• deliriousdreams@fedia.io
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    22 hours ago

    If loot boxes are illegal then send Valve a cease and desist for selling games that have loot boxes and be done with it.

    Because you can do the same thing by buying the required hardware from any of those companies and selling it with the digital items on it for cash. That’s not really supposed to be allowed (plenty of companies including steam do crack down on selling accounts). But while I agree that lot boxes are gambling there really needs to be a hard line that doesn’t require the ability to convert assets to cash. Otherwise the loot box problem will persist and we will have shittier resulting services with no real added benefit.

    People were selling animal crossing residents on eBay. People have been selling accounts for things like WOW and Call of Duty. I believe there was even a market for Destiny accounts at one point.

    By NY’s definition of gambling, buying a pack of Pokemon cards is gambling.

    Or, alternatively, sue the game developers themselves. Because I note they aren’t suing Xbox, Nintendo, or PlayStation.

    • kinsnik@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      the main argument seems to be not that steam has games with loot boxes in them, but that steam allows people to exchange the assets for steam wallet cash, which allows people to buy real products (games AND hardware), so it is equivalent to money. And steam is obviously enabling that system. as far as i know, xbox, nintendo and playstation don’t have that in their systems

      (also, NY argues that valve knew about and did not enough to stop third-party marketplaces that work with real money, based on internal communications, which might not be the same (or just be harder to prove) for the other companies)