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'People Enjoy Surprises' — Valve Is Trying to Dismiss New York's Counter-Strike Loot Box Lawsuit (www.ign.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 57 points 5 months ago (8 children)

Yes, they do. And when you charge for surprises that can be of varying value, what do we call that?

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  • [–] 19 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Agreed, though NY should be going after everyone involved in 'Surprise Mechanics', not just Valve.

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  • [–] [S] 27 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    It's not unusual to target specific entities first to try and set a precedent. Going after everyone at once would likely spread their efforts too thin.

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  • [–] -3 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Not wrong, but there are more worthy targets to go after first. Ones that have treated their customers far, far worse than Valve.

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  • [–] 17 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Just because Valve does great things elsewhere doesn't mean Valve should get a free pass on running a 5 billion market gap gambling economy. And that's 5 billion AFTER Valve nuked 3 billion from the market. I think people don't fully comprehend how sickeningly huge the CS skin market is.

    What other company operates loot boxes at the same scale as Valve?

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    I don't recall suggesting Valve getting a free pass, nor downplaying the CS skin market being an issue. What I'm saying is Valve at least turns that money to some good, unlike its contemporaries in the veiled gambling space.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    Saying "don't go after Valve (right now), instead go after these other bad companies I won't name" isn't giving a free pass to Valve? My bad.

    And let's not act like Valve isn't raking in money. They don't need gambling money to do good.

    Also

    What other company operates loot boxes at the same scale as Valve?

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    • [–] 24 points 5 months ago

    Daily reminder that corporation arent your frens. Not even when gabe shaped.

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    [–] 15 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    New York Attorney General’s lawsuit against the company, which claims loot boxes in its games such as Counter-Strike 2 promote illegal gambling and threaten to addict children.

    Both CS and TF2 are rated M. Children shouldn't be playing them in the first place.🤷‍♂️

    to deem loot boxes illegal gambling, because doing so would mean the likes of baseball cards, Happy Meal toys, and even Labubu blind boxes would be considered gambling, too.

    You know what, do it. Make it illegal. Fuck MTG and Pokemon card collectors. 🥳🥳🥳

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    Yeah, hockey and baseball cards used to be fine, then they became speculative assets.

    Now, you have YouTube videos of kids opening packs and talking about how much they're worth.

    It's fucking gambling. I did some work for that industry, 80% of sales were from addicts. I'm talking about people spending thousands a week on baseball/basketball/football cards. People openly talked about it in the industry as gambling. I've personally seen the numbers.

    It's fucking gambling.

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    • [–] 11 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I always thought of steam as neutral evil for being a corporation, but that was just plain wrong of me. Compare them to Digital Extreme and the fact they accidentally created a lucrative loot box and prompt remove from the game. They actually called the mechanic a slot machine instead of surprise mechanic.

    From a documentary: https://youtu.be/NA5vT1LooXk?t=1360

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Yep. People (gamers) give Valve way too much leeway. They pretty much invented the loot box and controll almost the entire PC gaming market, extracting a huge pile of wealth in doing so.

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    • [–] 9 points 5 months ago

    "But Homer, the grocery store sells sugar for a dollar a pound. And it doesn't have nails and bits of broken glass in it."

    "Those are prizes"

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    [–] 7 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    People also enjoy gambling. At first.

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    • [–] 13 points 5 months ago

    I bet they'd enjoy surprises they didn't have to pay for even more.

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    [–] 12 points 5 months ago

    People enjoy surprises

    Not when it's a surprise bill.

    "Surprise! You owe money!"

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    [+] 4 points 5 months ago (3 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    They've had lootboxes for-fucking-ever, they practically started the trend of gambling for video game skins, it's not only characteristic but integral to the corporation

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    • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    Great, let's get NY to regulate Polymarket and their stock market too!

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    [–] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    I'm guessing it's related to cs2/tf2 ? If so why go for a company with 2 games and not EA that has eighty?

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    • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Are they struggling to keep the steam machine out of the bullshit ancillary markets before it even launches

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    [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    And they already made it worse - new "cases" just go over the items 1 by 1 and give you a choice to buy each one right then and there at stupid prices. Wouldn't surprise me if this makes Valve even more of a giant in the end, because these people have absolutely no idea what they are even trying to achieve with these lawsuits.

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    [–] -3 points 5 months ago

    But guys, Gaben cares about gamers and isn't like the rest of them. They are the cool monopoly!

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    [–] -1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Okay Valve please go back to doing nothing and winning thanks

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    • 30 comments in c/games@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 33 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Come on Valve. Abolish the loot box. Set an example.

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    • [–] 26 points 5 months ago

    The fact that California decided to sue Valve for Counterstrike and not sue EA for FIFA is just blatant targeted harassment. Valve's right for pointing out that any precedent set here would make Pokemon cards and Baseball cards illegal, both of which are actually advertised directly to kids.

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    [–] 21 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Yup, just a nice stark reminder that gaming corporations all suck to some degree.

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    • [–] 17 points 5 months ago

    Children yearn for the mines-ass argument

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    [–] 48 points 5 months ago

    yeah valve is pretty indefensible here..

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    [–] 43 points 5 months ago

    People get addicted to drugs, alcohol, and gambling too; that doesn't make it good for them.

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    [–] 11 points 5 months ago

    I bet they'd enjoy surprises they didn't have to pay for even more.

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    [–] 22 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    This is one of the few times I'd agree that Valve is the bad guy. I think other companies are also wrong for this. I think they all should be part of this lawsuit and I think legislation needs to have more repercussions for loot box BS.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago* (5 children)

    They are brining up the good argument that this would essentially make baseball and pokemon cards gambling and illegal as well, I'm not a lawyer but with the way the law is written and from my understanding of it valve has a very good chance of getting this dismissed or wining in court. It would suddenly make many other things illegal if they loose.

    In its motion to dismiss, Valve continued to heavily criticize the lawsuit. “Can parents purchase packs of baseball cards for their children?” it said. “Can families go to Chuck E. Cheese to play games of chance and exchange winning tickets for prizes? Can a child reach into a cereal box and grab a surprise toy? All these actions and more could lead to chargeable crimes under NYAG’s interpretation of gambling.”

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

    Nah. I actually thought the same at first. I literally asked when this was first announced in the news if it wasn't basically the same as Pokemon cards.

    The problem is this. The company producing the Pokemon cards isn't I hope actively providing a service to trade or resell them for monetary value based on rarity. Secondary markets exist for that but a first party Pokemon company market doesn't exist for that.

    This is where valve fucked up. They allow you to get a rare drop by chance, trade it for points, and use those points to buy something with real world value. It's a lot more like pachinko than it is Pokemon cards or baseball cards.

    In a casino you buy chips. Those chips can then be traded back to the casino for cash. When you bet on things at the casino you bet chips with the understanding that those chips are work a real world amount of money.

    That is what makes gambling illegal in a lot of places. The ability to convert the gambled assets directly into spendable currency.

    Pachinko does it a little different. You pay to play and when you win you get little trinkets. The pachinko parlor doesn't let you trade them for cash or anything else. But you can go next door to a place that will buy those little trinkets for actual cash. Valve shouldn't let you trade the points for anything with a fixed actual monetary value. Which is likely what they will do going forward if this lawsuit is successful.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Steam wallet funds expressly have no monetary value in the steam user agreement, and it explicitly states in the steam user agreement it's against their tos to sell items off of their market. So they are covered. Second hand markets exist but it's without valves support or consent, they aren't breaking the law. A court can't compel valve to restrict user freedom (trading digital items) because they don't shut down websites that they have no ability to shut down.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago* (2 children)

    Valve allows users to cash in on the virtual items they have won in two ways. Users can sell the items they won through Valve’s own virtual marketplace, the Steam Community Market, where they can use the proceeds to buy other video games, video game hardware, and other virtual items. Users can also connect their Valve accounts to third-party marketplaces where the virtual items can be sold directly for cash. The OAG’s investigation found that Valve facilitates and even assists these third-party marketplaces in their operations.

    All three games feature an optional mechanic where players can pay real money in exchange for “loot boxes”: a virtual item that drops a randomly-generated piece of cosmetic gear that can be used in-game. Most of these items have no mechanical impact and are there strictly for looks, such as silly hats in TF2 or neon-painted “weapon skins” in CS2.

    Despite their lack of actual effect, loot boxes and item trading are both an extraordinarily lucrative market for Valve. Virtual items for these three games have been sold for staggering amounts of real money. One estimate cited by the AG’s office indicates that the market for Counter-Strike skins alone was worth over $4.3 billion as of last year.

    While Valve absolutely benefits from the strangely frenetic market for virtual items in CS2, TF2, and Dota 2 — it sells these loot boxes in the first place, and hosts the secondary market for them via the in-app Steam Marketplace — the occasionally shocking prices for these items is part of a player-created economy. The lawsuit may be partially aimed in the wrong direction.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    There is no evidence I have seen that Valve supports 3rd party market places, and like I said the steam user agreement explicitly forbids them. There is nothing illegal about their own market place because you are paid in steam wallet funds and steam wallet funds cannot be exchanged for real world money. This case is going to flop, valve will win this one.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago

    Valve makes you buy a key to open the loot boxes.

    Valve then allows the contents of loot boxes to be traded for platform currency.

    Unfortunately that platform currency has a real monetary value because it can be traded for real monetary goods because you can use it to buy a steam deck of other valve hardware.

    It is this direct chain of events that make this illegal gambling because this is not something you can do with baseball cards or Pokemon cards.

    three core elements common to all gambling laws: (1) consideration, (2) chance, and (3) prize. So long as one of these three elements is not met, a loot box system is not “gambling”. The “chance” element is inevitably met in any form of loot boxes, but the “consideration” element can arguably be avoided by making loot boxes acquirable only by exchanging virtual currency that itself arguably has no “value”, and the “prize” element can arguably be avoided by making the loot box drops account-locked. Where the loot box drop cannot be transferred, sold, or “cashed out”, there is arguably no “prize” no matter how rare the drop is or how useful it is for in-game purposes.[1]

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    • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    I feel like this argument held a lot more weight before polymarket.

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    [–] 5 points 5 months ago

    Like in casinos where the surprise is that you won nothing

    Yeah, people love that, and gambling is addiction is real

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    [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    Finally, something I can criticise Valve for

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    [–] 7 points 5 months ago*

    I enjoy it when the bank send me a letter saying i may or may not have missed a payment on some loan. Fun surprise!

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    [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    All you need is to talk to some younger gamers to see how bad CS cases can be. My younger sibling (24 now) was surrounded by case gambling growing up and I personally know some kids highschool aged that are keeping the trend going.

    Valvd does a lot of good things for gaming but this is really not one of them.

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    [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    I sure love me a surprise loot box when someone I know thoughtfully purchases what's inside and gifts it to me.

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    [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    It’d be nice to have all those boxes I picked up to be free.

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    [–] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Every degenerate gambler I know tells me that it’s fun. Every single one tells me that the reason I don’t like Vegas is because I don’t like having fun.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    There’s so many flashing lights and feedback systems to slot machines now, it’s kind of believable.

    Like, you put $15 into Slay the Spire, and you KNOW you’re getting nothing back. But you get a bunch of flashy effects in the playing of it.

    With gambling, you throw in $15, you get the flashy effects, AND you might get $30 back. When you look at it that way, it can become more understandable how people fall for it and feel happy to.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    The people telling me how fun it is don’t spend $15. They spend 4,000 in one night. They always have stories about all the money they won but they always seem to work the same job as me instead of being professional gamblers.

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    • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    enjoy these nuts

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    [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    People enjoy good surprises

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    [–] -1 points 5 months ago

    But guys, Gaben cares. He made some features in steam launcher just for me!

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