I seem to remember a company that thought this sort of thing gave users “a sense of pride and accomplishment”

Maybe since they own Steam, they'd cascade the ruling to games sold on their platform.

RS has a similar thing, but recently they have gotten rid of most of thier lootbox(keys) MTX, and decided to nerf the game as well as a vendetta.

Ha! All the points to you!!

Meanwhile people are probably betting on if Valve will lose or win this battle.

Hang on a sec I'm just putting some money on "Will NYC sue the stock exhange"... /s

...it's gotten so out of hand.

Not all gambling is banned, and they are specifically calling out games targeting kids

I'm the first guy to go to bat to point out why someone's bullshit issue with valve is bullshit.

But this ain't one of those times. Valve is as guilty as all the others on this. Loot boxes should be illegal. And valve should be ashamed.

On one hand: I just want my Steam Frame so I can put a real, actual computer on my face and escape into it and dev on it, dammit. I bet the gambling allows them to take risks like that.

... On the other hand... illegalizing loot boxes might directly put us on the path to Half-Life 3 or even Left 4 Dead 3? And it's morally upstanding so...

It's actually a bummer that if they lose it'll probably just make them cut access to loot boxes SPECIFICALLY in NYC IP address ranges and nothing else.

So because it's everywhere it's good?

These arguments just maintain the status quo. Yeah its everywhere and it's almost normalized but it's not in anyway a good thing. There should be laws against gambling and especially when you target children.

Pokemon cards is basically lootboxes i think pokemon is more horrendous on that front than the other TGCs, because they refuse to change the pullrates to negate scalpers.