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No one is forcing you to charge for that type of mechanic. What a stupid defense. It's gambling. It's advertised to children.
It doesn't matter how much you like valve for other reasons. They are in the wrong here.
If we lived in a just world, all loot boxes and other pay-for-random-things would be outlawed completely. It is gambling and it is directed at kids, yet there's zero oversight or regulation the way gambling is regulated everywhere else.
I don't know aboit the new FH6, but I always really liked how Forza Horizon does it. Because it does not cost anything. You just get an endless stream of wheel spins and random drops. There isn't even a way to buy them at all.
You get thst sort of, "Randomized dopamine hit" but its just part of the game.
Vampire Survivors had it, kinda. It was just miniboss drops, random, like a typical hack and slash, but opening a chest looked like a silly slot machine animation jacking straight into my gambler brain (I don't actually gamble - I have many other bad habits but I realized I might be wired dangerously back when I played cards for small sums of money with my classmates as a teenager. So I actively swore off gambling and never fell for it, apart from "fake" gambling in video games, where I'm always reminded of why I shouldn't touch it in real life)
Cloverpit is a roguelike where the gameplay is literally just playing a slot machine
In general, they hold that criminalising loot boxes as a form of gambling "will have an impermissible chilling effect on protected videogame design", creating a risk of liability for people who stream about lootboxes together with people who sell analogous products, like the aforesaid packets of baseball cards.
I'm failing to see the problem here. Baseball cards, randomized "blind boxes" and packs are all gambling aimed at kids. If we "chill" that sort of speech (and commercial speech has long received less protection) that's a good thing.
But but but... Money!
I didn't understand it when this lawsuit first popped up either.
But the fact is, Valve run a loot box mechanic and a storefront where the items in loot boxes can be traded and purchased with store front currency. That might not be problematic except that you can use that shop currency to buy actual real world products like the steam deck and controller. So there's an avenue to monetary gain here that is first party and that's the problem.
I like Valve generally as a company but this does in fact appear to be illegal.
Valve's argument isn't in defense of free speech, it's in defense of Gabe's next yacht.
For the record, Gabe already has six yachts. More than anyone on earth*. Including the world's largest yacht*.
(* Roman Abramovich has owned 8 different yachts, but not at the same time).
(* The Abu Dhabi royal family owns a bigger yacht, if we include state-assets then technically it is #2).
a reminder that no corporation is your friend, and even valve will do scummy things if that's where the profit is.
I am glad, that the comment section here isn't filled with Valve fanboys, like it's usually when Valve is criticized.
That always pisses me off. How hard is it to realize there are actually no good billionaires?
Oh no, they'll have to ban gacha games, the horror.
Not letting me advertise cigarettes to children is a violation of my free speech
you mean maybe they'd do a proper TF2 update or actually make games again instead of constantly phoning it the fuck in?
I agree it's gambling, but where is the line? Is killing a boss in World of Warcraft not gambling? You also have various chances of getting random rare items, which you can then sell for real money on third party sites.
Where is the line between random outcomes being part of the game, and it being gambling? CS:GO is really obvious, but what if they didn't have the box opening thing, you just got the random skin directly after winning a match, without having to explicitly open the "loot box"? Would it still be gambling then? Feels like it should since the end result is the same, but then every game with loot has gambling. I genuinely don't know.
The line is real money, that's it. No randomization should happen anywhere near where we spend money. Buy thing get thing, grind it you get chance.
Killing a boss in WoW isn't gambling because you don't need to pay anything to do so. With CS, unless something has dramatically changed since I last played, when you get a box you need to typically buy a key to open it and get the item.
If you just got a random skin after a match, it would not be gambling. The value of the item received, or resellability of the item, doesn't really matter here as much as whether or not there's an entry fee.
Also, them putting that level of abstraction, - buying a key, not the box - makes it look even more shady. They intentionally add another step to deny liability and comparison to traditional gambling. And, being not gambling per law, they are npt even controlled by the regulation existing for gambling machines, e.g. distribution of loosing and winning outcomes.
The gambling line for me would be "Does it cost me financially" to do it or is an option. If I just have to play again, then it isn't. It could be gambling-like, for example Balatro, but that isn't actually gambling.
I agree and this is why the solution is that steam should give players the funds to buy these loot boxes themselves; create a fictional currency (lots of these games do that anyway) and give players the power to just play the game for that currency, or better yet just give them that currency so they can buy them; you maintain the lootboxes and their random nature and players get to avoid spending real world money buying them. There's a lot of games today that already incorporate that mechanic where you can earn in-game currency to buy lootboxes. As for players then turning around and selling their accounts or items for real world money, the buyer is not getting a CHANCE at that item, he's buying something he knows he's getting for certain.
To avoid turning killing bosses in WoW into gambling, the game can make it so you can fight those bosses for free, and instead incorporate costs into the game via (again) a fictional currency that allows you to buy consummables to make the fight more manageable. This way the player avoids spending real world money on this boss, and then whatever he gets, he can sell as a concrete item that the buyer knows for certain he will get.
this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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