Steam maker says settling the case would be easier but would set a bad precedent.

Last month, the New York Attorney General (NYAG) brought a lawsuit against Valve accusing the company of promoting “illegal gambling” through its randomized in-game loot boxes. On Wednesday, Valve issued its first public comment on the case, comparing its digital loot boxes to randomized real-world purchases like blind-bagged toys or packs of trading cards.

“Generations have grown up opening baseball card packs and blind boxes and bags, and then trading and selling the items they receive,” Valve wrote. “On the physical side, popular products used in this way include baseball cards, Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, and Labubu.”

Though that may seem like an apt comparison on the surface, Valve’s loot boxes differ from these real-world examples in large part because of Valve’s control of the Steam Marketplace, which serves as the only legitimate way to exchange or resell those items. While owners of real-world items are free to trade or sell them however they want, Valve has cracked down on many third-party sites that enable the exchange of in-game items—especially when those items are used as glorified chips for gambling games.

Lawyers told Ars last month that Valve’s control of that marketplace—and its 15 percent commission on item resale—helps establish the inherent economic value of the randomized items it sells, both to players and to Valve itself. That could be a crucial legal element in a courtroom in turning a mere “random purchase” into legally defined “gambling.”

  • TehPers@beehaw.orgEnglish
    5·
    18 hours ago

    US law does not view TCGs as gambling, but by the colloquial definition, it is gambling. You say there’s no wager on an outcome. The wager is the price you spend on a pack, and the outcome is the resale value of the contents of the pack.

    As for the case against Valve in particular, I make no claims as to what they should or shouldn’t argue in the case. I am not a lawyer. I can’t imagine most people in this instance are either.

      • TehPers@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        17 hours ago

        By this definition, buying anything is a wager.

        Mostly correct. Buying anything which retains value after the purchase is a wager. This includes shares in a company, collectible items, even a shipping crate of RAM.

        You’re not betting on a specific outcome in that definition, which is the “gamble” part of “gambling”.

        In the case of TCGs, the bet is that the value of the cards contained in the pack exceed the money spent on the pack. This is very common. And within TCG communities, there is a common understanding that this is gambling.

        That’s of course not to say that all purchases of a booster pack are with the intent to gamble. I’ve also played poker and blackjack for fun, and those games are full of wagers, bets, and outcomes. But the bar has never been that all possible reasons to do something are to gamble, just that gambling is a common motivation to do it.

          • TehPers@beehaw.orgEnglish
            2·
            17 hours ago

            And yet are not “gambling” as the colloquial understanding of the regulated activity stand, nor certainly things that people want to be covered under gambling regulations.

            I didn’t say they were gambling, though trading shares is often associated with gambling. But in all of those examples, you receive something with value that changes in a way that is impossible to accurately predict.

            And since this is about what should fall under the regulated activity, doubly-irrelevant.

            And here you’re changing the topic to suit your needs. I replied to a comment discussing the definition of the word “wager”. As I’ve told you not long ago today, I don’t care much about the semantics of specific words. I’ll engage in the discussion though.

            And since this definition is irrelevant to the regulated activity, it’s irrelevant to TCGs or loot boxes if you are pushing for those to be considered regulated gambling.

            What? I’d like to remind you that you responded to me and solo’d out TCG boosters. In my response, I said very clearly that I am not a lawyer, nor do I make any claims as to what they should say in their case.

            If you are only arguing about what is or isn’t legal, then you’re wasting your time. I’m not a lawyer, nor in a position to rule on laws. I don’t know if something gave you the impression otherwise.

            If you’re arguing about what should or shouldn’t be legal, then it’s not an unpopular opinion that TCG booster packs should be regulated to some extent.

            Anyway, I’m disengaging. As you mentioned before, we assume good faith here. That is my initial assumption, so I engaged with the discussion. At this point, I believe you are arguing for the sake of arguing.