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.
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.
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.
“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?
Edit:
I think I was missing that key detail which is you’re paying to open the loot boxes and that’s the “wager”.
If the loot boxes were free to collect and open then they wouldn’t have a starting value.
While you can generally also earn them through gameplay, it’s normal for lootboxes to be available for sale, either directly with money or via an intermediate currency that can be bought with money (which is generally specifically to skirt anti-gambling law or to force you to buy an amount of the intermediate currency that doesn’t exactly match anything you can buy with it).
You can get them through playing but you can’t open them unless you buy a key for real money. Each key only opens one box so you basically have to pay for the random chance item
There are also child gambling machines, like crane games, coin pushers, or that one with the moving light. I don’t get why stuff like that is okay. I’m not defending loot boxes, but I do think it’s really weird to single them out. Why don’t they just work to pass a law which bans all of them?
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.
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.
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.
The solution of “Just collect blood samples from all users” is the law. Gambling laws require that the company providing a gambling service verify the age of the user to prevent underage gambling. If Valve is providing a gambling service then by law they should have age verification. So far, legally, what Valve has been doing is not gambling and part of this lawsuit is proving that what Valve is doing is gambling, and if it is gambling then Valve is doing an inadequate job at verifying the ages of the users and thus is breaking the law.
I’d like the NYAG to equalize pressure on sports betting sites.
As far as I know online sports betting sites are already required to verify the age and identity of the user. Outside of changing the laws I don’t see what pressure you’re expecting.
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.
NY has submitted legislative bill proposals on making age verification checks mandatory at the OS level, restriction of access to social media without Age Verification, and other such proposals and new infrastructure like their Mobile ID, all point to a push for age verification. They also are pushing legislation for things like outlawing 3D printing. In conjunction with their push to say the Valve lawsuit is about child gambling rather than gambling full stop (including child gambling as a way to get people to go along with it, because gambling is illegal for adults too in NY), is extremely telling.
This isn’t happening in a vacuum. I’m pretty sure Valve wouldn’t have made this statement about what the NYAG’s office request if they couldn’t back it up with documentation. Especially in light of them being sued. I’m sure they will absolutely bring said documentation with them to court.
I’d bet good money that the AG’s office absolutely did ask for that and Valve refused and that’s why they are being sued.
The TF2 loot crates were the worst, but you could get around them for crafting except for visuals. What’s crazy to me is that people are getting mad over visuals in loot boxes and that the gambling is largely over that. I don’t think you can put all the shit leading up to that to one company, yet bureaucrats persistently try to do it to avoid acknowledging their own dismal efforts to get their feet wet in implementing some basic legislation on the matter.
Before it used to be Asian MMOs that basically targeted people with addictive personalities with paid for RNG boosts that gave actual in-game advantages (and they will still exist, because they are not loot boxes, just dice rolls), now people are getting this invested over skins and 3D models. We need to address the core of the problem, because the same people falling for this bullshit are also the ones who fall for populist reactionary political bullshit pushing scammers onto our governments. Education and our social nets are clearly failing, and going after one of the better companies that’s guilty of this is not going to do anything when the problem is literally coming from the highest tiers of government as they rush to get their friends and family invested in predatory ventures. It’s sort of like living in Nazi Germany and thinking the most important thing to complain about is whether businesses forced to be sold are really getting their money’s worth instead of being forced to sell to whomever can buy them up the soonest.
As much as I like Valve, I really hate their virtual items trade market and the lootboxes in some of their games. I hate if EA does that, so I hate if Valve does that. And comparing them to real cards falls flat, because virtual cards are not real cards. Valve does not want give up the trade market, because they get money for doing nothing with each transaction.
This topic is the biggest flaw and problem I have with Valve, otherwise I am a Valve lover and fanboy.
You drew a really strong link between what EA did and what Valve does, and that gives me the idea that you build your stance on that. EA lootboxes gave you nothing of monetary value, whereas that’s objectively untrue with valve.
You can say that the items are virtual so they’re not really valuable, but you can say the same thing about baseball cards in a sense; they provide no tangible value, only monetary value from sentiment, which is either real and applies to virtual items equally, or it isn’t in which collectable cards are in the same camp as weapon skins.
EA’s lootboxes gave items that could not be transferred, that’s also different from csgo boxes.
EA’s lootboxes locked core gameplay content behind them, and went so far as to reduce the playtime of people without them because the contents of the boxes were so overpowered making them a must have. I don’t recall ever having a noticeably worse experience playing CS because I didn’t have a skin, and I’m not already $60 in on the game y’know?
I agree that kids should not be able to buy cases unsupervised, and parents should be aware that this exists. But I also think that about pokemon and baseball and MTG cards as well, for the exact same reason.
I know I’ve done a lot of writing, so to summarize I’m not convinced by your logic. I believe CS cases are much closer to opening a pack of cards than you’re giving them credit for, and I think they’re an entirely different product than EA’s infamous lootboxes for a number of reasons.
I just briefly mentioned EA for having lootboxes. It could have been any other company. My point is, if any other company did what Valve did, I would hate that too. Also that the items in Steam / Valve games are transferable doesn’t matter, because it is still lootbox, a chance and gamble to get something and to get addicted. In fact, being able to transfer and sell or trade makes this even worse than static micro transactions to me. It is the same problem with collectable sports or Pokemon cards (which is in my opinion worse, because kids can buy them and get addicted…).
To make that clear: To me the trade market of Valve is a huge problem. This should not be a thing with videogames. Not even EA does that, or any other company for that matter (I am not focused on EA, it was just an example).
My bro in example got addicted to CS:GO skins and wasted lot of money. Because he could get the one expensive item and could sell it for lots of money. And that is not okay!
I don’t believe things should be illegal only because a subset of the population cannot handle themselves. I’m sorry to hear about what happened to your brother, that really sucks and I’ve seen it first hand; I know it’s devastating and I’ve felt the anger towards the beneficiary of such products. It’s a thin line to walk, though, because what happens to the rest of the population that has no issue with it? I’ve found myself addicted to weed before, and it’s had a meaningful impact on my life going so far as to dropping out of school because I wouldn’t allow myself to drive to class while high and I had bad priorities. That, though, is not grounds for everyone else that can handle themselves responsibly to be prohibited from that. With Pokemon cards I see the same problem, I don’t think irresponsible parents are sufficient grounds for regulating what the rest of the public can and cannot do. It is the exact rationale used to require age verifications online, in the OS, and a growing number of other places. In my other comment on this thread I talk about it a bit more.
TL;DR, I empathize with you and your brother. Having said that, the weaknesses of a few should not dictate the liberties of the whole. A much better and proven effective method would be social measures like public, free, and well-researched rehab and safety nets to prevent the effects of gambling addictions from ravaging the lives of those affected and their loved ones.
I think lots of people have a problem or could get a problem with that, and don’t realize it. I mean it is similar to the shitty microtransactions situation on smartphone games. I say similar in the sense, that most people don’t have a problem with it, compared to the population and how many have a problem. This should not be an excuse for exploitation of the weak ones.
But besides that, I don’t even think its a problem with a few only. Even the potential of getting addicted is bad. There are reasons why children (i mean under 18) are not allowed in casinos. Are these games and the gambling with CS:GO and Team Fortress 2 for 18+ only? Whatever it is, we all know younger people play these games too. If not the microphone is a good indication… but I digress here. I hope the market place in Steam will go away. There is no good reason for, other than Valve making money. There is not benefit for humanity or the people.
BTW the situation with my bro was not that too bad, just saying. It was a slight problem, but one that showed me first hand (or is it second hand?). I am also glad you made it through your difficult times.
I appreciate your message at the end :) One of the things I appreciate about lemmy is the conversations are not assumed adversarial like they are on most socials.
I see what you’re saying, and I agree microtransactions deserve to burn in hell. I also realize that people have an issue with realizing an addiction, even their own, and even when they’re “aware” of it. I don’t want to point the finger at other larger societal issues as a default strategy, but we do have hard evidence from other countries where these issues get caught earlier because of public campaigns combating the stigma around such problems in tandem with the social safety net required to truly fix them.
I don’t think gambling is good, I’m not even fully convinced that the csgo cases should persist, and my intent is not to convince you they should. My stance is purely philosophical/logical in the sense that limitations should not be placed on the public with the sole justification of protecting a subset, especially children, since it is the parents’ entire role as guardian to protect them from the hardships in life. I’m sure I’m ignoring the nuance in my stance by saying that, but the general idea is there; something being bad for some people should not be the only reason nobody can have it, and that goes for drugs, art, communication, bed times, expression, etc. I know they’re problems worth protecting the affected subsets from, but legislative blanket bans are not the correct tool.
Glad to hear all is well, by the way. Addiction is a hell of a disease and gambling especially can have quite the blast radius. I hope you don’t see me as an enemy
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, exactly my point. Whether you paid previously, and whether its available without gambling has no impact on the definition of gambling or if it is bad.
Yeah, true. Both of those were arguments more against lootboxes in general than specifically how valve has done it, I suppose. Valve’s implementation is certainly a lot less predatory than EA or any mobile game lol
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.
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.
I see what you’re saying, but I still don’t see how this gives any merit to the lawsuit, as I’m especially dubious about the multiple lawsuits on valve in a short timeframe. Note how one of the points that the lawsuit is making is that Valve doesn’t verify user’s age, so that is why they’re being sued; for letting children gamble.
It’s a blatant move made by wealthy CEOs who have dirt to either hit valve in one of its more profitable money making centers, or fall in line with demanding PII from customers for a surveillance state.
Just to go back to the gymnastics you’ve set up, I’d also like to point out that I’ve seen kids get their hands on plenty of things they aren’t “supposed” to, like cigarettes, other nicotine products, drugs, and many more. While it isn’t great that safeguards aren’t in place for children, that isn’t exactly a great trade-off for turning into fucking North Korea.
There are solutions for these problems; Better paid, less overworked parents would have more time and mental bandwidth to be involved with their children and be better parents. More strict government regulation (that doesn’t involve dissolving personal freedoms even further than they already have) regarding dangerous practices for its citizens.
And just to get ahead of any insistence that this lawsuit is a good idea, let me give you some examples of what could be done besides giving PII:
laws that more broadly categorize gambling
laws that heavily tax gambling profits (from the companies)
laws that ban gambling outright (not as likely to succeed, but it is an option)
Final note here, but if someone is determined to do something, it’s going to be very hard to stop them if they’re not under supervision; think of various high profile murders that occur in the US regularly. Hell, think of all the school shootings! A kid isn’t able to legally own or buy a firearm, hell purchasing a firearm is about the most strict customer filtering you can get outside of more specialized goods, and kids still get their hands on them all the time, so clearly putting the onus on a business to filter it’s customers when it can’t even see them is going to be much more difficult to enforce.
I do think parents have plenty of responsibility here. I don’t think that absolves Valve. We put regulations on who can legally gamble because we know it’s addicting, and I think it’s a problem how little Valve have done to prevent it from being done by those who aren’t legally supposed to. I’m not advocating for government intrusion to collect more PII, nor am I convinced necessarily that that’s what NY state is asking for, but it’s certainly what Valve would like you to believe they’re fighting against. I would love to see things legally categorized as gambling that currently are not, and the space that Valve is operating in may be less of a gray area than their competitors operate in due to the resale market.
The targeted court cases are to argue that the previously passed legislation already covers these particular facts.
If the legislature passes a law that says “making false statements to another in order to obtain something of value is fraud,” you can expect litigation about the actual contours of what is or isn’t fraud.
Same with legislation against driving at an unsafe speed, causing a nuisance to your neighbors, discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, etc. Court cases decide the edge cases.
If the legislature passes a law banning gambling outside of licensed institutions, and banning gambling for minors, you can expect litigation about what actually is or isn’t gambling.
This shouldn’t be an “edge case”, and it really shouldn’t be only about just minors. The legislation needs to be cut and dry, and most of it definitely isn’t clear enough.
You literally can, that’s what legislating and voting is. This gets “the ball rolling” just about as much as going after Cambridge Analytica stopped targeted social network propaganda campaigns…
You can tell a lot of money is being moved on the dark web to push shit onto Valve. I wonder how much pressure they are under to try to get them to go public. The change needs to be legislative, not targeted.
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…
Edit: Honestly, thinking it over and reading responses, my personal thoughts are to require clear disclosures on products that include gambling (physical or not), possibly put stricter regulations on how it is accessed, such as a safety warning before accessing it to add another step of friction each time, and put limitations on the mechanics of it to prevent rigging the odds in ways that are manipulative or abusive. Be curious to hear people’s opinions on this too.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
There’s only so much to do about bad parenting. But all gambling games like this aren’t 18+ like they should be so parents aren’t getting an accurate representation of risks they take bending the rules, if they even are.
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.
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.
But part of the problem is that they’re not above the age rating, often things like Fifa are rated as suitable for children. And ultimately, the ratings are guidance, they’re not rules or law. There should definitely be a push for parents to actually look into it properly though, I do think that’s a big part of the issue, and leads to legislation such as age verification, which just makes things more difficult for everyone.
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.
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.
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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.
Wow I had no idea that’s where the term gacha games came from.
Yeah I don’t really think so, GabeN. Loot boxes should go the way of the dinosaurs.
Become bird
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?
Edit:
I think I was missing that key detail which is you’re paying to open the loot boxes and that’s the “wager”.
If the loot boxes were free to collect and open then they wouldn’t have a starting value.
While you can generally also earn them through gameplay, it’s normal for lootboxes to be available for sale, either directly with money or via an intermediate currency that can be bought with money (which is generally specifically to skirt anti-gambling law or to force you to buy an amount of the intermediate currency that doesn’t exactly match anything you can buy with it).
You can get them through playing but you can’t open them unless you buy a key for real money. Each key only opens one box so you basically have to pay for the random chance item
There are also child gambling machines, like crane games, coin pushers, or that one with the moving light. I don’t get why stuff like that is okay. I’m not defending loot boxes, but I do think it’s really weird to single them out. Why don’t they just work to pass a law which bans all of them?
Valve needs to win this. Or at least stop this part:
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.
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:
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.
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 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.
The solution of “Just collect blood samples from all users” is the law. Gambling laws require that the company providing a gambling service verify the age of the user to prevent underage gambling. If Valve is providing a gambling service then by law they should have age verification. So far, legally, what Valve has been doing is not gambling and part of this lawsuit is proving that what Valve is doing is gambling, and if it is gambling then Valve is doing an inadequate job at verifying the ages of the users and thus is breaking the law.
As far as I know online sports betting sites are already required to verify the age and identity of the user. Outside of changing the laws I don’t see what pressure you’re expecting.
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.
This is kind of a naive take.
NY has submitted legislative bill proposals on making age verification checks mandatory at the OS level, restriction of access to social media without Age Verification, and other such proposals and new infrastructure like their Mobile ID, all point to a push for age verification. They also are pushing legislation for things like outlawing 3D printing. In conjunction with their push to say the Valve lawsuit is about child gambling rather than gambling full stop (including child gambling as a way to get people to go along with it, because gambling is illegal for adults too in NY), is extremely telling.
This isn’t happening in a vacuum. I’m pretty sure Valve wouldn’t have made this statement about what the NYAG’s office request if they couldn’t back it up with documentation. Especially in light of them being sued. I’m sure they will absolutely bring said documentation with them to court.
I’d bet good money that the AG’s office absolutely did ask for that and Valve refused and that’s why they are being sued.
Right, as if anyone actually cares about the children ™️
The TF2 loot crates were the worst, but you could get around them for crafting except for visuals. What’s crazy to me is that people are getting mad over visuals in loot boxes and that the gambling is largely over that. I don’t think you can put all the shit leading up to that to one company, yet bureaucrats persistently try to do it to avoid acknowledging their own dismal efforts to get their feet wet in implementing some basic legislation on the matter.
Before it used to be Asian MMOs that basically targeted people with addictive personalities with paid for RNG boosts that gave actual in-game advantages (and they will still exist, because they are not loot boxes, just dice rolls), now people are getting this invested over skins and 3D models. We need to address the core of the problem, because the same people falling for this bullshit are also the ones who fall for populist reactionary political bullshit pushing scammers onto our governments. Education and our social nets are clearly failing, and going after one of the better companies that’s guilty of this is not going to do anything when the problem is literally coming from the highest tiers of government as they rush to get their friends and family invested in predatory ventures. It’s sort of like living in Nazi Germany and thinking the most important thing to complain about is whether businesses forced to be sold are really getting their money’s worth instead of being forced to sell to whomever can buy them up the soonest.
Just call Nintendo and tell them this will fuck the Pokémon cards. You’ll get the most rabid lawyers in the world at your side
As much as I like Valve, I really hate their virtual items trade market and the lootboxes in some of their games. I hate if EA does that, so I hate if Valve does that. And comparing them to real cards falls flat, because virtual cards are not real cards. Valve does not want give up the trade market, because they get money for doing nothing with each transaction.
This topic is the biggest flaw and problem I have with Valve, otherwise I am a Valve lover and fanboy.
You drew a really strong link between what EA did and what Valve does, and that gives me the idea that you build your stance on that. EA lootboxes gave you nothing of monetary value, whereas that’s objectively untrue with valve.
You can say that the items are virtual so they’re not really valuable, but you can say the same thing about baseball cards in a sense; they provide no tangible value, only monetary value from sentiment, which is either real and applies to virtual items equally, or it isn’t in which collectable cards are in the same camp as weapon skins.
EA’s lootboxes gave items that could not be transferred, that’s also different from csgo boxes.
EA’s lootboxes locked core gameplay content behind them, and went so far as to reduce the playtime of people without them because the contents of the boxes were so overpowered making them a must have. I don’t recall ever having a noticeably worse experience playing CS because I didn’t have a skin, and I’m not already $60 in on the game y’know?
I agree that kids should not be able to buy cases unsupervised, and parents should be aware that this exists. But I also think that about pokemon and baseball and MTG cards as well, for the exact same reason.
I know I’ve done a lot of writing, so to summarize I’m not convinced by your logic. I believe CS cases are much closer to opening a pack of cards than you’re giving them credit for, and I think they’re an entirely different product than EA’s infamous lootboxes for a number of reasons.
I just briefly mentioned EA for having lootboxes. It could have been any other company. My point is, if any other company did what Valve did, I would hate that too. Also that the items in Steam / Valve games are transferable doesn’t matter, because it is still lootbox, a chance and gamble to get something and to get addicted. In fact, being able to transfer and sell or trade makes this even worse than static micro transactions to me. It is the same problem with collectable sports or Pokemon cards (which is in my opinion worse, because kids can buy them and get addicted…).
To make that clear: To me the trade market of Valve is a huge problem. This should not be a thing with videogames. Not even EA does that, or any other company for that matter (I am not focused on EA, it was just an example).
My bro in example got addicted to CS:GO skins and wasted lot of money. Because he could get the one expensive item and could sell it for lots of money. And that is not okay!
It’s good you’re consistent in your beliefs.
I don’t believe things should be illegal only because a subset of the population cannot handle themselves. I’m sorry to hear about what happened to your brother, that really sucks and I’ve seen it first hand; I know it’s devastating and I’ve felt the anger towards the beneficiary of such products. It’s a thin line to walk, though, because what happens to the rest of the population that has no issue with it? I’ve found myself addicted to weed before, and it’s had a meaningful impact on my life going so far as to dropping out of school because I wouldn’t allow myself to drive to class while high and I had bad priorities. That, though, is not grounds for everyone else that can handle themselves responsibly to be prohibited from that. With Pokemon cards I see the same problem, I don’t think irresponsible parents are sufficient grounds for regulating what the rest of the public can and cannot do. It is the exact rationale used to require age verifications online, in the OS, and a growing number of other places. In my other comment on this thread I talk about it a bit more.
TL;DR, I empathize with you and your brother. Having said that, the weaknesses of a few should not dictate the liberties of the whole. A much better and proven effective method would be social measures like public, free, and well-researched rehab and safety nets to prevent the effects of gambling addictions from ravaging the lives of those affected and their loved ones.
I think lots of people have a problem or could get a problem with that, and don’t realize it. I mean it is similar to the shitty microtransactions situation on smartphone games. I say similar in the sense, that most people don’t have a problem with it, compared to the population and how many have a problem. This should not be an excuse for exploitation of the weak ones.
But besides that, I don’t even think its a problem with a few only. Even the potential of getting addicted is bad. There are reasons why children (i mean under 18) are not allowed in casinos. Are these games and the gambling with CS:GO and Team Fortress 2 for 18+ only? Whatever it is, we all know younger people play these games too. If not the microphone is a good indication… but I digress here. I hope the market place in Steam will go away. There is no good reason for, other than Valve making money. There is not benefit for humanity or the people.
BTW the situation with my bro was not that too bad, just saying. It was a slight problem, but one that showed me first hand (or is it second hand?). I am also glad you made it through your difficult times.
I appreciate your message at the end :) One of the things I appreciate about lemmy is the conversations are not assumed adversarial like they are on most socials.
I see what you’re saying, and I agree microtransactions deserve to burn in hell. I also realize that people have an issue with realizing an addiction, even their own, and even when they’re “aware” of it. I don’t want to point the finger at other larger societal issues as a default strategy, but we do have hard evidence from other countries where these issues get caught earlier because of public campaigns combating the stigma around such problems in tandem with the social safety net required to truly fix them.
I don’t think gambling is good, I’m not even fully convinced that the csgo cases should persist, and my intent is not to convince you they should. My stance is purely philosophical/logical in the sense that limitations should not be placed on the public with the sole justification of protecting a subset, especially children, since it is the parents’ entire role as guardian to protect them from the hardships in life. I’m sure I’m ignoring the nuance in my stance by saying that, but the general idea is there; something being bad for some people should not be the only reason nobody can have it, and that goes for drugs, art, communication, bed times, expression, etc. I know they’re problems worth protecting the affected subsets from, but legislative blanket bans are not the correct tool.
Glad to hear all is well, by the way. Addiction is a hell of a disease and gambling especially can have quite the blast radius. I hope you don’t see me as an enemy
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.
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?
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, exactly my point. Whether you paid previously, and whether its available without gambling has no impact on the definition of gambling or if it is bad.
Yeah, true. Both of those were arguments more against lootboxes in general than specifically how valve has done it, I suppose. Valve’s implementation is certainly a lot less predatory than EA or any mobile game lol
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.
https://piefed.social/c/games/p/1870233/video-game-pegi-age-ratings-are-changing-in-europe-from-june-four-new-categories-added
To follow-up I found this post and feel like this is more the way to attack it possibly.
Is it fair to say they’re “doing nothing to stop it”? They have indeed been shutting banning users for this, according to themselves millions of them.
Not saying it’s enough, but it’s hardly nothing.
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.
I see what you’re saying, but I still don’t see how this gives any merit to the lawsuit, as I’m especially dubious about the multiple lawsuits on valve in a short timeframe. Note how one of the points that the lawsuit is making is that Valve doesn’t verify user’s age, so that is why they’re being sued; for letting children gamble.
It’s a blatant move made by wealthy CEOs who have dirt to either hit valve in one of its more profitable money making centers, or fall in line with demanding PII from customers for a surveillance state.
Just to go back to the gymnastics you’ve set up, I’d also like to point out that I’ve seen kids get their hands on plenty of things they aren’t “supposed” to, like cigarettes, other nicotine products, drugs, and many more. While it isn’t great that safeguards aren’t in place for children, that isn’t exactly a great trade-off for turning into fucking North Korea.
There are solutions for these problems; Better paid, less overworked parents would have more time and mental bandwidth to be involved with their children and be better parents. More strict government regulation (that doesn’t involve dissolving personal freedoms even further than they already have) regarding dangerous practices for its citizens.
And just to get ahead of any insistence that this lawsuit is a good idea, let me give you some examples of what could be done besides giving PII:
Final note here, but if someone is determined to do something, it’s going to be very hard to stop them if they’re not under supervision; think of various high profile murders that occur in the US regularly. Hell, think of all the school shootings! A kid isn’t able to legally own or buy a firearm, hell purchasing a firearm is about the most strict customer filtering you can get outside of more specialized goods, and kids still get their hands on them all the time, so clearly putting the onus on a business to filter it’s customers when it can’t even see them is going to be much more difficult to enforce.
I do think parents have plenty of responsibility here. I don’t think that absolves Valve. We put regulations on who can legally gamble because we know it’s addicting, and I think it’s a problem how little Valve have done to prevent it from being done by those who aren’t legally supposed to. I’m not advocating for government intrusion to collect more PII, nor am I convinced necessarily that that’s what NY state is asking for, but it’s certainly what Valve would like you to believe they’re fighting against. I would love to see things legally categorized as gambling that currently are not, and the space that Valve is operating in may be less of a gray area than their competitors operate in due to the resale market.
And again, the parents should be monitoring what their kids do online. They can totally spot it if they cared enough.
Then it needs to be done through legislation, not targeted court cases.
The targeted court cases are to argue that the previously passed legislation already covers these particular facts.
If the legislature passes a law that says “making false statements to another in order to obtain something of value is fraud,” you can expect litigation about the actual contours of what is or isn’t fraud.
Same with legislation against driving at an unsafe speed, causing a nuisance to your neighbors, discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, etc. Court cases decide the edge cases.
If the legislature passes a law banning gambling outside of licensed institutions, and banning gambling for minors, you can expect litigation about what actually is or isn’t gambling.
This shouldn’t be an “edge case”, and it really shouldn’t be only about just minors. The legislation needs to be cut and dry, and most of it definitely isn’t clear enough.
Targeted court cases are how you get the ball rolling. You can’t just go after everyone all at once. You gotta start somewhere.
You literally can, that’s what legislating and voting is. This gets “the ball rolling” just about as much as going after Cambridge Analytica stopped targeted social network propaganda campaigns…
I guess G*mers love loot boxes now.
Fuck Valve for the profiteering off child gambling.
And fuck the G*mers that keep giving Valve a free pass because they’ve been a monopoly longer then they’ve been alive.
Fuck valve for loot boxes but also fuck you twice as much.
Valve is the only market place and game company that isn’t as fucking consumers at every step of the way.
They have ONE problem. Instead of ALL the problems like everyone else.
I have physical copies of games that won’t work because of Steam making back alley deals with publishers to push their DRM into securing a monopoly.
Fuck you for excusing monopolistic shithead behaviour because your favourite billionaire has to buy Aston Martins to race.
They hate billionaires except when it involves their treats
Fuck you Valve is the most pro consumer company there is. Go suck off zuckerberg and Tim cook you bootlicker.
Is that why they argued against refunds for years until the EU forced them to do the bare minimum?
Is that why they happily sell broken games with zero quality control?
Is that why they happily continue to sell abandoned early access products?
Is that why they make back alley deals with publishers to use Steam as DRM for physical releases?
Is that why platform most-favored-nations is used to prevent games being sold for cheaper on other platforms.
Fuck you. You brainwashed G*mer cunt.
You can tell a lot of money is being moved on the dark web to push shit onto Valve. I wonder how much pressure they are under to try to get them to go public. The change needs to be legislative, not targeted.
oh yes please delete all the analogue gambling for children too. make it something everyone has to follow
Attempting to rebrand the terminology to “mystery boxes” like that’s gonna make it better ultimately comes across as so much shadier.
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…
Edit: Honestly, thinking it over and reading responses, my personal thoughts are to require clear disclosures on products that include gambling (physical or not), possibly put stricter regulations on how it is accessed, such as a safety warning before accessing it to add another step of friction each time, and put limitations on the mechanics of it to prevent rigging the odds in ways that are manipulative or abusive. Be curious to hear people’s opinions on this too.
Oh, that’s easy. Find some kids who gambled and make an example out of them on national TV. Problem solved!
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.
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.
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.
“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.
There’s only so much to do about bad parenting. But all gambling games like this aren’t 18+ like they should be so parents aren’t getting an accurate representation of risks they take bending the rules, if they even are.
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.
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.
But part of the problem is that they’re not above the age rating, often things like Fifa are rated as suitable for children. And ultimately, the ratings are guidance, they’re not rules or law. There should definitely be a push for parents to actually look into it properly though, I do think that’s a big part of the issue, and leads to legislation such as age verification, which just makes things more difficult for everyone.
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.
Gotta wonder why the NY AG is so interested in prosecuting Steam and so blase about pursuing anyone in the Epstein Files.
They want exclusive rights to exploit children.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_N._Straus_House#Jeffrey_Epstein