Official statement from Valve.
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.
You’re right! We should stop that too!
Yeah I’m getting pretty tired of the “everyone must pay the price to protect kids”
Why are kids able to access adult sites without ID? Everyone must prove they’re an adult online to read books with adult themes. Why are kids able to use installed applications that could have some forbidden social features? Everyone must prove their age to their operating system to use an electronic device. Why are kids able to access alcohol at their homes? Adults should have to keep their legally purchased alcohol at government approved holding facilities, where they may take a drink after proving their age. Why are kids allowed to stay out after curfew? Everyone must wear a shirt with their name, address, and birthdate printed after 11pm on week nights.
This is a new trend in law and we need to stop getting tricked into allowing it. It is the parent’s responsibility to be aware of what their child is doing and either allow or prevent it. I don’t want parents spying on their kids and think there’s an element of trust for sure, but I’d much rather have the parents spying on kids than the government and their contractors spying on EVERYONE. It’s ridiculous and infringes on rights established through rigid SCOTUS precedent including Stanley V. Georgia, and NAACP V. Alabama.
We’re a bunch of pansies now that lick the boot with ID verifications online in red states and OS-level requirements in the blue ones. The internet and all of its offspring are not meant for children’s unsupervised use, but it isn’t the public’s responsibility to bear the burden.
Don’t forget about the NYSE! If that ain’t gambling, then I guess I don’t know what is.
Oh, it’s gambling because I’m addicted
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
You’re right! We should stop that too!
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…
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.
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 love Valve, but I don’t think this one is going away and I don’t think it SHOULD go away. F2P games with RNG loot boxes are a scourge and I don’t play games that have them for that very reason.
It absolutely shouldn’t go away. My problem isn’t that Valve is being targeted, but that only Valve is being targeted. It should extend to all of the big players using gambling and addictive conditioning in video games starting with EA and Microslop/Activision, and then all of the gacha games from the east. Targeting Valve and nobody else is extremely suspicious, especially in the wake of the victory over the Rothchilds.
But you don’t start 20 lawsuits for the same thing at the same time against everybody. You start with one case against one company, and if it rules in your favor, that sets stronger precedent to go after the others.
As for why Valve, I’m guessing it’s easier to demonstrate more specific examples of harm when you have a larger pool of consumers to draw from, and easier to get an American entity in an American courtroom.
Valve is also doing this themselves and supporting others in doing it. If it is so ruled serving Valve a cease and desist to stop their own illegal gambling and an injunction to not give it a platform is something completely else from suing any other company.
It’s about targeting the ones you can legally target. I’m not going to get into it again but Valve does their lootboxes differently to almost every other big developer/publisher and that way of doing things has gotten them in trouble. Should all companies that in practice are gambling get into legal trouble? Yes. Should Valve get a pass because others get away scot-free? No. If 6 people rape someone but legally there’s evidence to convict one of them you don’t give that one person a free pass because the other 5 can’t be convicted.
In this case there’s one company, Valve, where you have some legal basis to get them in the court and there’s no legal basis for other companies even though they’re largely doing the same thing. You may not like it and might consider it unfair but that’s just how the legal system works.
I’m trying to understand what’s different. If you don’t want to explain again here, that’s fine but can you link me to your other comments or something.
I haven’t played Dota or TF2. I don’t know how the loot boxes work and I’m trying to understand.
Epic was taken to court over loot boxes several years ago. They lost. It’s why Rocket League removed crates/keys.
I think they’re referring to valves community market in tandem with loot boxes.
Valve drops boxes in cs2, which you pay to open. You get a weapon skin. But the difference is that I can sell that skin on the steam marketplace, and then turn around and buy Helldivers 2 with that credit.
Valve provides a pipeline for skins and ingame items to be traded for goods and services outside the game ecosystem.
I assume that makes them easier to go after in some way.
This explains quite a lot. I’ve only ever played a couple of games that have loot boxes (Destiny and Overwatch and like Battlefield) and you don’t pay to open those.
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.
After that, assigning a value based on rarity for resale of the items would be on the players, not on Valve.
But now I agree that that is problematic even if I don’t agree with the way the NYAG is going about trying to fix it.
I especially object to the save the children angle as none of the games are rated E or even rated for children.
Someone else in the thread brought up how kids can get around this with a gift card, but I question why they’d need a gift card to buy free games. Sounds to me like that’s a case of parents not doing parenting.
Even if you used the gift card to pay to open the loot boxes, that seems like a problem with the parents too. I don’t know why it’s any more acceptable to sue Valve over this than it is to legislate who can buy gift cards. Like technically the parents own the gift card in the same way we don’t let kids have legal ownership of anything else.
A literally solution would be preventing the purchase of gift cards by minors or preventing gift cards from being used to buy anything not rated for everyone. Or not rated for kids.
I’ll put it another way, kids aren’t allowed to buy x-rated content. But you absolutely can use a gift card to purchase x-rated media from x-rated sites. It’s one of the things being proposed by several people in the wake of age verification stuff. So by the same logic a child could do that.
The example NYAG was providing was:
- Opened a crate
- Sold the item from a crate
- Used that money to buy a Steam Deck from the Steam store
- Sold the Steam Deck at a pawn shop
Which I think is a bit far fetched to “launder” or somehow convert a digital item to physical cash.
I mean the simpler option is likely just selling a cs2 skins for crypto or just a direct paypal payment on one of many skin gambling or exchange sites. But sure, you could scalp hardware once valve has it back in stock, especially considering pc part prices and shortages.
Well that is against the Steam TOS.
Buying a Steam Deck and reselling it, isn’t.
I think that’s what the NYAG was trying to get at here.
Again, far fetched.
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The biggest difference compared to the likes of EA and Activision is that the items have real monetary value. In Activision or EA games the money spent on the lootbox is effectively wasted. You generally can’t trade the content to recoup the costs and in some cases where you can those trades tend to happen for in-game currency which again, has no real monetary value. There’s no monetary incentive to “gamble” because from a monetary point of view it’s always a loss. The lawsuit actually makes a case that with Valve there is a monetary incentive to “gamble” because the value of the item you receive from the lootbox translates to real world money. And while the lawsuit has to take sort of a roundabout way of proving that, I think most people agree that the stuff you pull from Valve’s lootboxes has real monetary value.
The second point is supporting the infrastructure to make trades happen. One of the things that separates trading cards from gambling is that the cards themselves officially have no value. You can buy a pack of MTG cards and get something really valuable but you can’t sell that back to WotC (Wizards of the Coast, the makers of MTG) and actually WotC doesn’t even acknowledge that you pulled something really valuable because they claim all the cards have their value based on rarity and not the card itself. But it’s valuable because there’s a secondary market that has nothing to do with WotC. That’s not entirely true for Valve because all trades happen on Valve’s infrastructure and Valve literally shows the real world value of the items. Now Valve gets to claim they don’t set the price, the market does, and that’s not an acknowledgement of the value, but Valve still benefits and supports that market which itself is a vessel for gambling. Worth mentioning that it’s not an argument that is being made in the lawsuit (at least I didn’t notice it there) so it’s less relevant or even completely irrelevant from a legal perspective, at least for now.
Yeah I was missing the key detail that you need to pay to open the loot boxes which gives them a base monetary value as the starting point and does essentially equate to pay for the contents inside. That combined with them also running a market for trades and sales of the item is very synonymous with the pachinko machine setup and I do agree that this is gambling.
Thank you for taking the time to explain. I haven’t played any of Valve’s games that have loot boxes so I didn’t understand how it was different from loot boxes in Destiny or Battlefield.
Oh yeah, I completely forgot to mention that part because for some reason I thought everyone knew you can’t open Valve lootboxes without paying for it. That’s a very important distinction to make because if you could open them for free there’s an argument that because you’re not putting money in it’s not legally gambling.
Yeah. a lot of people don’t mention it and I had no frame of reference but I kept seeing comments that sort of alluded to that. I tried to Google it but with the current news cycle that information is buried and I couldn’t find a source. And of course I don’t play those games so I just didn’t know.
Still, thanks again.
I don’t care if they exist, but you’d have to make it an 18 an over type of deal. I don’t really care how adults choose to blow their money, gambling included. You want to verify you’re over 18 so you can get loot boxes, you do you.
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 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.
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.
Right, as if anyone actually cares about the children ™️
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.
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.
oh yes please delete all the analogue gambling for children too. make it something everyone has to follow
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.
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?
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.
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
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).
Yeah I don’t really think so, GabeN. Loot boxes should go the way of the dinosaurs.
Become bird
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.
They hate billionaires except when it involves their treats
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.
Valve is the only market place and game company that isn’t as fucking consumers at every step of the way.
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.
Fuck you Valve is the most pro consumer company there is. Go suck off zuckerberg and Tim cook you bootlicker.
Valve is the most pro consumer company there is.
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.
Gotta wonder why the NY AG is so interested in prosecuting Steam and so blase about pursuing anyone in the Epstein Files.
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.
And “was a rapist in FL and a private island”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_N._Straus_House#Jeffrey_Epstein
They want exclusive rights to exploit children.
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.
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.
stop it in physical games as well
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 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?
