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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
most notably by purchasing a steam deck
Well...
You can use your steam wallet money to buy DDR5 RAM and HDDs!
Yeah this would include WoW because drops are randomized and you can sell them and cash out with tokens.
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'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 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
So your argument is that they're mostly alright so you'll look the other way here?
Look, I don't have any love for loot boxes in general, at least when it's real money. But there are far more egregious examples that would work just as well if not better for going after the practice of loot boxes than what steam does.
There's a reason they are singling out steam, and they signal why in the statement, saying this "teaches kids to gamble and makes them violent", repeating 90s BS about "violent video games", when the games in question are rated M, meaning if a child is playing it then that is 100% on the parents... and still not illegal anyway.
They are most likely singling out valve because they refuse to play ball with the privacy violating age checks. Valve did the bare minimum they had to: basically clearing anyone with a credit card registered as being over 18.
Valve is also not a publicly traded company and is very customer focused, even with the loot box thing. Which has been the driver for other lawsuits that only single them out.
Kinda lazy for New York to do this.
When there are countless gaming companies that are more cutthroat about it.
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.
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.
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.
I despise all loot boxes and they should be going after EA and Activision/Blizzard if they want really scuzzy, exploitive ones.
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
PM a mod to add your own
Video games
Generic
Help and suggestions
By platform
By type
By games
Language specific