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Comment on Coffeezilla does a third part of his CS:GO gambling expose...where he squarely puts the blame on Valve

PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

Honestly, in a lot of ways, I think this video is a miss. In both this video and to a lesser extent the last, he put a lot of the blame on Valve, but also provides a higher standard to Valve than the other companies covered. So much of this video boils down to “Valve uses lootboxes too,” and “Valve needs to do something about this.” without addressing Valve’s position as a market player nor providing any solution for Valve to actually tackle the casino problem. He even says in the video that Valve previously issued takedowns but nothing changed and many of the casinos didn’t even respond to the cease and desist. No other course of action is suggested, and frankly, I don’t see any from Valve that wouldn’t punish victums and unrelated users far more than the casinos.

This isn’t to say Valve is blameless, but Valve is fairly tame for their direct involvement with lootboxes and is competiting directly against companies that use them far more agressively - exactly the reason Coffee previously gave the casinos and those involved with them leniency, and encouraged looking further up the chain. In the same way, I’d say the actual solution here would be for governments to ban underage gambling and enforce those laws - because the more Valve trys to crack down on this or even just avoid it, the more of an advantage the worse players in the space have. Ubisoft and EA have already been attempting to dislodge Steam for years, and its not because they think they can be more moral than Steam.

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Aielman15@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
It’s not his place to provide a solution: he is a journalist exposing a problem. Do you have such expectations for all journalists talking about any topic?

When articles get shared about any other company using micro/macrotransactions, predatory tactics or gambling-related schemes, people’s consensus is unanimous, but when Valve is involved, suddenly people have double standards.

Valve is fairly tame for their direct involvement with lootboxes and is competiting directly against companies that use them far more agressively […] Ubisoft and EA have already been attempting to dislodge Steam for years, and its not because they think they can be more moral than Steam.

Valve could shut down the entire gambling market today and nothing would change to their market position. Steam is not the number one marketplace because of the skin market. They are leaving it as is because it nets them money. I don’t know how can you call Steam “fairly tame” when they are literally allowing multimillion dollar casinos to exist and operate without impunity. They sent a C&D to casinos and then washed their hands of the problem, because ultimately they don’t really care about shutting them down.

They could ban accounts linked to the casinos, but they don’t, because they profit from them. They could have some sort of account-level check to make sure that minors don’t spend their steam gift cards on CS skins (which, by the way, Coffezilla proposes at the end of the video) , but they’d rather use the gambling loophole of “akshually, it’s not gambling as defined by law”. Then they lie through their teeth by saying that they “don’t have any data” supporting the claim that the gambling aspect of the game has profited them by leading to more interest in their games, which is bullshit.

PC players, and Lemmy users in particular, have a huge double standard for Valve.

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- PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  
  It’s not his place to provide a solution: he is a journalist exposing a problem. Do you have such expectations for all journalists talking about any topic?
  
  It wouldn’t be his place to provide a solution if he was arguing that the practice is a problem and prehaps pushing for further study. It is his place because throughout the video, he tries to argue that solving the problem is not only possible, but easy - and yet, despite supposedly being easy, his best solution is to basically propose that the industry self-regulate. That is the main issue I have with this video.
  
  Valve could shut down the entire gambling market today and nothing would change to their market position.
  
  And how would they do this without screwing over normal users and victums of the casinos in the process? They can’t get money from these casinos, nor collect casino records to redistribute scammed money. All they can do is disable trading or their marketplace, effectively seizing the poker chips (or metals balls, following Coffee’s pachinko comparison) but doing nothing about the money casinos have taken from victims nor preventing the casinos from either walking away or re-investing in a new casino. To prevent new ones from popping up, you could disable all trading and marketing, but now you’re punishing 132 million users for the acts of a couple thousand.
  
  They could have some sort of account-level check to make sure that minors don’t spend their steam gift cards on CS skins
  
  They could, but A) this is just one game on their platform, and B) this would leave them directly competiting against those who don’t regulate themselves and can make and reinvest significantly more. This is exactly the situation that Coffee argued was systematic and needed to be adressed further up the chain previously.
  
  they’d rather use the gambling loophole of “akshually, it’s not gambling as defined by law”. Then they lie through their teeth by saying that they “don’t have any data” supporting the claim that the gambling aspect of the game has profited them by leading to more interest in their games, which is bullshit.
  
  Again, exactly like their competition. The recent talk of Balatro’s PEGI rating being a prime example, with the industry self-regulation body declaring that virtual slot machines and loot boxes aren’t gambling but featuring poker hands was.
  
  PC players, and Lemmy users in particular, have a huge double standard for Valve.
  
  This is the problem I have with this video. Valve is being held to a different standard, and told to self-regulate while others in this very series are having blame redirected away from them because its unreasonable to expect them to self-regulate.
  
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  - Aielman15@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    
    It wouldn’t be his place to provide a solution if he was arguing that the practice is a problem and prehaps pushing for further study. It is his place because throughout the video, he tries to argue that solving the problem is not only possible, but easy - and yet, despite supposedly being easy, his best solution is to basically propose that the industry self-regulate. That is the main issue I have with this video.
    
    He is not proposing that the entire industry must self-regulate and that it’s the only solution to the problem. He is saying that this specific instance, the CS skin market, could be solved by Valve taking a firm stance, which not only they are not doing, but are actually working against, such as them side-stepping the regulations imposed on them by the French government.
    
    I’m all in for stricter regulations on gambling by government agencies, but that doesn’t mean that the people side-stepping those regulations aren’t to blame too. While they are not doing anything technically illegal, they are purposefully operating in a grey area to profit off vulnerable people.
    
    And how would they do this without screwing over normal users and victums of the casinos in the process? They can’t get money from these casinos, nor collect casino records to redistribute scammed money. All they can do is disable trading or their marketplace, effectively seizing the poker chips (or metals balls, following Coffee’s pachinko comparison) but doing nothing about the money casinos have taken from victims nor preventing the casinos from either walking away or re-investing in a new casino. To prevent new ones from popping up, you could disable all trading and marketing, but now you’re punishing 132 million users for the acts of a couple thousand.
    
    You can’t do anything about the money the casinos have already made, but you can stop them by making further money. That happens pretty much all the time in every market.
    
    They could, but A) this is just one game on their platform, and B) this would leave them directly competiting against those who don’t regulate themselves and can make and reinvest significantly more. This is exactly the situation that Coffee argued was systematic and needed to be adressed further up the chain previously.
    
    A) The video is explicitly about Counter Strike and the gambling market surrounding that specific game; not the whole industry. I agree a more systemic approach (ie. on a government level) should be advisable, but until that day comes, Valve could put an end to this specific problem, which they are currently choosing to ignore because they are profiting from it instead;
    B) Valve makes literally billions and can invest to their heart’s content. They are not a small indie dev.
    
    Again, exactly like their competition. The recent talk of Balatro’s PEGI rating being a prime example, with the industry self-regulation body declaring that virtual slot machines and loot boxes aren’t gambling but featuring poker hands was.
    
    Cool, their competition does it too. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
    
    This is the problem I have with this video. Valve is being held to a different standard, and told to self-regulate while others in this very series are having blame redirected away from them because its unreasonable to expect them to self-regulate.
    
    Valve literally created the market. If you take the bigger share of the profit, you also take the biggest share of the blame. Casinos are obviously bad, but they are ultimately leeching off the system that Valve put in place.
    
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    PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    
    You can’t do anything about the money the casinos have already made, but you can stop them by making further money.
    
    Valve makes literally billions and can invest to their heart’s content. They are not a small indie dev.
    
    So if I inderstand this right, you’re arguing thay valve should just disable the entire CS skin trading and marketing system, current victims and other users be damned, and should stop expecting to make money on their products because they have enough money as it is? That sounds sounds like a ridiculous argument, so please clairify what I’m misunderstanding here.
    
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- Evotech@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  But he’s placing blame easily enough
  
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Cyv_@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
He did say govt should be involved, and I’d agree generally. Gambling and gambling lite like lootboxes need regulation to die, but Valve is also a massive company running the biggest game storefront in the world, and they don’t need the money from the lootboxes and cuts from selling and trading. They aren’t in direct competition with most game creators, they compete with other storefronts, and it isn’t even close. They could fix this relatively easily and it would barely make a dent in their finances.

They could also leave the lootboxes and gambling up, and just implement an age verification system, one that locks you out of trading until the account is verified 18 or older, and add other tools like locking yourself out of trading or opening boxes similar to how casinos allow you to blacklist yourself for your own good.

In terms of a relatively quick, relatively painless, realistic fix, with a decent timeframe, valve makes the most sense, and they can fix this extremely easily compared to getting every government in the world to agree, implement, and enforce regulations. Ideally, yes, governments fix it. Realistically, kids are getting addicted to gambling and having their lives ruined right now, and valve has the power to stop it. I think it’s fair to ask, and expect a real answer, yes or no.

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- PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  I think the issue of lootboxes and shady third-party casinos, while intertwined, are very separate, almost parallel issues. Coffee reads them as largely being the same issue which leads to a lot of the messiness of this video, and makes the video harder to discuss.
  
  I think in terms of dealing with the 3rd party casinos, Valve is pretty powerless, and feel Coffee’s arguments for their intervention are very hand-wavey. That is the biggest issue I have with this video. As I outlined in a comment on his last video punishes victum and unrelated users more than casinos. Even if Valve goes all-out and disables all item trading and marketing, casinos still walk away with all their profits and are incentived to try and scam their users out of every penny before that happens, while normal users and traders are left without ways to get skins they want (at least outside of gambling through Valve) or are left with a bunch of dead inventory they don’t want. If anything, this kinda highlights what I meant by Valve being less agressive on the gambling, as they provide many fairly priced ways to be involved with the skin ecosystem without ever having to open a lootbox or a casino.
  
  In terms of Valve regulating lootboxes on their platform, and specifically CS2 crates, I think theres more merit to the argument, but I still think it’s not realistic to ask Valve to regulate themselves and assume they’ll be able to compete both on the game and platform level, with those who are not. Valve’s momentum does play a bit part in their success, but so too does their featureset to players and friendliness to developers and publishes.
  
  On the game front, if Valve removes lootboxes or adds barries to entry, they will still be forced to directly complete with games that don’t. Even assuming players don’t want lootboxes (although the unfortunate reality of the market is that many do) Valve is still put in a position where their budget is determined by what they can morally earn while their competition uses whatever manipulate, deceptive, or immoral methods they want.
  
  On the platform side, it might be easier, but it could also put them in an even worse position as they rely on other developers and publishes, including the shady ones like EA and Unisoft, to fill their storefront. Part of the reason Steam has the userbase where other platforms don’t is because they have the most complete selection of games. On the other hand, if Steam starts to threaten Publisher’s incomes such as by requiring age verification on gambling, this will likely be far more in incentive to leave than their 30% split ever was. At least the 30% cost covered infrastructure, payment processing and first level support whereas if companies are blocked from their gambling addict audience, they likely will lose a significant part of their revenue outright.
  
  compared to getting every government in the world to agree, implement, and enforce regulations
  
  You don’t necessary need every country nor do you need particularly extreme measures to have an impact. Same as with privacy regulations and a lot of other forms of monitization on the internet, you just need a few bigger blocks to massively increase the costs and risk. If, for example, the EU started requiring age verification to access lootboxes, that would immediately add a significant new cost to adding lootboxes. Notably, for exactly the sorts of live-service games these lootboxes are most common in, data collection and anti-cheat also tend to be key elements of the game and it’s design and monitization - both of which comflict with the ability to ignore user location or age. The developer can’t claim they thought the user was in the US, if the anti-cheat reported that they were using a VPN and were actually logging in from the EU, for example. Obviously there are workarounds for this sort of thing, but again more costs and compexity that eat into profits, and more risk for making mistakes.
  
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  - RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    But valve is not powerless. They provide the API to easily trade outside of the steam marketplace. And saying Valve is morally earning money while the competition does not, its not a fair thing to say. Valve started the whole slotmachine lootbox bullshit in the first place. They know very well what they’re doing. Valve could give gamblers 2 weeks to take their skins off the sites and then block API access to these casinos or just shut down the API completely. Saying victims will be hurt so lets have casinos continue to create victims, is a strange argument to make.
    
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    PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    
    And saying Valve is morally earning money while the competition does not, its not a fair thing to say.
    
    This was arguing in the hypothetical that Valve stopped acting immoraly. I’m not trying to argue that Valve is in the right here. I’m arguing that they are a player in this game as well, along with their competition, and so shouldn’t be singled out as the ones required to change or to enforce new laws.
    
    Valve could give gamblers 2 weeks to take their skins off the sites and then block API access to these casinos
    
    This just gives the casinos warning so they can pull the rug more cleanly, and have more time to spin up a replacement casino.
    
    or just shut down the API completely.
    
    Then this punishes every other user for the actions of a tiny, tiny minority. Even ignoring users using the open market for legitimate and fair buisness, said market provides a way to obtain skins without relying on Valve to set prices or distribute skins. As such, unless Valve also removes their own lootboxes at the same time, it means that users can only interact with skins through gambling.
    
    The one solution that would address all of this at once and wouldn’t substantially affect unrelated users would be governments implementing laws against unregulated gambling. Unlike Valve, they can address the whole industry at once, and aren’t punished for trying to enforce said laws.
    
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  - 2ncs@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    
    Valve is still put in a position where their budget is determined by what they can morally earn while their competition uses whatever manipulate, deceptive, or immoral methods they want.
    
    What competition has such a rich gambling scene though. No other game I am aware of (Maybe TF2 but, still valve)
    
    if Steam starts to threaten Publisher’s incomes such as by requiring age verification on gambling, this will likely be far more in incentive to leave than their 30% split ever was
    
    Age verification on the marketplace transactions is the more likely scenario, and again, no other game I know of has as much of a gambling community so I don’t really get why other publishers would leave if it doesn’t effect them.
    
    Ultimately, I think you’re missing the point of coffeezillas video, which is that a lot of people who were in the skin gambling community are actively or, started in it, as a minor. You are here trying to find all of these excuses for valve not to be held accountable for facilitating gambling to a minor.
    
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    Coelacanth@feddit.nu ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    
    What competition has such a rich gambling scene though. No other game I am aware of (Maybe TF2 but, still valve)
    
    Gacha games have been taking over the world ever since Genshin Impact and those are pure gambling. Going even further back, Ultimate Team on FIFA (EA FC now) is probably the worst true “selling gambling to kids” product I can remember.
    
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    PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    
    What competition has such a rich gambling scene though. No other game I am aware of (Maybe TF2 but, still valve)
    
    Most mobile games? Apex? Overwatch? Keep in mind, a lot of the CS gambling happens off-platform and Valve doesn’t collect any direct revenue from it, which is why Valve can’t directly intervene in a lot of it.
    
    Age verification on the marketplace transactions is the more likely scenario, and again, no other game I know of has as much of a gambling community so I don’t really get why other publishers would leave if it doesn’t effect them.
    
    This argument is specifically in the context of lootboxes as gambling on Steam. Think how much people will spend in lootboxes on your average free to play game. If they aren’t allowed to do this on Steam, games like Apex, CoD, PUBG, War Thunder, ect. won’t stay on Steam.
    
    Ultimately, I think you’re missing the point of coffeezillas video, which is that a lot of people who were in the skin gambling community are actively or, started in it, as a minor. You are here trying to find all of these excuses for valve not to be held accountable for facilitating gambling to a minor.
    
    This is exactly my point about Coffee’s argument being muddled in this video, making it hard to discuss. There are three parallel problem here that the video combines into one: third-party casinos, CS lootboxes, and lootboxes in the industry in general.
    
    In terms of Valve shutting down illegal/third party casinos, they don’t have the means to impact this without also shutting down the entire market for everyone, innocent or guilty. Why should I, as someone who has even bought a lootbox, nonetheless run an illegal casino be punished for their actions. Even then, casino owners aren’t held responsible, they’re just stopped. On the other hand, with government intervention, no one is caught in the crossfire and casino owners could actually be held responsible for their actions. Why wouldn’t this be the better option?
    
    In terms of Valve selling lootboxes themselves, yes its immoral, but as Coffee said about the casinos, they’re competiting with other products and you can’t reasonable expect one side to just role over and accept their loss. Instead, you need to change the system so neither side can use tactics like this. Instead of asking Valve to regulate themselves, and expecting their competition to do the same, you change the law (or just actually enforce it) to ensure that noone gets away with it.
    
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