The lawsuit aims to “stop Valve from promoting gambling features in its games, disgorge all ill-gotten gains, and pay fines for violating New York\u2019s laws.”
Lotta billionaire sucking in this thread. Just because you like his platform doesn’t make GabeN a good person.
Everyone say it: There’s no such thing as an ethical billionaire.
I am honestly a little bit in shock how people are willing to do volunteer PR for Valve.
They are an American technology, they can’t escape the culture of corruption and criminality that dominates their region.
They should sue Epic Games because Fortnite greatly popularized loot boxes and Microtransactions. Also other games which are the real culprit such as Overwatch, League of Legends, and more. Though granted Valve did make CSGO which was one of the first big games to popularize buying and selling video game skins. But of course lots of other games do it much worse like Gatcha games and mobile games.
Can start with the OG loot boxes of Magic the Gathering amd Pokemon? So much gambling & its targeted at children.
The fun part is that a lot of trading cards have their roots in the early movements for cigarettes. Same idea for the most part, except it was typical for pinups instead of monsters or magic. You bought tobacco to get the cards, so tobacco became popular amongst kids. If you wanted to collect em all, you would buy more boxes of cigarettes, so imo it’s even more of a parallel than just calling out TCGs
The fact that the idea swapped to hooking kids on gambling is honestly a no brainer, especially since the cards were the things helping sell the cigs anyhow.
Valve doesn’t make the games. You’ll need to take this up with the game developers. They’re the ones who inserted the “surprise mechanics” into the game.
this is about Counterstrike loot boxes, so Valve absolutely makes the game in question
Valve did make CSGO and other games in the past which did have heavy microtransactions though yes I do agree that other companies such as Epic Games are much more liable for this
Is this a joke or did you not read the article?
Reminder: this was Epstein’s idea.
Okay, but who do you want the NY DA’s office to go after? Jamie Dimon? Bill Gates? Steve Bannon? Half of Activision/Blizzard?
Valve was the obvious choice.
All of them.
A good few years ago now, I watched as my two cousins, Steam voucher in hand (and he didn’t even have a gaming PC btw), faffed about with one of those sites promoted by shady Youtubers.
Codes went in. Buttons were pressed. Glances were exchanged.
“Now what?” asked the younger one who’s Steam voucher it was.
“Oh nothing,” said the older one. “You lost.”
I think it was only teenage emoism that stopped him bursting into tears right there.
He’s an accountant now, so I assume he learned an important lesson about gambling that day.
Gambling is pointless.
I enjoy low stakes gambling. I’ll walk into a casino with $20-40 bucks for gambling, buy a few drinks, and see what I can get. If I win enough to break even and pay for the drinks, I came out on top. I’ll throw 5 bucks down on a parlay during Football season once a month or so. Outside of that, I couldn’t imagine the stress of higher stakes. I do it for fun and maybe turning 5 bucks into 30.
Not for the House. It’s sort of their bread and butter.
He’s an accountant now, so I assume he learned an important lesson about gambling that day.
Or it fully broke his spirit…
Why not both?
I’ve never been a gambler because I’ve only ever lost. I’d say I’m down ~$30 in the last 30 years.
I’m not really a gambler either. I’ve been to the casino a few times in my 20s with friends, but either for one of their birthdays or they were celebrating something. I only ever brought like $50 to drink with and another $50 to play with, knowing full well the most enjoyment of that hundo I was getting was the beers.
I did however win exactly once. Turned my last $10 of the 50 into $900. And that was also the last time I ever gambled.
I did once have someone give me a roll of quarters and I walked out with $70. I figured the only reason I won was because it wasn’t my money.
I mean, that’s pretty sweet!
It’s like me and lotto tickets. If I buy one, I lose every time. If someone buys me one I win either a free play or the value of the ticket…then lose on the free play
Finally someone standing upto Valve for the right reasons.
Interesting how this just happens after Valve wins against the Rothschilds in court, despite the lootboxes being available for the past 10 or so years in Counter Strike and Team Fortress 2.
Valve wins against the Rothschilds
Okay, tap the breaks. Can you field a link on that one?
lootboxes being available for the past 10 or so years in Counter Strike and Team Fortress 2.
In a lot more games than that. EA, Ubisoft, and Activision/Blizzard have been dolling out lootboxes for at least as long. So targeting Valve exclusively definitely raises some eyebrows.
But I’m curious to know what this has to do with “the Rothschilds” and not an actual financial, business, or government entity.
Not everything is a conspiracy and the jews are not behind everything.
Jews are not, billionaires are
Billionaires like Gabe Newell?
For example
But it seems from the outside that Newell’s business strategy is against the push of the billionaire clique that bought the White House, and that’s why some people here act like he’s a hero.
He just makes his undeserved amount of money without also actively trying to make everything worse using the undeserved and frankly harmful political power that amount of money grants.
He just makes his undeserved amount of money without also actively trying to make everything worse using the undeserved and frankly harmful political power that amount of money grants.
Exactly! Where does that get him? Probably to the end of the line if we can ever get the guillotines going again.
Nothing personally against him, except that no one should have that much money. He’s not doing anything harmful to society beyond being entirely too wealthy.
If this stops loot boxes in general I’m all for it… can we also ban the sale of suprise toys also then because its the same thing as this…
Fuck we can go maximum carnage and stop the sale of card packs like pokemon and mtg and everything else as those are loot crates also
This wouldn’t “stop loot boxes” though. They aren’t bringing in EA, Activision, Epic, or any other big company pushing loot boxes.
It feels like they are trying to specifically target Valve until they go public and get controlled by the same BS financiers that run the rest of “the market”.
My tinfoil hat is getting a lot of use lately. :(
Yeah it’s bullshit, you can’t say some of the least toxic and manipulative loot boxes are the problem… I understand valve is one step on the edge of evil but for the most part they have used that power to help control the gaming industries greed…
If this goes through I can see them banning any games with loot boxes from steam or some petty shit like that which im all for…
Let people buy the things they want…
Loot boxes allowed valve games to be free to play for most people. I’m fine with sacrificing the people who aren’t smart enough not to gamble so that the rest of us can play for free, they weren’t going to make it anyways.
the people who aren’t smart enough
So children
You are fine with sacrificing children
Yes I am specifically fine with sacrificing children… the younger the better.
This is coming in so late that it basically seems to be more of a move for someone to run their political career off of. There are so many worse offenders now, while Steam was basically one of the least gregarious ones. Unfortunately for Steam, it is a corrupt market nowadays, and it’s always going to be the least corrupt, private entities who get singled out. You can specially tell its political when it’s flying under the “protect the children” flag, gambling in general has gotten out of hand and needs to be toned down, for all ages. Going after one company isn’t going to fix this, it needs to be legislation wide.
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They’re not wrong, it is gambling.
Good, gambling needs to be cracked down its getting way to bad.
KELSHI LITERALLY HAS SUPER BOWL ADS. WHAT DO YOU MEAN GOOD SIR.
People never cease to amaze me.
I’m assuming you mean Kalshi? Polymarket too, of course.
Games are all rigged, btw. But the spill-over has been eyebrow raising.
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country finally starts cracking down on gambling
oh no wait nevermind they just want to sue a videogame company
In this thread: a complete lack of moral clarity as gamers simp for one of the most profitable companies in the industry. Valve was a pioneer of loot boxes. When they got in trouble for CS:GO skin gambling, they did the minimum to make it look like they didn’t allow it and allowed it to make an easy comeback. They sit back and make 30% off the sale of every game on the platform. People should be saying that Valve is very bad and Epic is even worse. Instead gamers feel this strange need to pick sides with a giant company that controls almost all PC gaming. No, we can easily say they’re all bad.
They need to get rid of Steam to begin rolling out cloud computing. They’ve already started the phase were people can no longer realistic build the rigs they could build a year ago.
You are right, they are all bad. Singling out any company isn’t helping out. That’s the problem with this lawsuit, it is not legislative, it is going only after one company under the telltale of politicization “it’s for the children” with a fair amount of false accusations that “CS2 and other FPSs are causing kids to become violent”. This is to build up Leticia James’ political career by going after an easier target that does not have the political ties other marketplaces have and it will not fix the system, but just allow the competitors to thrive.
Now that doesn’t mean she’s doing as part of some conspiratorial shift to cloud computing, it just means that the parties interested in that shift generally encourage and do nothing to oppose this sort of intervention whereas in the past it might have been opposed to because of the hurdle of precedence they could help to establish - which no longer matters as much because half the Supreme Court is corrupt anyway and can just hallucinate the precedence away in an exercise of mental gymnastics in their opinion.
You don’t think it matters, just look at the shitshow YouTube is increasingly becoming, because that’s what a lot of rich assholes want to appropriate and coerce Steam into becoming. Fear the day Steam goes public.
I think you’re probably right. I still think it’s important to point out that this lawsuit, even if successful, won’t take down Valve. Steam and CS2 will still be around. If it is successful, it might force other platforms to change how they handle lootboxes too. Singling out Valve won’t mean that steam is down and we all need to use the Epic store. The flaws of this lawsuit and it’s motivations don’t mean that we need to excuse Valves bad behavior. You aren’t doing that here but many people feel the need to pick sides. We can call out the lawsuit for being largely a political stunt and call out Valve for profiting off of child gambling.
Reminder most vg marketplace charge 30% on sale on they’re platform. Steam isn’t charging much different then it used to.
Again, those other marketplaces are bad too. Saying Valve is bad isn’t saying another company is good and calling another company bad doesn’t mean I have to say valve is good.
Not everyone has loyalty to Valve or any company.
Not everyone, but plenty of people in this thread do. And plenty of gamers in general excuse their bad behavior.
You’re a citizen in a village. The Nazis have come to your village and decide to destroy you. You attack the friendly village toymaker for hosting gambling nights for everybody.
Yes, it’s wrong.
No, it’s not the time.
Nuance is dead.
Village toymaker? Wow.
The village must be quite famous and populous to even have one! Perhaps it’s a whole ass-town, even!
What do you think would be a more apt analogy, then? Maybe I’m painting them in an unfair light. But, my point is that they’re a toymaker that makes and distributes entertainment for everybody, but also do this thing that kinda sucks.
Billionaire owned tech companies that controll a market so tightly they pretty much have a monopoly shouldn’t be anthropomorphized so fondly. I want you to vomit up that Kool aid.
That’s true. I’ve gotten pushback for criticizing Valve and there is a lot to criticize.
They might be better in some way than other US tech companies, but that’s doesn’t mean much.
