Valve has come out with a strongly worded public statement after being hit with a lawsuit from New York’s Attorney General, Letitia James, which alleges that the company is “promoting illegal gambling” through its games. The lawsuit takes aim at tradeable items earned from loot boxes in titles such as Counter-Strike 2, with the Office of the Attorney General claiming in a press release that “Valve has made billions of dollars luring its users, many of whom are teenagers or younger, to engage in gambling in the hopes of winning expensive virtual items that they can cash in on.” Now, Valve has responded, saying it has “serious concerns” with the requests laid out in the case.
The Office of the Attorney General announced the existence of this lawsuit on February 25, and said that NYAG James was seeking to “permanently stop Valve from continuing to promote illegal gambling in its games and to pay disgorgement and fines.” The randomized nature of cases in CS2 and other such loot box mechanics in Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2, and the fact that items can be bought, sold, and traded, has drawn James’ attention.
However, Valve is refuting this. It likens the digital “mystery boxes” in its multiplayer games to several physical examples, such as “baseball cards, Pokémon, Magic the Gathering, and Labubu,” which aren’t perceived as gambling, yet offer random, unseen items that can be sold or traded.
“Players don’t have to open mystery boxes to play Valve games,” it also says in its new statement. “In fact, most of you don’t open any boxes at all and just play the games – because the items in the boxes are purely cosmetic, there is no disadvantage to a player not spending money.”
Valve also reveals some of the evidence it has provided to the NYAG that it believes shows the company taking an anti-gambling stance. “To date we’ve locked over one million Steam accounts that were being misused by third parties in connection with gambling, fraud, and theft. We’ve also shipped features (like trade reversal and trade cooldown) to discourage gambling sites’ ability to operate and protect Steam users from fraud. And we forbid any gambling-related business to participate in or sponsor tournaments for our games.”
Reflecting on the lawsuit itself, Valve says it has “serious concerns with many of the alterations the NYAG claims are necessary to make to our games.” The first is that James wants to put an end to item transferability, which would then remove a major monetary incentive for people to engage in the loot box systems.
“We think the transferability of a digital game item is good for consumers – it gives a user the ability to sell or trade an old or unwanted item for something else, in the same way an owner can sell or trade a tangible item like a Pokémon or baseball card,” Valve says. “The NYAG proposes to take away users’ ability to transfer their digital items from Valve games. Transferability is a right we believe should not be taken away, and we refuse to do that.”
The other major concern is around collecting more data about players in order to provide better evidence that those engaging in loot boxes are of legal gambling age, something Valve is certainly not keen to do.
While it says it will “comply” should New York pass new laws on videogame loot boxes, it is taking a firm stance against the NYAG’s lawsuit right now. “It may have been easier and cheaper for Valve to make a deal with the NYAG, but we believed the type of deal that would satisfy the NYAG would have been bad for users and other game developers, and impacted our ability to innovate in game design,” it claims.
It also addresses the additional, surprising remarks made in the Office of the Attorney General’s press release about how “Valve’s promotion of games that glorify violence and guns helps fuel the dangerous epidemic of gun violence, particularly among young gamers who can become numbed to grave violence before their brains are fully developed.” Given the lawsuit was solely aimed at alleged illegal gambling practises, it was unusual to see those comments included. Valve agrees, “those extraneous comments are a distraction and a mischaracterization we’ve all heard before. Numerous studies throughout the years have concluded there is no link between media (movies, TV, books, comics, music, and games) and real world violence. Indeed, many studies highlight the beneficial impact of games to users.”
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