There is a massive secondary market for in-game items (primarily CS skins) that Valve refuses to combat or even officially acknowledge. Some of it is legitimate, some of it is literal lottery for children. And since every transaction takes place on Steam, they get a cut of that.
I hear people say this sometimes, but I don’t know what they mean. Is there part of Valve’s system that has a gambling mechanic I’ve just never engaged with?
Or is it one of their games that has gambling?
Because I’ve been using it for years as basically my sole gaming interface and haven’t seen any gambling.
rtxn@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
technohacker@programming.dev 8 hours ago
Mainly Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike GO/2, cuz both of them have cosmetics with rarities obtained via what effectively amounts to lootboxes. In one sense they also have an out-of-game economy around these things where these items are traded for actual money
missingno@fedia.io 4 hours ago
TF2 was the original gacha game.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 8 hours ago
All their own games have lootboxes and stuff like that.
dukemirage@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Loot boxes in Counter-Strike
artyom@piefed.social 7 hours ago
The short version is that an enormous, multibillion dollar industry has been built around Valve’s item marketplace, and in particular around CS:GO skins. If that sounds completely insane and stupid, I’m with you, but it exists. Valve takes their typical cut off of all of these trades, and thus derives massive profits from it.
Here’s the long version: https://peertube.gravitywell.xyz/videos/watch/a8e6d20c-3003-4b14-b9c4-cb6a25b238e7?isPeertubeContent=1