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.”

  • kugmo@sh.itjust.works
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    1 hour ago

    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.

    • Joeffect@lemmy.world
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      50 minutes ago

      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

  • TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca
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    1 hour ago

    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.

  • HollowNaught@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    country finally starts cracking down on gambling

    oh no wait nevermind they just want to sue a videogame company

  • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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    5 hours ago

    Good, gambling needs to be cracked down its getting way to bad.

  • JillyB@beehaw.org
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    9 hours ago

    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.

    • TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca
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      1 hour ago

      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.

    • Smaile@lemmy.ca
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      6 hours ago

      Reminder most vg marketplace charge 30% on sale on they’re platform. Steam isn’t charging much different then it used to.

      • JillyB@beehaw.org
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        3 hours ago

        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.

      • JillyB@beehaw.org
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        8 hours ago

        Not everyone, but plenty of people in this thread do. And plenty of gamers in general excuse their bad behavior.

        • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          6 hours ago

          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.

            • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              5 hours ago

              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.

              • JillyB@beehaw.org
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                3 hours ago

                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.

        • Agent_Karyo@piefed.worldOP
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          8 hours ago

          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.

  • 𝕲𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖈𝖍🔻𝕯𝖃 (he/him)@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    On the one hand, good. Valve needs to be held responsible for this.

    On the other hand, steam has the best parental controls of any platform I’ve ever seen. You can just not let your kid play those games. Parents should take responsibility for their kids. Games already have ratings and warnings and such.

    On the third hand, I forsee this as being yet another means of forcing ID checks and face scanning into the platform. I don’t trust our government not to fuck this up in the worst way possible right now.

    • jaselle@lemmy.ca
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      19 hours ago

      ID checks are a solution used when there are different rules for both adults and children. I don’t see how that would apply here, since the rules in NY appear to be the same in this case.

    • rishado@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      How is this valves problem? Shouldn’t the NY state government be banning shit like this? This is a policy thing

  • MehBlah@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    I quit playing games with loot boxes. Having said that my experience and valve with loot boxes were they were cosmetic only. I may be wrong about that.

    • PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works
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      10 hours ago

      They are only cosmetic, but absolutely still gambling. That said, the design and use of the market and operations did mean it was far easier to avoid and far cheaper. For example, you could get basically a full loadout of skins, without ever opening a lootbox, for far less. Doesn’t change the fact that the lootboxes in CS (and everything else) need to be regulated though.

    • chuckleslord@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      Them being cosmetics doesn’t change anything. People want cosmetics, they made a gambling system to get them, easy-as.

      • BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip
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        8 hours ago

        Not mechanically the same at all. The reason they can skirt by and have not been considered ‘gambling’ is largely due to the fact that you always win something, even if the player to player market dictates that item as worthless.

        A slot machine literally just takes your money and you are left with nothing but having pushed a button for the pretty lights and fun noises.

  • Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    22 hours ago

    Gotta love how they just randomly threw in that long-disproved little tidbit about violent videogames making kids into psychopaths. Way to discredit your whole stance.

    • MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip
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      22 hours ago

      Way to discredit your whole stance.

      People can be right about one thing and wrong about another at the same time. Do you have to be right about everything ever for one of your opinions to count?

      • Railcar8095@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        Sure, but doesn’t help when you go out of your way to say something stupid.

        Nothing discredits a health lifestyle advice more than being followed by a rant about vaccinees. Same here.

        • MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip
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          19 hours ago

          Yeah, I agree the whole “video games cause violence” thing is incredibly stupid.

          I don’t think having a dumb opinion about something discredits your other opinions though. They should each be taken on their own merits.

          You’ll have a hard time convincing someone to change their mind if you just write them off because one of their opinions is dumb.

          • Railcar8095@lemmy.world
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            19 hours ago

            I didn’t write them off, just said they wanted to reinforce their position with something dumb, which has the opposite effect.

            This is not a quote of something they said some other time about other topic, this was on the and breath.

            To be clear, fuck loot boxes, hope they are banned. That’s why it’s bad to shot yourself in the foot appearing either uninformed or actively lying.

      • FishFace@piefed.social
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        21 hours ago

        The downvotes, the shameful, wrong downvotes.

        Guess everyone who did so is wrong about everything.

        • athatet@lemmy.zip
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          15 hours ago

          God I love downvoting people who complain about downvotes. I don’t even know why. It’s just incredibly funny to me for some reason.

          • qarbone@lemmy.world
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            14 hours ago

            It’s the same thing as stabbing a guy who says “what are you gonna do, stab me?”

              • FishFace@piefed.social
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                7 hours ago

                Dumb shit like not checking the usernames so you’d know the post in question was not mine? Hmm.

                Also that comment was 100% reasonable. Nobody has come up with a sensible criticism of it.

  • ulterno@programming.dev
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    15 hours ago

    For some reason, even though I have been using Steam for a long time, I am not privy to the “lootboxes” they talk about. And my account was never parented. I feel like I would actively need to look for what they are talking about.

    disgorge all ill-gotten gains

    Why is this the only lawsuit where I see this phrase?
    Why do other companies go away with a few million $ in fine?

    -> Now I want to know how much Valve has “ill-gotten” out of this thing.


    I definitely prefer GoG and being able to play all my games with the internet off and don’t consider Steam as some angel. But from what I see, the very fact that so many Gaming companies are trying to destroy Valve, tells me that Valve is giving value that these others don’t want given to the customer.

    So, using what laws to sue a group of companies for the malicious use of court to attempt to reduce the overall quality of product options available to the consumers?

      • ulterno@programming.dev
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        9 hours ago

        Ok, so I looked into it further and looks like they also take a tax on every trade, meaning they are actually profiting off of people’s auctions after they run their slot machines.

        Seems to be quite a bit of ill-gotten gains to be found here.
        Gabe might have to pass on a few of his future yachts.