ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
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.
Dunstabzugshaubitze@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
valve has a way to transfer money in your steam wallet into something with real world value: hatdware.
you can not trade pokemon cards with nintendo for game cartridges or money, that is the whole distinction, no secondary market required.
klankin@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
Dont the cards have value?
Dunstabzugshaubitze@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
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
klankin@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
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?
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
How is that different from any promotion like “find the golden ticket and earn an iphone”?
uid0gid0@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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.
Zetta@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
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 suer agreement.
Dunstabzugshaubitze@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
it’s the only difference i see to other loot boxes or trading card games.
notaviking@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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
Dunstabzugshaubitze@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
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.