounts at one point.
By NY’s definition of gambling, buying a pack of Pokemon cards is gambling.
Or, alternatively, sue the game developers themselves. Because I note they aren’t suing Xbox, Nintendo, or PlayStation.
This lawsuit is targeting Valve not because they are a platform or storefront that provides games with gambling, but rather is due to gambling in games that they themselves have developed. From the first line in the article:
New York state has filed a lawsuit against Valve alleging that randomized loot boxes in games like Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2 amount to a form of unregulated gambling, letting users “pay for the chance to win a rare virtual item of significant monetary value.”
The suit is not claiming that lootboxes are gambling in and of themselves, it’s claiming that the lootboxes in valve’s own games counts as gambling because you can sell the items for steam wallet funds through the steam community market, which can then be converted into cash via multiple methods, most notably by purchasing a steam deck with wallet funds and then selling the steam deck for cash, which is not against any laws or steam’s terms of service.
Personally, I agree that the line needs to be drawn more strictly than just requiring the possibility of converting the winnings into cash, and that lootboxes are predatory regardless. But this case isn’t about lootboxes in general, it’s about the very real problem of valve actively enabling and encouraging gambling with actual monetary value. We can’t easily change the laws, but valve is (allegedly) breaking the laws as they already exist.
It’s particularly the bit about buying a steam deck, loading it with the high price items, and selling it that I latched onto when I read the article.
Specifically that’s important because that’s literally something you can do with any system and more importantly with any account. You don’t even need to load up and sell a steam deck, you absolutely can just sell the steam account.
If this is simply about providing a marketplace for loot box goods on where you can convert those assets easily to real world currency then that’s different. I still don’t agree that it should eliminate loot boxes from being gambling (because that’s exactly what it is), but I do understand why they might consider the steam asset market as part of a casino or similar.
I don’t play the types of games that give out loot boxes like that, and my only experience with the asset market is the trading cards you can get by playing some games. Those strike me as very similar to Pokemon cards and TCG has already got a “black market” going on for those.
I would definitely argue that it’s telling that they even mention children in this lawsuit. Because honestly, there’s lots of games that are for children that include the loot box mechanic (not even just digital games but trading cards), and nothing has been done about reselling assets from those.
The root of the problem is that the loot box assets can be purchased instead of just traded (within the limits of the law), and so I’d wager that should be the change Valve makes.
I still think they should just make the loot boxes illegal if we’re doing this.
Yeah this would include WoW because drops are randomized and you can sell them and cash out with tokens.
most notably by purchasing a steam deck
Well…
You can use your steam wallet money to buy DDR5 RAM and HDDs!
the main argument seems to be not that steam has games with loot boxes in them, but that steam allows people to exchange the assets for steam wallet cash, which allows people to buy real products (games AND hardware), so it is equivalent to money. And steam is obviously enabling that system. as far as i know, xbox, nintendo and playstation don’t have that in their systems
(also, NY argues that valve knew about and did not enough to stop third-party marketplaces that work with real money, based on internal communications, which might not be the same (or just be harder to prove) for the other companies)
Their argument is just “this is gambling, gambling is illegal in ny”
But it is also “you should be doing more to prevent this, this is your responsibility”
But then also "you let kids gamble*
And then sort of ALSO “therefore, you’re evil and all of your profits are ill begotten and you’ve built an industry around 100% preying on gambling for children and circumventing our moral highground laws that outlaw sin”
So, just based on the first one, yeah, guilty.
The second one, maybe. Requiring Valve to do all that suddenly would be a massive undertaking. I’d be curious to see what they could turn out. They’d go from game devs, to store owners, to a small government.
Letting kids gamble though… Like, this is such bullshit. Fuck off with that nonsense. This is unfair targeting on THAT issue. For what’s actually happening everywhere, this is such a targeted and unreasonable change of expectation of consequence. Yeah it has to happen somewhere, but can it happen to fucking EA instead? Or even Pokemon. Do it to the TCG market or the console market. Why the PC market’s best platform? Not muh boy Gaben. He’s been so good to us all. OUR LORD AND SAVIORRRRRRRRRR
I’m curious to see what happens though. If Valve does lose, I hope things change for the better and not for the worse. I wonder what the Trump admin and other Nazi benefactors and idealists want. Probably to see Valve fall.
I do think, if gambling is to be allowed anywhere, it should only be in places that can verify age; just like alcohol delivery services. But, given the trend of using age verification as an inroad for data collection and Palentir spying, I mostly think of that requirement as a jury-rigged guillotine for the casino, or for the loot boxes. Either get rid of gambling, or set up a monolithic roadblock to users. I’d be appalled if Valve were somehow required to collect drivers’ licenses of people playing Dark Souls.
I’m not necessarily bothered that it happened to Valve. I honestly do see the other commenters point about the secondary market Valve runs as part of their platform.
On the other hand though I’m almost certain that WoW has basically the same thing (I’ve never actually played WOW, so I can’t be 100% positive), and if literally the only problem is them running the secondary market, the lawsuit makes more sense.
But the fact that they included selling hardware to sell the digital assets makes me suspect that they don’t know you could essentially do the same thing with a switch or PlayStation and that’s wild to me.
They didn’t memtion selling hardware as a way of selling digital assets. They included selling hardware as a way to convert the digital currency in steam wallet to real cash. The process of “selling skin in marketplace -> use those funds to buy a steam deck -> selling the deck for cash” is straightforward, and all allowed by valve.
Other platforms have people circumventing the rules and restrictions in order to sell digital assets for cash. In steam, they are included and supported by valve (and valve profits immensely from it, by selling the keys and getting a cut of most sales)
I haven’t played wow in like 15 years, so I don’t know either.
I do know that many other games have this system, some worse. I get the issue where you can get your money back out being actually a draw for people who could see it at profitable, that’s a helllllla dark pattern.
I don’t think Valve runs any of the third party platforms though. They only run the Steam marketplace, to my knowledge. I refuse to gamble on CS2 skins though, it goes against my values.
Being able to launder assets into money, while potentially being a draw (“wow, if I spend $20, I could make $1,000,000!”), seems really fucking obtuse as soon as you realize that it’s through buying sold out steam decks or valve indexes. If that is happening though, I wish it wouldn’t, because that encourages scalping.
I proposed a system for cs2 in a different thread:
You only get so many crates per week or hour played or whatever, and those crates are free to open and random. But, you can buy keys for specific crates where you can manually choose what you get out of said crate. The profits for that crate is split between the different skins in that crate, with more percentage going to the skin maker of the skin you chose.
But the argument as to why valve is enabling gambling and other companies that also have lootboxes arent relies on that the skins in valve’s games have monetary value that is both directly influenced by valve (by making some skins rare), that players open loot boxes in hopes of getting the rare skins (because the common skins can be bought in steam’s marketplace for cents) and that the skins can be exchanged for real money (either by buying hardware with steam wallet cash and selling it, or in the third party marketplaces that valve allows, protect and promotes (yes, valve has closed accounts of some third party marketplaces, but only those with gambling. The ones that just allow buying and selling for cash are explicitly protected by valve, as shown in the filing).
I do agree that the children argument is weird. Gambling in illegal in ny for all, not just children
