They are brining up the good argument that this would essentially make baseball and pokemon cards gambling and illegal as well, I’m not a lawyer but with the way the law is written and from my understanding of it valve had a very good chance of getting this dismissed or wining in court.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Nah. I actually thought the same at first. I literally asked when this was first announced in the news if it wasn’t basically the same as Pokemon cards.
The problem is this. The company producing the Pokemon cards isn’t I hope actively providing a service to trade or resell them for monetary value based on rarity. Secondary markets exist for that but a first party Pokemon company market doesn’t exist for that.
This is where valve fucked up. They allow you to get a rare drop by chance, trade it for points, and use those points to buy something with real world value. It’s a lot more like pachinko than it is Pokemon cards or baseball cards.
Zetta@mander.xyz 8 hours ago
Steam wallet funds expressly have no monetary value in the steam user agreement, and it explicitly states in the steam user agreement it’s against their tos to sell items off of their market. So they are covered. Second hand markets exist but it’s without valves support or consent, they aren’t breaking the law. A court can’t compel valve to restrict user freedom (trading digital items) because they don’t shut down websites that they have no ability to shut down.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 8 hours ago