Comment on New York sues Valve for enabling "illegal gambling" with loot boxes

• Goodeye8@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  The point is that this is not the first time that Valve has been singled out for things widely done across the industry and they’ve also been falsely accused of doing things that the rest of the industry is doing.

  I don’t see how that’s relevant. If someone is innocent the 99 times they’ve been accused of a crime we shouldn’t give them a pass on the 100th accusation.

  If they wanted to go after Valve specifically for gambling they should not have linked it to kids. It’s invoking “think of the children” BS while diluting what they claim is the core argument.

  But it is an argument to be made when a) kids are playing a game with gambling (which they are), b) there’s clear evidence that kids experiencing gambling has a negative impact on their life (which the lawsuit also clearly cites) and c) children gambling is illegal.

  Gambling is also harmful for adults. They are M rated games. If a child is playing the game that is a parental issue, not a state issue. It’s not illegal for kids to play M rated games, nor do I really think it should be as that is something parents should decide. The issue is that a lot, if not most, parents have no idea what their kids are doing online.

  Gambling is also harmful for adults, but that has been legalized. Children playing an M rated game is a parental issue but that’s not the argument that’s being made. But it turns into a legal issue when the game children are playing is gambling.

  The argument that “mostly kids play these games” is unsubstantiated at best. Might have been true in the 90s and early 2000s, but there are people in their 50’s that have played games for the majority of their lives.

  I didn’t see them making that argument. I saw them make an argument that teenagers are a core audience for CS.

  Teenage boys are a core audience of first-person shooter games like Counter-Strike. It is also well known that many of the most famous esports players of CS 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2 began playing well before they turned 13. Over half of the 22 players on the top five Counter-Strike esports academy teams are 18 years old or younger, and the youngest member is just 14 years old.

  That seems to be pretty well argumented especially when you know the competitive scene of CS where those same academy teams have slotted straight into T1 CS. The fact that there are so many talented players in the competitive scene who either are or were minors a few years ago means that there is a big enough teenage audience to have such talent rise to the top.

  Also, PC gaming tends to skew older. They might have more of an argument if they were talking about Call of Duty on a console, but an M rated game is still not targeted to that age group.

  You don’t see the irony of defending Valve with their games being M rated and then saying it would be different if it was Call of Duty, which is also an M rated game? By your own logic you should be just as opposed to them talking about Call of Duty as they are talking about Counter Strike.

  Again, if they want to go after Vavle for gambling, then do that. But they are jumping around with what exactly the accusation is which makes it seem like they are grasping at straws at best or trying to hide the real reason at worst.

  They are and they’re making arguments where Valve would be breaking the law if Valve is gambling. That includes letting children gamble.

  That we have all the age verification crap happening at the same time is too much of a coincidence to ignore. Like, How about going after anyone implicated from the files if you really want to protect children? They can come back to this after they develop a coherent argument and include any other gaming companies doing the same thing.

  They can’t legally force Valve to implement age verification unless Valve decides to double down on the gambling. Valve could just as easily prevent age verification by removing gambling from their platform. I don’t think Valve should get a free pass on gambling just because there’s a risk of someone malicious trying to push age verification through this door. Valve opened that door when they decided to implement gambling.

  They have a coherent argument, it’s just an argument you like and they can’t include other gaming companies in this lawsuit because other gaming companies are not doing it the exact same way Valve is doing it. What you’re saying is that we should give Valve a pass on allegedly breaking the law because we can’t accuse all companies who may or may not be breaking the law. If there’s a gangrape and only 1 of the 5 rapists could be proven guilty should they get a free pass because we can’t prove all 5 did the raping? Because that’s the argument you’re making.

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