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New York sues Valve for enabling "illegal gambling" with loot boxes (arstechnica.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] 3 points 8 months ago (5 children)

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.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    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)

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    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

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