Yup, just a nice stark reminder that gaming corporations all suck to some degree.
Corporations, really.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
I feel like this argument held a lot more weight before polymarket.
Come on Valve. Abolish the loot box. Set an example.
But then Gabe could only afford 3 mega yachts instead of 6.
People get addicted to drugs, alcohol, and gambling too; that doesn’t make it good for them.
Like in casinos where the surprise is that you won nothing
Yeah, people love that, and gambling is addiction is real
yeah valve is pretty indefensible here…
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.
valve has a way to transfer money in your steam wallet into something with real world value: hardware.
you can not trade pokemon cards with nintendo for game cartridges or money, that is the whole distinction, no secondary market required.
How is that different from any promotion like “find the golden ticket and earn an iphone”?
The “No purchase required” part. In all cases of promotions like these you, if read the fine print you can simply write to the company and they send you a ticket for free.
No. I mean when the cap of a bottle of coke has prices or find the golden cookie and win a trip to NY. Those have a purchase required, and you can’t write to the company and get the to send you the price token for you ro exchange it for the price.
Yes even the “collect the cap” ones have to provide a free alternate method of entry. The FTC at the federal level and all 50 states have these laws. Edit: just search on the phrase “free alternate method of entry” and you’ll get many hits explaining this.
The US is truly a very weird country. In any case even if that’s the rule CS is a free game, so no purchase required to participate in the loot boxes. So I’ll ask again, how is that any different?
I’m not a CS player but the lawsuit says that Valve charges money for keys to open the boxes, what’s in the boxes has monetary value, and the reason the items have value is because Valve allows them to be bought and sold. These three facts together constitute an illegal gambling scheme.
You could contrast this with the fact that Rocket League no longer charges for keys to open their loot drops and their items can no longer be traded.
I found a website that spells it out quite clearly: https://ussweeps.com/about-us/blog/articles/no-purchase-necessary-sweepstakes-guide/
A sweepstakes becomes an illegal lottery when all three of the following elements are present:Prize – Something of value is awarded Chance – Winners are chosen randomly Consideration – Entry requires payment or significant effortRemoving consideration (and clearly disclosing a free AMOE) keeps your sweepstakes on the right side of the law.
Now before you say “but how is this different from magic cards”, the fact that the only thing that WOTC or Topps or Nintendo are offering you is purchasing their cards to either play the game or commemorate your favorite players. You get the physical cards that you paid for with no further value.
I don’t think that’s how the law is written though. You can only get steam wallet funds for your skins, steam wallet funds explicitly have no cash value. The transaction at that point is done. A video game also has “real world value” you could just as easily say well I get steam wallet funds and than sell gifted games to other people. I don’t think your argument tracks with the law or steams user agreement.
But guys, Gaben cares. He made some features in steam launcher just for me!
Daily reminder Valve is a scumbag monopoly.
