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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.

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Zetta@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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- atrielienz@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  Valve allows users to cash in on the virtual items they have won in two ways. Users can sell the items they won through Valve’s own virtual marketplace, the Steam Community Market, where they can use the proceeds to buy other video games, video game hardware, and other virtual items. Users can also connect their Valve accounts to third-party marketplaces where the virtual items can be sold directly for cash. The OAG’s investigation found that Valve facilitates and even assists these third-party marketplaces in their operations.
  
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  - Zetta@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    There is no evidence I have seen that Valve supports 3rd party market places, and like I said the steam user agreement explicitly forbids them. There is nothing illegal about their own market place.
    
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    atrielienz@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Valve makes you buy a key to open the loot boxes.
    
    Valve then allows the contents of loot boxes to be traded for platform currency.
    
    Unfortunately that platform currency has a real monetary value because it can be traded for real monetary goods because you can use it to buy a steam deck of other valve hardware.
    
    It is this direct chain of events that make this illegal gambling because this is not something you can do with baseball cards or Pokemon cards.
    
    three core elements common to all gambling laws: (1) consideration, (2) chance, and (3) prize. So long as one of these three elements is not met, a loot box system is not “gambling”. The “chance” element is inevitably met in any form of loot boxes, but the “consideration” element can arguably be avoided by making loot boxes acquirable only by exchanging virtual currency that itself arguably has no “value”, and the “prize” element can arguably be avoided by making the loot box drops account-locked. Where the loot box drop cannot be transferred, sold, or “cashed out”, there is arguably no “prize” no matter how rare the drop is or how useful it is for in-game purposes.[1]
    
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