Valve has moved to dismiss the New York Attorney General’s lawsuit against the company, which claims loot boxes in its games such as Counter-Strike 2 promote illegal gambling and threaten to addict children.
The fact that California decided to sue Valve for Counterstrike and not sue EA for FIFA is just blatant targeted harassment. Valve’s right for pointing out that any precedent set here would make Pokemon cards and Baseball cards illegal, both of which are actually advertised directly to kids.
only on a secondary market in which those companies don’t participate. it’s a paper thin line which keeps trading card game booster packs from beeing gambling in a legal sense
the difference is that wotc won’t give you anything for your magic cards, but you can directly sell skins on steam and actually buy something with it, which from my understanding gives the skins direct, and sometimes really high value, which might make this actual gambling, simmiliar to how you exchange your chetons in a casino.
wotc and other simmiliar companies skirt around that by not acknowledging that a second marekt exists and not participating in it.
The “No purchase required” part. In all cases of promotions like these you, if read the fine print you can simply write to the company and they send you a ticket for free.
No. I mean when the cap of a bottle of coke has prices or find the golden cookie and win a trip to NY. Those have a purchase required, and you can’t write to the company and get the to send you the price token for you ro exchange it for the price.
Yes even the “collect the cap” ones have to provide a free alternate method of entry. The FTC at the federal level and all 50 states have these laws. Edit: just search on the phrase “free alternate method of entry” and you’ll get many hits explaining this.
The US is truly a very weird country. In any case even if that’s the rule CS is a free game, so no purchase required to participate in the loot boxes. So I’ll ask again, how is that any different?
I’m not a CS player but the lawsuit says that Valve charges money for keys to open the boxes, what’s in the boxes has monetary value, and the reason the items have value is because Valve allows them to be bought and sold. These three facts together constitute an illegal gambling scheme.
You could contrast this with the fact that Rocket League no longer charges for keys to open their loot drops and their items can no longer be traded.
Prize – Something of value is awarded
Chance – Winners are chosen randomly
Consideration – Entry requires payment or significant effort
Removing consideration (and clearly disclosing a free AMOE) keeps your sweepstakes on the right side of the law.
Now before you say “but how is this different from magic cards”, the fact that the only thing that WOTC or Topps or Nintendo are offering you is purchasing their cards to either play the game or commemorate your favorite players. You get the physical cards that you paid for with no further value.
I don’t think that’s how the law is written though. You can only get steam wallet funds for your skins, steam wallet funds explicitly have no cash value. The transaction at that point is done. A video game also has “real world value” you could just as easily say well I get steam wallet funds and than sell gifted games to other people. I don’t think your argument tracks with the law or steams user agreement.
The fact that California decided to sue Valve for Counterstrike and not sue EA for FIFA is just blatant targeted harassment. Valve’s right for pointing out that any precedent set here would make Pokemon cards and Baseball cards illegal, both of which are actually advertised directly to kids.
valve has a way to transfer money in your steam wallet into something with real world value: hardware.
you can not trade pokemon cards with nintendo for game cartridges or money, that is the whole distinction, no secondary market required.
Dont the cards have value?
only on a secondary market in which those companies don’t participate. it’s a paper thin line which keeps trading card game booster packs from beeing gambling in a legal sense
I’m not at all experienced this stuff so sorry if this is obvious - but how is that different from hardware?
Its not like valve is reimbursing cash for the hardware after bought, theyre both just some materials (that can be sold elsewhere for cash) right?
the difference is that wotc won’t give you anything for your magic cards, but you can directly sell skins on steam and actually buy something with it, which from my understanding gives the skins direct, and sometimes really high value, which might make this actual gambling, simmiliar to how you exchange your chetons in a casino.
wotc and other simmiliar companies skirt around that by not acknowledging that a second marekt exists and not participating in it.
but i am not a lawyer obviously.
How is that different from any promotion like “find the golden ticket and earn an iphone”?
The “No purchase required” part. In all cases of promotions like these you, if read the fine print you can simply write to the company and they send you a ticket for free.
No. I mean when the cap of a bottle of coke has prices or find the golden cookie and win a trip to NY. Those have a purchase required, and you can’t write to the company and get the to send you the price token for you ro exchange it for the price.
Yes even the “collect the cap” ones have to provide a free alternate method of entry. The FTC at the federal level and all 50 states have these laws. Edit: just search on the phrase “free alternate method of entry” and you’ll get many hits explaining this.
The US is truly a very weird country. In any case even if that’s the rule CS is a free game, so no purchase required to participate in the loot boxes. So I’ll ask again, how is that any different?
I’m not a CS player but the lawsuit says that Valve charges money for keys to open the boxes, what’s in the boxes has monetary value, and the reason the items have value is because Valve allows them to be bought and sold. These three facts together constitute an illegal gambling scheme.
You could contrast this with the fact that Rocket League no longer charges for keys to open their loot drops and their items can no longer be traded.
I found a website that spells it out quite clearly: https://ussweeps.com/about-us/blog/articles/no-purchase-necessary-sweepstakes-guide/
A sweepstakes becomes an illegal lottery when all three of the following elements are present:
Removing consideration (and clearly disclosing a free AMOE) keeps your sweepstakes on the right side of the law.
Now before you say “but how is this different from magic cards”, the fact that the only thing that WOTC or Topps or Nintendo are offering you is purchasing their cards to either play the game or commemorate your favorite players. You get the physical cards that you paid for with no further value.
So if they did not have any hardware available it would have been fine?
Maybe Steam should change the policy that store credits cannot be used to buy hardware
thats my understanding of it and if valve loses this, they’ll introduce gabe bucks to buy boxes and keys with and nothing meaningful will change.
I don’t think that’s how the law is written though. You can only get steam wallet funds for your skins, steam wallet funds explicitly have no cash value. The transaction at that point is done. A video game also has “real world value” you could just as easily say well I get steam wallet funds and than sell gifted games to other people. I don’t think your argument tracks with the law or steams user agreement.
it’s the only difference i see to other loot boxes or trading card games.