Official statement from Valve.
We shared with the NYAG that these types of boxes in our games are widely used, not just in video games but in the tangible world as well, where generations have grown up opening baseball card packs and blind boxes and bags, and then trading and selling the items they receive.
You’re right! We should stop that too!
I’m not a big fan of Valve’s use of loot boxes. But I’m also not happy about the proposed solution of “Just collect blood samples from all users”. That doesn’t protect kids, and risks harm and increased surveillance to many other users. It also means companies in similar situations to Valve are forced to safeguard data they didn’t want to be involved with.
I don’t buy that Valve is fully at fault on the concept of targeting children. I don’t see how parents are held at gunpoint to attach credit card data to Steam accounts, or to check the “remember my info” box. Valve has also attempted to add adequate parental account controls. The main reason I oppose Valve on loot boxes is those shouldn’t be used on anyone. I’d like the NYAG to equalize pressure on sports betting sites.
I’m not a big fan of Valve’s use of loot boxes. But I’m also not happy about the proposed solution of “Just collect blood samples from all users”.
It also might not be exactly what NY is asking for, even if that’s how Valve would like to frame it. The actual ask might be to just stop profiting from gambling.
Valve needs to win this. Or at least stop this part:
The NYAG also proposed to gather additional information (beyond what we normally collect in the course of processing payments) about each game user on the off-chance someone in New York was anonymizing their location to appear outside of New York, such as by using a VPN. This would have involved implementing invasive technologies for every user worldwide. Similarly, the NYAG demanded that Valve collect more personal data about our users to do additional age verification—even though most payment methods used by New York Steam users already have age verification built-in. Valve knows our users care about the security of their personal information, and we believe it’s in our and their interest to only collect the information necessary to operate the business and comply with law.
Loot boxes are overall bad for users and should be regulated. But not by getting valve to collect personal information on everyone in the world.
These are two different things. You don’t need to let valve sell loot boxes to stop new York from implementing mass surveillance.
I’m not a lawyer, and even having perused the official filing, it’s still legalese that I can’t swear I fully understand. There are two possibilities of what NY state actually wants:
- just stop selling loot boxes
- you can sell loot boxes, but only if you’ve verified that your customers are of legal gambling age
And I don’t know for sure which is true. Of course it’s in Valve’s best interests to represent this to their customers as the government trying to violate your freedoms, because it gets the public on their side. Remember the Epic case against Apple, where Epic knowingly broke a contract with Apple allowing in-game purchases to cut Apple out, then they had a trailer parodying the 1984 Apple ad to garner public support with “Free Fortnite” ready to go.
Yeah people don’t seem to get that Valve has a vested interest in getting you to agree to their narrative.
They didn’t even mention the little toy vending machines where you put in a quarter and get a random toy or sticker. Those are what I always equated lootboxes to. You always get something; but it’s almost never what you’d like to get.
Gachapon machines. They’re extremely huge in Japan, hooked me young since they were always in the entrances/exits of grocery stores here in the usa.
Gotta wonder why the NY AG is so interested in prosecuting Steam and so blase about pursuing anyone in the Epstein Files.
The NY AG doesn’t generally bring criminal suits. And “was a rapist in FL and a private island” may not be enough to give anyone standing to empanel a grand jury and indict.
If you live in NY and then take a vacation in Texas during which you open carry a AR15 and then “self defense” somebody at the Alamo who called you a Yankee, there wouldn’t be much NY could do if the local DA accepted your defense.
And “was a rapist in FL and a private island”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_N._Straus_House#Jeffrey_Epstein
They want exclusive rights to exploit children.
I love Valve, but I don’t think this one is going away and I don’t think it SHOULD go away. F2P games with RNG loot boxes are a scourge and I don’t play games that have them for that very reason.
It absolutely shouldn’t go away. My problem isn’t that Valve is being targeted, but that only Valve is being targeted. It should extend to all of the big players using gambling and addictive conditioning in video games starting with EA and Microslop/Activision, and then all of the gacha games from the east. Targeting Valve and nobody else is extremely suspicious, especially in the wake of the victory over the Rothchilds.
But you don’t start 20 lawsuits for the same thing at the same time against everybody. You start with one case against one company, and if it rules in your favor, that sets stronger precedent to go after the others.
As for why Valve, I’m guessing it’s easier to demonstrate more specific examples of harm when you have a larger pool of consumers to draw from, and easier to get an American entity in an American courtroom.
It’s about targeting the ones you can legally target. I’m not going to get into it again but Valve does their lootboxes differently to almost every other big developer/publisher and that way of doing things has gotten them in trouble. Should all companies that in practice are gambling get into legal trouble? Yes. Should Valve get a pass because others get away scot-free? No. If 6 people rape someone but legally there’s evidence to convict one of them you don’t give that one person a free pass because the other 5 can’t be convicted.
In this case there’s one company, Valve, where you have some legal basis to get them in the court and there’s no legal basis for other companies even though they’re largely doing the same thing. You may not like it and might consider it unfair but that’s just how the legal system works.
I’m trying to understand what’s different. If you don’t want to explain again here, that’s fine but can you link me to your other comments or something.
I haven’t played Dota or TF2. I don’t know how the loot boxes work and I’m trying to understand.
I think it’s possible that loot boxes (and real-world equivalents like trading cards) don’t violate existing anti-child-gambling laws, but if so, that’s a flaw in those laws that needs to be fixed rather than an indication that they’re totally fine and should be allowed to exist in their current form. They cost money and give an unpredictable reward where different options have different perceived value, so they’re quite clearly gambling to anyone who defines it based on its characteristics rather than an individual territory’s specific legalese.
Yeah I’m confused by this too.
“According to New York law gambling occurs when a person wagers something of value on a contest or game of chance or some other thing outside of their control, and that a sum will be paid or something of value returned based upon a particular outcome set by the wager. This definition is broad. It includes everything from fantasy sports, cockfighting, dice, car racing for titles, and betting on sports.”
So to be clear, doesn’t there have to be a wager involved of some value in exchange for the loot boxes to take place before it reaches the threshold for gambling?
I haven’t played any of the games in the suit, so I don’t know how their loot boxes work, but I kind of assumed you just got them by random chance from playing. Can you buy loot boxes?
Yeah I don’t really think so, GabeN. Loot boxes should go the way of the dinosaurs.
Become bird
I don’t get why these target valve and how they are a scourge if it’s purely cosmetic. Only complaint I could see is possibly for tf2, though that never seemed pay to win like.
I’d highly recommend you check out People Make Games’ videos on Counter-Strike gambling, which include testimonials from child gambling addicts. And if you still need more convincing, there’s also some videos by Coffeezilla.
But I’d also like to see more companies held accountable for this than just Valve.
Did end up watching it (I’ve always enjoyed PMG vids and Quinns). In a way I see it, I just don’t quite fully understand why the onus is on Valve. If valve was directly running the gambling sites, that would be one thing. I would give them flack for accepting sponsorships for dota with some of them. Though it’s a similar vein to sport kings advertisements on shows and such.
Even before you get to the reseller sites that Valve is definitely aware of, benefiting from, and doing nothing to stop, the way the system is intended to work is still using all of the tricks out of the slot machine playbook.
This is true, but most things digital do the same thing if I remember correctly. I think rocket league with free loot boxes does that.
How exactly are the children buying the loot boxes in the first place? Me thinks the parents play a role in this…
You can buy gift cards for Steam from the drug store or Walmart with cash, and there are many non-gambling ways to spend money on Steam.
And the kids are getting the cash from?
Far more sources than just a credit card. You can sell something from home during lunch period to another student for enough money to buy a Steam gift card, and their parents would never know.
And again, the parents should be monitoring what their kids do online. They can totally spot it if they cared enough.
Biggest argument: it’s bad to get children addicted to gambling.
Secondary argument: if you buy a game, you shouldn’t have to gamble to get the game’s content.
Secondary argument: if you buy a game, you shouldn’t have to gamble to get the game’s content.
This one doesn’t apply to Valve’s games, both because the base games are free and because the items can be bought directly. The rest of the gaming industry on the other hand…
Bought from valve directly? Because I don’t think saying you can buy the skin from the Steam marketplace for $1,000 is the slam dunk argument you think it is.
Bought from valve directly? Because I don’t think saying you can buy the skin from the Steam marketplace for $1,000 is the slam dunk argument you think it is.
Technically, yes, bought from them directly, but I’m not sure how that distinction matters one way or another.
Either way, you either spend about $1000 on lootboxes, gambling to get it, or you buy it from another player for about that much. Given that the value is player set based on supply and demand, the price will be in the same ballpark either way. You can argue that the price is absurd and abusive, but thats an argument against high prices on worthless digital items, not one against lootboxes.
Yes, there’s a huge difference between selling something with transparent pricing versus offering it as a gambling prize.
The issue is not the price, it’s the addictive gambling mechanic. It’s not about making sure steam doesn’t rip people off, it’s about making sure steam doesn’t get kids addicted to gambling.
How Valve sounds right now: “It’s totally cool to rip off kids with blind box stuff and get them addicted to gambling mechanics!”
I’m with you OP, we need to stop it in physical games as well. Just because Magic the Gathering does is and Labubu does it doesn’t make it okay. It actually just creates artificial scarcity and pushes children and the families providing them the money to gamble ever harder to get the rare drops, on the off chance that those are valuable.
Even Beanie Babies never stooped that low.
stop it in physical games as well
I think the connection to physical cards is pretty weak really - the crucial difference being that if you want to get some physical cards, you go out and buy them (or stay in and buy them I guess). You start with nothing except some cash, and you end up with some random cards, which may or may not be valuable.
Loot boxes in F2P games are not like that - you play a free game, have fun and then end up with this “loot box” without having done anything to ask for it. It’s just there in your inventory, and it stays there until you fork over some cash and see what’s inside.
It’s way more of a temptation than physical cards that you won’t encounter until you buy them.
I’m not a psychologist or any sort of expert who can properly evaluate something as “gambling” or “not gambling”, but I’ve seen kids going through pack after pack of Magic cards at the shop and I’ve seen people going through scratch-off after scratch-off at the corner store, and to my eye, it’s the same picture.
granniesTappingSlotMachines.avi
I agree in theory with these kinds of rules, but I don’t trust legislators to do it properly.
For an example, I remember back in my rs2 days, RWT (real world trading) was relatively common and things like loot dropped from certain monsters was randomized, you might have to kill it 100 times to get that one drop or pay $5 or whatever to get it now.
Where would a legistlator fall on that? Is that gambling? Does RNG and the ability to transfer goods on a game then become illegal just by way of interpretation?
Honest question I’m curious to hear peoples opinions on: Gambling is obviously dangerous, and I think we can all agree that exposing kids to it easly is bad. At the same time, for any form of virtual gambling, how do you ensure that kids can’t access it without putting a significant limit on adults’ freedoms? Like, Lemmy is very pro-privacy, but would this be a case where the (few) merits of ID based verification would be justified, or should we be just be banning all gambling outside of designated casinos, or…
In this case the NY lawmakers have already banned gambling for adults as well. I honestly think a lot of the pushback they’re likely to get from. the community has to do with the fact that they included this phrasing about child gambling at all. The games in question aren’t really made for children, and Valve didn’t really market any of their games to kids (while Pokemon cards absolutely are marketed toward children and amount to gambling, but NY’s AG doesn’t appear to go after New Yorkers who sell or buy Pokemon cards).
If their logic was: “Gambling = Illegal, and running a web shop where the proceeds of gambling can be exchanged for real world cash” is the bar to clear then it doesn’t really matter who was able to gamble, that’s just a way to avoid backlash from parents who don’t want their kids gambling but don’t understand the world their kids live in.
Or… parents can parent their goddamn children. All this deanonymize the internet shit is absolutely not about protecting children anyway and would have grave consequences.
Oh, that’s easy. Find some kids who gambled and make an example out of them on national TV. Problem solved!
Make it so that gambling leads to a higher age rating for the game, and then let parents manage that the same way they would violence or language in a game. I think (hope) this would lead to a huge drop in lootboxes, rather than changes to ratings, but either way works for me.
We need punishments for parents neglecting their kids like this, letting them gamble and play things rated above their age rating is not good parenting.
“Gambling” is one of the tags the ESRB labels games with already. A higher letter rating won’t really help when parents aren’t parenting and don’t pay any attention to what their kids are doing. Hella little kids are already in most M rated games, squeaking out racial slurs over the mic.
The entire rating system is to assist parents and it basically does nothing.
I guess what I meant, but didn’t go as far as saying, is that lootboxes should be categorised as gambling, as they currently show up in games like Fifa, rated for children, which parents likely wouldn’t think twice about until they see their next credit card statement.
Ultimately parents need to do more to safeguard their kids, but the sneaky and insidious way lootboxes are used makes it significantly harder, and I would argue goes beyond what the average parent would reasonably be able to look out for.
I mean, currently Counter Strike already has (had?) an ESRB M rating, as did TF2. Dota isn’t rated, but would clearly also be M, given abilites like Rupture. Do you think we just need to reduce the normalization of it?
But how many children are playing those games and buying lootboxes without their parents’ knowledge?
I am absolutely in favour of less lootboxes in games though. They are an unfortunate natural progression of microtransactions, and the fact that they make so much money means they’re unlikely to go anywhere without any systemic measures being put in place.
I don’t really partake, so I’m always hesitant to have a really firm line in the sand, but we’ve seen a ton of harm come from the constant access to gambling that we’ve got now via sports betting that we didn’t have before deregulation in the wake of Draft Kings, so I’m inclined to lean toward it only being in designated locations. The problem here is similar in that you can access it everywhere and definitely exacerbated by not even doing the bare minimum amount of countermeasures against underage gambling, because they want to pretend that it isn’t gambling.
Attempting to rebrand the terminology to “mystery boxes” like that’s gonna make it better ultimately comes across as so much shadier.
