Washington State Gambling Commission: Valve, Stop Skin Gambling
95 replies, posted
[QUOTE=VinLAURiA;51163487]Yeah, and that raised [i]massive[/i] goddamn red flags for me when it happened. Especially reading his blog posts, they basically amounted to, "Wow, in all my years of real-world finance, I've never seen a goldmine like this! These gamer idiots will spend thousands of dollars' worth of real money on in-game items we can create unlimited copies of with no effort or cost! I'll never have to work again!"
I still remember this one time a Valve employee added an Unusual Bill's Hat with circling hearts to his wife's Steam inventory as a gift and people immediately tried to shark it from her. I even saw a few of them unapologetically admitting to it on SPUF, with one guy in particular from a third-world country going, "Dude, the value of that hat could feed my entire family for a month." All that value was conjured out of thin air with a few keypresses and an admin password by some nerd in Washington as a gift for his wife. That's the kind of power Valve is playing with. And people [i]let[/i] them have it through years of rushing to their defense because of this belief that Valve is "on our side."
It's like if God came down from Heaven to get into commodity trading on Wall Street. He can materialize the damn goods out of thin air and make a fortune. That's what Valve is doing on a virtual level, but still for real money. People are paying boatloads for a few flipped bits in a hard drive on Valve's servers. Nothing special about that hard drive. Nothing special about the bits flipped. If you downloaded their database data, you could flip those bits yourself on the copy on your own drive even though you'll get nothing for it. That's how trivial it all is. That doesn't ring alarm bells for you? That flipping those few bits on the right hard drive is worth so much? We gave Valve absolute control over an entire economy. There have been [i]wars[/i] for the kind of power that gamers let Valve just walk up and grab.
This is a goddamn crash waiting to happen and Valve's profitiing handsomely off of skirting that line in lieu of doing any actual work as a game developer. There is absolutely nothing physical backing all this pretend value up and people are paying [i]real[/i] money for it. They are [b]actually[/b] playing god with finance.[/QUOTE]
waiting for that economist user of the forum to come up with "bu bu bu but it represents utility for the gamer therefore it's worth something!"
:snip:
[QUOTE=Dwarfy77;51163368]A lot of people act like Valve has done no harm, but they've created the economy where virtual items are worth thousands, sure they don't opperate the casinos in this metaphor, but they produce the chips, given the players methods to pay for more of them with their winnings, and have a credit method where if you try and cash out through less shady methods, you can only spend it in their store.
Fuck Valve, fuck their lack of actual game development, fuck the 'Freemium' content of crates & paid cosmetics in paid games.[/QUOTE]
literally nothing wrong with that, if people want to pay for that kind of crap let them
and with all that "horrible horrible freemium paid cosmetics content" I'm still able to play the game how it's meant to be played without having any REAL content behind a paywall, no frustrations because someone bought something that gives him an advantage in that situation or the game has to be balanced in a way to keep such P2W content in mind
e.g. CSGO compared to Rainbow Six Siege and Dota 2 compared to League, this way of dealing with microntransaction isn't cancer, it's literally perfect for anyone who cares about the gameplay aspect of it and not irrelevant shit that changes absolutely nothing besides how your character visually looks
besides letting these betting sites exist(and honestly if it's regulated the same way online poker is, this wouldn't be an issue either), Valve isn't doing anything wrong, in fact they're just improving the godawful F2P models that plagues almost every F2P game because somehow having to pay 10 bucks for every game altering thing is fine but god forbid having a 1k cosmetic that does literally nothing
and no, I don't have to hear for twentieth time how only Valve is able to do that, Path of Exile is doing just fine and both Battlerite and Smite give you an option to have every Hero for a normal set price
this outrage is fucking hysterical
[QUOTE=Wormy;51159638]Although store credit is probably not a major issue, the issue is when people decide to sell their skins for real money [I]which is possible[/I] but not allowed.
It should be pretty easy to find sellers and buyers on Ebay as an example, I found some listings just now when I looked it up.
There are many ways of bypassing this so you don't necessarily have to sell skins for Steam Wallet funds. The same applies to TF2 items such as keys or more expensive hats.[/QUOTE]
When bypassing valves restrictions by selling on eBay is a workaround valve is no longer at fault. I can sell my origin account that contains FIFA with a ton of expensive players (which by the way also utilises a crate system) but I don't see anyone gutting EA for introducing kids to gambling. Beyond closing down gambling sites anything more is pure bullshit. Do you know just how many games use a 'pay money to open secret boxes' micro transaction system?
[editline]7th October 2016[/editline]
Honestly this is fucking ridiculous
[QUOTE=riki2cool;51159180]Creating a virtual market for those games was necessary to keep them alive. CS:GO was in a huge downward spiral before the arms deal update. TF2 wouldn't have lasted 6 more years without the mann-conomy update, even with the F2P update.[/QUOTE]
Since no one else has responded to this yet: lol, [B]no[/B].
There were a number of different solutions they could've done in order to extend the lifespan of these games, and the choice they made, which was likely at the bottom of the list, resulted in an unchecked tumor that went on and on for a number of years until just now with the gambling site drama shit and the actual efforts at regulation of online gambling.
While I think its absolutely stupid to say that Valve "stopped making games" because of this system, it was still one of the many things that completely fucking sidelined them and ironically, all it did was alienate the fanbases even further in the future.
[QUOTE=Blueplastic;51165035]*few paragraphs about how the system is ok and Valve is actually trying to improve the F2P model*
this outrage is fucking hysterical[/QUOTE]
Valve is still at fault here for the Crate system alone, which is literally 1:1 gambling.
[QUOTE=Clovis;51165264]
Where do you get this 1:1 figure from
[editline]7th October 2016[/editline]
literally 4/5 times you pay $2.50 for a skin worth less than 10 cents. If you were to open 20 crates, thats $50 for probably about $2 worth of skins. You might get one or two skins worth a few dollars, but lets not ignore the fact that keys are a static value and the product you get from them are not. By the time you open enough crates to get a big item, the return wouldn't be in your favour either.[/QUOTE]
Did you just answer your own question?
[QUOTE=AaronM202;51160857]No, but the principle is the same, which is my point.[/QUOTE]
Not really, when you have high value random prizes it becomes more like a slot machine. People aren't going to try to win big bucks on a machine that only spits out garbage toys, but they are if there's the possibility to win hundreds of bucks and even more. That's what makes it gambling and addictive.
[editline]7th October 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;51163397]You don't just "Create a digital economy with items worth tens of thousands".
There needs to be a market of interested people for that to happen. You can't force it.
I get that it's fun to hate on corporations and shit
but people were stupid. People decided that's what they wanted because people are stupid, and people have a right to be stupid. Valves not been handling this super great, but ultimately, I have trouble blaming them when they have an audience of people clamoring to be fucking stupid
From a business stand point, it's pretty hard to ignore people willing to give you free money, and none of you can deny that for a fucking second.[/QUOTE]
It's true that Valve didn't just create this insane economy all by themselves but they have full control over it and aren't doing anything to tone it down, so in my view they're almost as responsible.
[QUOTE=Kljunas;51165881]Not really, when you have high value random prizes it becomes more like a slot machine. People aren't going to try to win big bucks on a machine that only spits out garbage toys, but they are if there's the possibility to win hundreds of bucks and even more. That's what makes it gambling and addictive.
[editline]7th October 2016[/editline]
It's true that Valve didn't just create this insane economy all by themselves but they have full control over it and aren't doing anything to tone it down, so in my view they're almost as responsible.[/QUOTE]
Question: Since when was paying 25 cents for a 15 cent toy even close to the same as paying 2.49 for a maybe 1000 dollar completely 1 and 0 model or texture?
[QUOTE=Clovis;51165288]No, actually, I proposed that the odds are less 1:1, and closer to about 1:25
[editline]7th October 2016[/editline]
Those are pretty shit odds if you ask me[/QUOTE]
Oh I assumed he meant it as exactly the same as gambling, not that the odds of winning are 1:1.
[QUOTE=Swilly;51166616]Question: Since when was paying 25 cents for a 15 cent toy even close to the same as paying 2.49 for a maybe 1000 dollar completely 1 and 0 model or texture?[/QUOTE]
Because both the toy and the 1000 dollars skin are basically both completely worthless, its just that one has thin supply and massive demand for some reason.
[QUOTE=Fetret;51166739]Oh I assumed he meant it as exactly the same as gambling, not that the odds of winning are 1:1.[/QUOTE]
Exactly what I was getting at: opening a crate per $2.49 purchase is really no different than playing slots (which has already been pointed out by a number of people in the past, including Ethan Klein of h3h3Productions).
Where the argument starts is that you can't turn in Steam Wallet money for actual money which is true, but that still doesn't change how its still basically gambling at its fundamental core: pay an amount of something, and hope you get something much more expensive in turn; if you lose the bet or you're unlucky, get fucked.
[QUOTE=Doozle;51158032]Gambling isn't something children should get into. It's addictive and potentially destructive.[/QUOTE]
[quote]Think of the children! Won't somebody PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN[/quote]
Why does EVERYBODY always bring up this argument with csgo gambling?
CS GO is a rated M game about [I]blowing up civilians with bombs and shooting people[/I]. It just flatly isn't for kids. Shutting down a service that MIGHT be used by kids just because the kids might use it is fucking retarded. It isn't even real gambling, because skins aren't actually money- nor are they even an analog to money like chips are because there is no legitimate way to buy or sell them for any real currency
[IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12024286/cs%20go%20rating.PNG[/IMG]
[editline]7th October 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=zombini;51159834]Crates are so goddamn awful it's unreal.[B] It doesn't cost $2.49 to make a virtual key. It doesn't cost $0.01 to make one.[/B] [/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=zombini;51159389]I lost over $800 on hats and keys because I didn't realize just how cutthroat and evil the average trader can be, or when to stop. Scams left and right, people lowballing CONSTANTLY, some people announcing that they'll only buy hats with as much as a 75% discount known as a "quicksale." It's bad shit, don't do it. [/QUOTE]
Man don't take this the wrong way but it sounds to me like you're just bad with money and don't get basic economic concepts like trading, and value of digital goods. Of course keys cost more than what they cost to produce, producing a copy of a game costs nothing but the copy can still be worth 50 dollars.
You weren't gambling, you were trading. Buying and selling. You know, like a business.
[QUOTE=Clovis;51167189]Do you really think a Mature rating is going to stop children from playing a shooting game
[quote]
No, but it instantly makes any argument involving children "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" tier because it's not even ained at them
[/quote]
You're forgetting the fact real money is used to buy them, and while they're not "legitimate" currency thats even worse. It's like casino chips for a casino that doesnt even have a license saying they have to give you the money for the chips you own. The only way to earn the money back is to attempt to sell them on sites for money on paypal. That's even fucking worse - people who are trying to get monetary value out of it risk being scammed from the get go.[/quote]
Oh man, it's almost like things that aren't actually gambling are hard to get money out of or into.
That's the thing. It's [I]not real gambling specifically because it's not currency equivalent.[/I] It's just item gambling. That's all it is. Digital goods for digital goods.
[QUOTE]
and dont say opening crates isn't gambling. you're relinquishing a fee for a random chance reward that may (ha!) or may not have a decent turnover for you. thats exactly the same as putting a bet on a blackjack table for the chance of getting a good hand. if its not good, you lose the money, if it is, you earn more money than you had before the fact.[/QUOTE]
Opening creates is gambling because you are giving up a currency analog (dollars) and getting a random chance of getting something back. However, it also doesn't matter unless you think that gambling is inherently bad (which is a dumb concept entirely)
[QUOTE=phygon;51167165]Why does EVERYBODY always bring up this argument with csgo gambling?
CS GO is a rated M game about [I]blowing up civilians with bombs and shooting people[/I]. It just flatly isn't for kids. Shutting down a service that MIGHT be used by kids just because the kids might use it is fucking retarded. It isn't even real gambling, because skins aren't actually money- nor are they even an analog to money like chips are because there is no legitimate way to buy or sell them for any real currency
[IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12024286/cs%20go%20rating.PNG[/IMG]
[/QUOTE]
You are absolutely right about Counter Strike being an M rated game. Therefore I believe Valve should start implementing much more stringent know your customer checks. I think a valid photo id and a bank statement/utility bill from the last 3 months should about do it. This would kill two birds with one stone. Children who have absolutely no place playing such a game will be kept away from it (which I am sure is giving a lot of Valve employees sleepless nights. After all, the money they make from kids smells and looks completely different to regular money and you can't even deposit it in a bank) and Valve can continue on with their crates and keys without a single worry.
Well no I'm sure the taxman will want their cut and a gaming commision might start looking into expected returns and actual payouts, but overall much less hassle for everyone.
[QUOTE=Fetret;51167378]You are absolutely right about Counter Strike being an M rated game. Therefore I believe Valve should start implementing much more stringent know your customer checks. I think a valid photo id and a bank statement/utility bill from the last 3 months should about do it. This would kill two birds with one stone. Children who have absolutely no place playing such a game will be kept away from it (which I am sure is giving a lot of Valve employees sleepless nights. After all, the money they make from kids smells and looks completely different to regular money and you can't even deposit it in a bank) and Valve can continue on with their crates and keys without a single worry.
Well no I'm sure the taxman will want their cut and a gaming commision might start looking into expected returns and actual payouts, but overall much less hassle for everyone.[/QUOTE]
Wow, you sure did catch me with your hot sicknasty hyperbole. I am caught, I cannot be uncaught, I surrender victory solely to you.
It's an M rated game. Kids do play it, but that doesn't mean that they should. It has [I]THIRD PARTY[/I] """""""""""""gambling""""""""""""""" sites associated with it that children MIGHT use. There is no problem with this, any more than there's a problem with there being gore porn on the internet where kids can access it. And you know what lock it's behind? the exact same one that appears when you try to access CS go on steam.
We shouldn't get rid of things just because kids [I]might[/I] use it, even if they already are. The problem isn't with CS, the problem isn't with gambling, and there isn't any problem at all unless you're also mad at the millions of other things that children have access to that they could theoretically lose money doing.
[QUOTE=jazzpunk;51201058][url]http://m.gamerevolution.com/features/exclusive-valve-ignored-emails-from-wa-state-gambling-commission-per-letter[/url][/QUOTE]
Y'know, I bet if the gambling commission had just waited a couple more months, Valve would have finally responded to their [del]ticket[/del] letters.
Valve is like the introvert shut-in of companies.
They really don't like to communicate with anyone, not with their communities, not even with a state government.
[QUOTE=Wii60;51158073]they will probably put a age limit on trading forcing those to verify their id with steam
aka enjoy a week waiting for your id to be verified[/QUOTE]
I'm absolutely fine with that. If they only have to verify it once, it's perfectly fine and would even fix
some other problems in other countries with stricter laws about videogame violence.
[QUOTE=Fetret;51167378]You are absolutely right about Counter Strike being an M rated game. Therefore I believe Valve should start implementing much more stringent know your customer checks. I think a valid photo id and a bank statement/utility bill from the last 3 months should about do it. This would kill two birds with one stone. Children who have absolutely no place playing such a game will be kept away from it (which I am sure is giving a lot of Valve employees sleepless nights. After all, the money they make from kids smells and looks completely different to regular money and you can't even deposit it in a bank) and Valve can continue on with their crates and keys without a single worry.[/QUOTE]
That's just stupid. I shouldn't have to waste my time getting a photo of my personal documents then waiting on an answer just to play a god damned video game. End of the day, kids are going to consume media outside their age range, it's a parent's responsibility to try and put a lid on that if it's such an issue with them.
[editline]14th October 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=Doom64hunter;51201422]Valve is like the introvert shut-in of companies.
They really don't like to communicate with anyone, not with their communities, not even with a state government.[/QUOTE]
They used to be a lot more transparent but over the last few years they've become rather tight-lipped. Don't get me wrong there are still things about Valve I can appreciate but given how close-knit they were with the community just a few years ago it seems like a shame.
imagine if wizards of the coast got shut down because some packs of mtg have rare cards in and they're worth more, lmao
It should be upto the gambing sites to get their shit together, not Valve. Yeah they kinda facilitate it, but people that manufacture syringes and rolling papers also kinda facilitate drugs and last time I checked nobodies suing them
Wtf is this rated M argument 17 year Olds aren't allowed to gamble at casinos lol
[QUOTE=A_Pigeon;51201817]Wtf is this rated M argument 17 year Olds aren't allowed to gamble at casinos lol[/QUOTE]
Well it sure is a good thing that these sites aren't actual gambling sites lol
Hopefully this goes somewhere. Because Valve's practices aren't.
[QUOTE=adamsz;51217465]Hopefully this goes somewhere. Because Valve's practices aren't.[/QUOTE]You literally have no idea what this is about.
[QUOTE=VinLAURiA;51163487]Yeah, and that raised [i]massive[/i] goddamn red flags for me when it happened. Especially reading his blog posts, they basically amounted to, "Wow, in all my years of real-world finance, I've never seen a goldmine like this! These gamer idiots will spend thousands of dollars' worth of real money on in-game items we can create unlimited copies of with no effort or cost! I'll never have to work again!"
I still remember this one time a Valve employee added an Unusual Bill's Hat with circling hearts to his wife's Steam inventory as a gift and people immediately tried to shark it from her. I even saw a few of them unapologetically admitting to it on SPUF, with one guy in particular from a third-world country going, "Dude, the value of that hat could feed my entire family for a month." All that value was conjured out of thin air with a few keypresses and an admin password by some nerd in Washington as a gift for his wife. That's the kind of power Valve is playing with. And people [i]let[/i] them have it through years of rushing to their defense because of this belief that Valve is "on our side."
It's like if God came down from Heaven to get into commodity trading on Wall Street. He can materialize the damn goods out of thin air and make a fortune. That's what Valve is doing on a virtual level, but still for real money. People are paying boatloads for a few flipped bits in a hard drive on Valve's servers. Nothing special about that hard drive. Nothing special about the bits flipped. If you downloaded their database data, you could flip those bits yourself on the copy on your own drive even though you'll get nothing for it. That's how trivial it all is. That doesn't ring alarm bells for you? That flipping those few bits on the right hard drive is worth so much? We gave Valve absolute control over an entire economy. There have been [i]wars[/i] for the kind of power that gamers let Valve just walk up and grab.
This is a goddamn crash waiting to happen and Valve's profitiing handsomely off of skirting that line in lieu of doing any actual work as a game developer. There is absolutely nothing physical backing all this pretend value up and people are paying [i]real[/i] money for it. They are [b]actually[/b] playing god with finance.[/QUOTE]
How is a bank any different? The value is only there because they don't fudge numbers and we trust that they don't fudge numbers, because people will notice. You can talk about settlement systems and transaction ledgers, which is a valid point, but in the end, (I think it's about)80% of our currency is... flipped bits.
[QUOTE]Valve has now issued a response to the Washington State Gambling Commission's call for action on the matter of CS:GO skin gambling, saying that it does not "facilitate" gambling through Steam, and that "there is no factual or legal support for these accusations." The company said it is "surprised and disappointed" that the WSGC has chosen to pursue the matter publicly, but added that it has taken steps to discourage skin gambling on third-party websites, and is "open to further cooperation with the Commission."
In the firm but amicable letter, Valve's legal counsel notes that the company has no business relationship with gambling sites, does not promote them, and does not earn any revenues through them. These sites take advantage of two well-used Steam services in order to operate: the ability to purchase and trade skins, and the "ubiquitous" OpenID system of authentication that "allows a Steam customer to identify himself on a third-party website by association with his Steam account, without having to give his Steam credentials to the third party site."
"We do not want to turn off the Steam services, described above, that skin gambling sites have taken advantage of," Valve's response letter says. "In-game items, Steam trading, and OpenID have substantial benefits for Steam customers and Steam game-making partners. We do not believe it is the Commission’s intention, nor is it within the Commission's authority, to turn off lawful commercial and communication services that are not directed to gambling in Washington."
Despite expressing doubt that it is in fact breaking any laws in the first place—"If there is a specific criminal statute or regulation you believe Valve is violating, please provide a citation," the letter says—Valve points out that it has already taken action against more than 40 skin gambling sites so far, first with cease-and-desist letters, and then by shutting down their Steam accounts. In the eyes of Valve's lawyer, though, it isn't realistic to expect Valve to hunt down every item-trading bot created by these websites. "Cleverly designed bots can be indistinguishable from real users," reads the response, "and their methods and techniques are constantly evolving."
"Valve can enforce its user agreements against the Steam accounts of skins gambling sites, where we can identify the site and identify the corresponding account. In fact, we would be happy to cooperate with the Commission, if it is able to identity more skins gambling sites that are illegal in Washington and the Steam accounts through which [they] operate," the letter says. "We welcome the change for further communication with the Commission, if it would like to clarify the legal allegations against Valve, or alternatively to work with Valve to identify offending Steam accounts of gambling sites."[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.pcgamer.com/valve-misses-deadline-to-respond-to-washington-state-gambling-regulator-but-says-its-coming-soon/?utm_content=buffera2a84&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=buffer-pcgamertw[/url]
[QUOTE=Wii60;51158029]Kid Exploitation, aka "Think of muh children" excuse.[/QUOTE]
Much more complex - games of chance generally have to fulfill a lot of rules and regulations. One of them for instance being that they not be rigged. The currency issues etc.
[QUOTE=wraithcat;51220583]Much more complex - games of chance generally have to fulfill a lot of rules and regulations. One of them for instance being that they not be rigged. The currency issues etc.[/QUOTE]
No, they don't.
[I]Gambling[/I] games have to fulfill a lot of rules and regulations.
[editline]20th October 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=Tracker;51219633]How is a bank any different? The value is only there because they don't fudge numbers and we trust that they don't fudge numbers, because people will notice. You can talk about settlement systems and transaction ledgers, which is a valid point, but in the end, (I think it's about)80% of our currency is... flipped bits.[/QUOTE]
Except a dollar in the bank is legally analogous to a dollar in the hand and gun skins are not a currency analogue
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