I'm one of the people affected by valve not regulating their gambling at all. I gambled between the ages of 12 to 16, Influencers were the ones that drawed me to it. Valve has never done anything about it, and they accept money from black market conpanies like 1xbet.
I am ok with Valve taking a hit IF there is evidence that they were specifically not intervening for business reasons. But I have to ask, are the parents also getting sued for allowing their kids to do this? At what point are we now expecting business to do parents jobs for them? If they find direct evidence that Valve said didn't stop that because it helps make them money, then they should be hammered. But if the evidence isn't there, then at what point to people have to take responsibility for their own children and choices? I know it's not worth as much, but why not go after then gambling sites that are allowing something illegal directly? The car companies can stop almost all car accidents. They could lock vehicles down to 5 or 10 miles an hour if they wanted. People don't sue them because a car can go over the speed limit. They sue when the car company knows that product is directly responsible for the accidents because of defect, not because someone used it in the wrong way. As for game ownership, that one I wish there were rules on. There should be a minimum availability time that comes with the purchase and it should be in big letters so people can decided. If a company closes the game down before reaching that time, then refunds should be required. If you know that the company says we will support and provide access to X game for a minimum of 7 years and you choose to still buy it, then it's on you. If they decide to remove it after 5, then they didn't meet the purchase agreement and should have to refund you. Valve should be required to track that.
@@teaser6089 Valve has been illegally raising prices on other stores. They do this by threatening to ban developers from Steam if they pass on savings from lower commissions onto customers through lower prices. This has harmed developers by artificially supporting their 30% commission, and harmed customers by inflating prices to compensate for that commission.
Just a note: The suit receiving class status doesn't mean it actually has any additional power. It just means that the court has agreed that there is a group of persons/entities that would qualify under the same conditions. That's it. It's a tool for the courts to combine lots of possible court cases into a single case preemptively to save the court's time. It has no legal impact.
That's true -- it was always going to be a class action lawsuit. The certification only matters in that it closes off Valve's last real chance of avoiding a high-stakes trial or expensive settlement ($1B+). Those are the only two options remaining, unless Valve can somehow win on summary judgment, which is unlikely after a certification decision like this.
@@TaylorMorgan-y2z Sorry to break it too both of you, it wont be a $B or more, and a Class only ensures that if people who were affected are affected all in the same way.
@@AEixilimar What makes you say that? The class was determined to include all developers in the world. If it is determined that the commission should have been 20%, then Valve will have to give up all their revenue from commissions above that rate since 2017, retroactively, times three (treble damages). You think that total is less than $1B? That seems like an underestimate, if anything.
@@TaylorMorgan-y2z Not really? As i said, there's NOTHING about it being a class action case that makes Valve's defense weaker or the plaintiff's case stronger. It's just a classification, and class action lawsuits "fail" to yield any rewards for their clients all the time. It doesn't mean the trial will be more expensive, it doesn't mean valve's potential damages are higher, it doesn't mean punitive damages could be higher. All that's happened is the Judge said it's a fruit and not a vegetable.
this only happens AFTER discovery happens and it's possible there's someone wrong. the fact the judge LET and increased the lawsuit to Class action level proves there's a case.
EU court has already ruled in 2011 that you own the games on Steam, as you own any other digital puchase if there was no set license time set on time of purchase and if you did not have to pay for it again after that time. It has not been ever needed to be tested in court yet. But if it will, the customers will win and Valve will weep. Because there already is an EU court precedent. It was a big thing for digital purchases when it happened, but people have forgotten. But the lawyers will pull that decision, if need be.
I wonder, if you want to get a useful precedent against a multi-billion dollar company, is it possible to sue someone very small and weak over it (possibly even a "friend" that you will bail out regardless of the result), and then they do a terrible job of defending their position, perhaps intentionally, and they lose, and now the precedent is what you wanted it to be, even if a competent lawyer could have made a much stronger case against your position. Then later when a multi-billion company tries to fight that precedent, it would be much harder for them.
Off the mark here. These rights shouldn't be waived, and no such waiver should be hidden in a tos or eula. If something of a 'paperwork' nature exists then it absolutely needs to be modernized to be doable electronically.
EU has not really slapped Valve with anything serious yet. If they start fining "percentage of company global revenue", which is a level of fine in almost all EU customer protection laws, then we are starting to talk about serious shit.
I always find it funny that the EU is an absolutely dead economic zone and for whatever reason the only thing they seem to produce for international markets is a bevy of new and absurd laws to leech wealth from other nation's corporations every year.
@@moonasha are you insane?! the EU market is huge there is no way on earth they would close up it would be like cutting your nose off to spite your face
@@moonasha Yes, I think increasingly this is going to become the outcome. The EU only seems to produce regulations these days. It's becoming increasingly hostile to global companies doing business in the market, and I think it's going to lead to a lot of companies choosing to not do business there over time.
From what I understand, all or most forced arbitration clauses are legally unenforceable, the companies just rely on normal people not knowing that and using intimidation tactics to make them think they have no choice.
Exactly. In most coumtries a base legal essential is that you simply can't take away anyone's right to sue. That might be different in crazy America where companies basically have no rules to abide by, which is how companies got so much ridiculous power to begin with. But this is the case in most of the rest of the world. Any agreement licence or otherwise specifying that someone can't sue, or specifying HOW someone can or can't sue, for any reason, is completely illegal in most countries. The problem is that a lot of people don't know that, even in our countries outside America, so of course, American people are even less likely to know these things. It's bizarre that Steam ever got away with having that as part of their agreement, since America is only one country, albiet an overly powerful one. That doesn't fly anywhere else other than America, where companies can do whatever they want.
@@fransmith3255 Valve operates according to the laws of its headquarters. And the State of Washington is no Delaware or South Dakota. We'd be practically European if we were an independent country.
Long story short 99% terms of services have ilegal parts and they hope you dotn see it I literally have a laptop that part of the advertising was the option of adding a disk and RAM (standard but it was in the advertising on the manufacturer's website) According to the product warranty, opening the product terminates the warranty so the action is advertised which is illegal from the perspective of their own rules... taking into account advertising laws and product warranty rules in the EU... they have no right to deny me the repair because of this. of course, official repair services have different solutions, e.g. dust particles on the fan XD
Yes this is true, but in this case Valve did this to favor you, the consumer. Chances are, your case isn't about getting loads of money back and they can foot the bill for the arbitration. Now you have to pay for it, this was actually an overall loss for the consumer. Not all arbitration clauses are bad. Thank the scummy lawyers for ruining it for the consumer.
Minor correction. Discovery is the process between the respective parties. Court is usually not involved, unless it's to compel one party to completely answer the other party's discovery requests. Ultimately, documents provided will be used at trial, providing it gets to that point.
"Court is usually not involved, unless it's to compel one party to completely answer the other party's discovery requests." For a hilarious example of what happens to people who try to ignore this, refer to the Alex Jones/Sandy Hook lawsuits.
@@arthuralford no, he's right. He a) was literally not alowed a defense, and was found guilty on default, following which the trial was only qbout how much he owes. b) when asked to present evidence at discovery, they did.... and the court said that they didn't....
I dont understand how gacha games are completely fine, mobile games(which have even more gambling and used more by kids) have more gambling, but only Valve get in the news about it. the whole industry should be affected, Valve included. Kids all over are litterally groomed to be gamblers from the age of 4
alright, it's bad that kids are being groomed, but we should then also go after these youtubers (who can easily see their demographic are underaged) since they're the groomers at the end of the day. But also, WHERE ARE THE PARENTS IN THIS? why are parents just getting a free pass to be terrible parents, the 1st thing a parent should say if their child wants to enter a casino is "no" meanwhile parents can get away buying their kid a device and let them do whatever with 0 supervision, this isn't early 2000s anymore where this was all new and very little parental controls, EVERY DEVICE nowadays has fairly strict parental control settings, to setting what type of content someone can access, to how many hours said person can spend on the device etc. (sure, kids are clever and can get around it, but it's a simple fix as "you did this to get around it, fixed it and now your new method is gone" Had this with the middle of the 3 younger brothers, I trusted them a bit too much, thinking a verbal warning of "don't buy anything without first asking me" was a good way to show I trust him to not do something stupid. he then went on and spend 89 euro's in the span of 5 minutes, when I found out, I first tried to refund everything. (I got around 40 euro's back) I then changed my password and enabled a 2FA code to always be required for any purchase from my Paypal account, it was my mistake that this happened, it won't happen again and it never did either, if any of the 3 brothers want to buy anything from the google playstore, they have to go through ME, they can't access my email or phone for the 2FA code either, so effectively I fixed the issue, but I also acknowledge that it's MY mistake for trusting a child.
Historically, many companies doing pretty terrible things-- for example, dumping toxic, cancerous waste into rivers and lakes-- have been stopped by huge class action judgments against them, making it cheaper for them to start following the law than to break it while paying out individual judgments. I agree that it seems like individual plaintiffs rarely receive anywhere near what the judgment makes it seem like they should, but that doesn't mean the process doesn't provide a net societal good sometimes. In this particular case, if Valve was taking responsibility by (for example) making sure that no external site could be linked to a steam account that was owned by someone under 18 years of age (or maybe 21, I'm not sure what the legal age is on a state-by-state basis), I wouldn't care that much. But gambling addiction is literally one of the most hopeless addictions; statistically, you're more likely to overcome a heroin addiction than you are to quit a gambling addiction. So I have pretty strong feelings about a company that is hugely profitable making even more profit by setting up an infrastructure that makes it easy for other companies to let kids gamble (and get potentially hooked for life before they're mature enough to even know what's going on), observe that this is going on, and then make only token efforts to stop it. If a class action suit makes it more profitable for them to put some guardrails on, then I'm all for it.
In this case, it's not JUST about the payout for consumers. It's about stopping the creation of new gamblers and the vicious cycle that exists between casinos, sports, and streamers, where everyone is incentivized to promote gambling. Sucks there isn't a bigger payday at the end of it, but at least this might cause positive change
It'd be funny if there was one guy who goes around to get the skins off losers. "Em sorry, just doing me job." *pulls out your skin like a velcro suit* *walks away*
@@bailvik6390 only because they were caught up in drama. They're doing the bare minimum to look like they're fighting it without really effecting the market
They're not really. Coffeezilla said it himself. They want the good PR. They like making themselves look the good guys by "fighting" the gambling sites when in reality they could just end them in an instant if they wanted to.
Nonono. They created the system to make this "economy" possible. Yes, Valve could simply change the system and end it in one big swoop. Anything else is pure BS.
@@valmiro4164 How could they end the third-party gambling sites in an instant if they want to? I realize Coffee said it but he doesn't mention how they could. To be so sure that a company *should* do something suggests knowing how they could go about it. So, how could they go about it?
Psychology correction here: Knowing the law of large numbers doesn't prevent anyone from being addicted to gambling the same way knowing how bad alcohol is doesn't prevent you from developing a dependance. It's the emotional tie and the development of the craving that is relevant, not your knowledge about the subject. The reason why it's especially bad for adolescents is that their brain develops addiction much faster than an adult brain for neurological reasons. In metaphoric terms: If you think about the adolescent brain as you would building a house then reserving one room or an entire floor for addiction is much more integral and faster than structural changes or changes in furniture after the house is build.
@renzuki5830 just to add: the more the addiction is habituated, the more difficult it is to break. And as the above commenter said, it's not about knowing vs not knowing, it's about humans being biological machines with cause and effect relationships between the brain and habituated a tions, especially ones with big percieved emotional significance. It is also why a person cannot think their way out of depression, it causes changes to the brain you can't just flip a switch to dissociate out of, unless you want things to get worse later on.
This kind of hit home as someone who has smoked marijuana on a daily basis and has wanted to stop for a long time now, but the psychology behind it really makes it difficult even if thc is considered 'not an addictive drug'. There are plenty of things in this world people may not consider addictive, but it most certainly can be. Pornography is another field people tend to be surprised to hear about.
So, it depends. While I agree that anything that you can download in its entirety and run locally should be your own copy to do with as you please, the license language is necessary for software and games with live services and to assert copyright. The license clarifies that the purchaser has bought the right to use the game, but not sell or otherwise distribute it. For live service software and games, it clarifies that the purchaser has bought access to the live service, not a complete copy of the game or software. I agree that companies should not be using overly restrictive license to unnecessarily exert control over responsible use of the software, however licenses are still necessary. It would also be great if companies were willing to publish server files when they stop live services, however I hesitate to suggest mandating it. The main reason is that while it seems reasonable to ask massive companies with thousands of employees and millions if not billions of dollars in revenues, the law would have to apply to everyone, including small teams of developers for whom it would be a considerable burden, particularly if their software were not a financial success.
Or simply choose better companies to shop at. Take GOG for example. They remove DRM from games, patch old games to work on new computers, and they also straight up give you the installers on your computer so that even if the company goes down, you can still install and play the games you've purchased.
Forced arbitration only applies in jurisdictions where it is legal to have Arbitration and legal to bind someone into it. The EU nullifies Forced Arbitration
Genuinely they are literally worthless and inflated. It’s like playing cards. They really aren’t worth that much but artificial rarity has people drive up the prices by a shit ton
I'm guilty of buying skins and DLC early when I started PC gaming. Since then when I've repented for my wicked ways. I've never bought new game at launch price ever and refuse to buy DLC (unless it has substantial meaningful content ala CDProjectRed)
i dont think skins having value is a problem but that’s because i own skins lol I feel like they’re close to pop figures or Pokémon cards. they dont do anything but i do like my knife and my usps skin they make me feel cool everytime i spawn in. plus they’ve only gone up in price. i feel like if valve went after gambling sites they could fix this… but at the same time if you take down the “trusted” sites how long until a fake pops up that instead of “scamming” you through gambling just api scams you. they have to be very careful because they could alienate vast majority of their player base and kill all esport funding just like that.
@@kadin9897 Uh... skins are not real tangible items.they are artificially finite entities. They are closer to NFT's than the pokeymans cards and poop figurines. You got played sir.
@@TKwoN87 i think the monetary value was heavily influenced and encouraged by valve themselves, sure you and I make these decisions to participate in a useless online market or not but valve definitely knew what they were doing 100%.
Funny thing not enough people have taken notice of, there has been a case recently where a legal firm got a bunch of people who would normally be represented in a class action, and instead filed tens of thousands of cases for arbitration, which was so expensive for the company they removed the arbitration clause from their contracts. The video mentions this. In theory, you can apply this strategy anywhere, as long as enough people are irritated enough
Companies already know about this and most of them updated their arbitration agreement to either force users to pay for arbitration themselves, or to say that you can't file arbitration as part of a collective group
While it is true that this case happened somewhat recently, it is also true that many companies jumped on the bandwagon of changing how arbitration works shortly after that case.
Are you referring to Patreon? In this case, Patreon was stupid in that the wording of their terms of service tried to prevent you from filing a class action by making it so that you had to go through their arbitration process in which they had to pay for the filing fees. What Patreon didn't realize was that this clause could actually bankrupt them because now they were effectively fighting and paying for a "class action" for each and every individual filing for arbitration. You can look it up yourself with the name Owen Benjamin but from what I recall, this ultimately backfired on him because it was deemed frivolous and he got counter sued. Patreon didn't exactly come out a clear winner either because it still cost them a lot of money to fight this. Of course they changed their terms of service when this happened because if tens of thousands of people actually attempted this, they wouldn't still exist right now.
Right after, he wildly overestimates the ability of adults to understand probabilities and basic statistics. The fact that he's made this basic error himself really underscores that this is not intuitive or easy to grock. (Though he says it correctly also, so I think the statement you've tagged was just a writing error, not misunderstanding)
As long as there are trade involved in a game. The game with high demand will create black market. It is in every game. And no one will ever talk about it. Here are some examples aside from Valve - Sell Valorent account stacked with skins - Roblox Game that involves trading in game. - Call of Duty Skin account trade. Etc etc
To add on to this, back in the early days of MMOs like Everquest and WoW, you had people playing on multiple accounts to acquire rare gear which they sell off by 3rd party means for real world currencies. This sort of problem exists since the dawn of time at this point. People will find a way to cash in by selling accounts of multiple games regardless of what text book definition tell you otherwise.
Yes, correct. Except that those are entirely difficult to trace back (as they involve offline/off-platform transactions), while Valve's is literally just a change in API if they wanted to block that functionality perfectly because the network uses Valve's own system.
Aloha Michael and Happy New Year to you. Living in Hawaii, I probably wake up and start my day with a bit of news. Ironically I’m gonna guess that your day is probably coming to a close. My point here is that you and your team are above and beyond the title of journalist. I love what this channel does to improve my and better my understanding of the *NEWS.* I tip my hat to you my good sir and wish you a wonderful 2025 year to you and your awesome team.
I mean... this is not the video to be praising Bellular for. He just ripped off Coffeezilla's deep dive to make a video of his own. There's nothing special about what Bellular has done except to spread the word to those who have no idea who coffee is.
You all keep talking about valve, but another big and even worse is rollblox and that market is 99% kids that have te same if not worse problems than steam.
Yeah but Roblox isn't held by a private company that has outright refused to play ball with the current "race-to-the-bottom/enshitification" CEOs of the gaming industry, therefore they don't get targeted by lawsuits and rapid-fire bad press the moment any weakness is scented; the corpos want "their" cut of that revenue stream.
@ALEXANDERdk007 well from my understanding its the same system as in cs for gambling your skins in rollblox as it its for cs, i see it on No Text To Speech as he tries to prevent scamers that take advantage of kids then go to resell the skins on those kinds of sites, i am not 100% sure since i havent used rollblox but its prety much the same from what i have seen in some of his vids
although CS:GO/CS2 is the primary focus of this black market gambling issue, it should be noted that CS2 is not the only game of Valve's with a micro-economy like CS2's. TF2 suffers from the same issues even if to a lesser extent and still rakes in millions for Valve. if Valve loses the CS2 gambling case, it'll also effect TF2 and they won't be able to use the same monetization model for their future games like Deadlock. it's more than just the money from CS2 that's on the line, it's their entire business model for their multiplayer games.
Crazy how much all of this stems from parents failing to monitor their children's online activities. INB4 "you cant watch them all the time!!!" No shit, thats why we instill values in our children that let them know gambling is addictive and bad before they get hooked. Especially if youre a gamer parent, you should be making your kids aware of the negatives in these games before your kid gets to it. Ive never gambled in any game, i play gotchas completely f2p, and have never paid for a loot box in my life. Same goes for most of my friends (one does have a slight spending problem on Dokkan Battle, but its like less than $100 a year) this is because we were made aware of the dangers and addiction that are implemented into these games, because our parents warned us. Crazy concept.
So let me get this straight. There are a bunch of sites that are not hosted by, promoted by, or even affiliated with valve in any way who are using CS skins as gambling currency (illegal gambling?)...... and because they are using Valve IP.... Valve somehow becomes responsible for that? So, if a bookie gets caught doing illegal sports gambling does that mean the sports league becomes responsible for that crime because the sporting events are easy to bet on?
@@brunoyudi9555 sports teams benefit from ticket sales/ad revenue from people illegally gambling on the games, so they should be responsible? That argument makes no sense.
It's not just the IP they're using Valves API which makes them responsible for how it's being used. Valve could make this all go away with a few lines of code but yet they do nothing.
@@TheUncleRuckus Only if you want all trading and account sharing disabled for all users, they don't use the front facing API anymore and haven't for a while, its all done through account trading inside steam.
The reason I quit TF2 back in 2018 was because I got addicted to the gambling. I was VERY fortunate and only come out ~$120 in the hole, but I know and have heard of people who are hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands down the drain because of their addiction. I'm all for harmless cosmetics. I just don't want them only accessible via putting money into the game.
Tbf, even paid cosmetics are ok for most people (me included). The problem is with paid lootboxes specifically. Paid skins can exist without having gambling as an entry barrier, which makes it so there's a clear price on every piece of cosmetic, and it's up to you to choose if it's worth your money or not.
lol, lmao even There's no such thing as gambling addiction. You're just an emotionally incontinent person looking to externalize blame you should be reserving for yourself. Learn to be virtuous and study stoic philosophy.
how the hell? You want the cosmetic it is available in the mann co store, and if you desperately want the cool unusual you should use that money to go to the therapist. Don't blame the game for your own shortcomings.
How would you "shut it down in an instance" at a technical level without hurting legitimate users? There is no official API to perform player trading on Steam, only unauthorized use of the private API used by the client. Short of just flat out disabling trading I don't see a way to prevent it.
Right, and that's the reason I think behind their inaction. They don't want to do something rash or wide-reaching that's going to affect ordinary users. Any intervention in the market *will* have this effect.
@@PropaneWP As far as I know, when you use these sites you're just trading items on steam to a bot that the gambling website controls to facilitate your deposit. If valve removed the ability to trade skins between players entirely, these sites wouldn't be able to take deposits. I've made a handful of trades with other users over the years, and would be a little put out if that option was removed.
I've never got the fascination with skins on CSGO, it doesn't change anything, it's just a cosmetic. Why do people spend so much of their money on aesthetics when it doesn't impact the gameplay at all...
Social bragging right, like kids will mock the one that has an old smartphone instead of the latest model Rarity, because someone is bound to be willing to pay real cash in a backdoor deal to obtain it : real money incentive
Its not about the cosmetics, its about making actual money. You sell it for steam currency, buy a valve index or steam deck, sell it second hand as new, and bam, real money.
Valve is being singled out for being a private company that is not beholden to share holders. If they went public today all these cases would disapear tomorrow
@@VladLad If memory serves, Gabe talked about this in an interview. He set it up that his son will inherit the whole company once he's gone, who apparently shares his ideas and values. Will see, how that works out, but he is aware of the possibility.
It's worth mentioning that CS isn't the only game that spawned a gambling environment from its in-game item economy. TF2 was the origin of all of this. Dota 2, Rust, PUBG, also have stuff like this. That was one major criticism about Coffeezilla's trilogy on gambling CS items that I had. He's fearless, that's very respectable. But I fear he's just at the tip of the iceberg. Valve definitely knows all too well at this point. For all of their games that support item trading, a feature that has been in Steam since 2011, the decentralized and unregulated nature of gambling skins/items there is just too hard to control. It's unfortunately another big case of the hydra effect. Valve tries to shut down a gambling site, a few more pop up. We can definitely leave the skin trading sites alone, though. On the topic of Monarch, the stuff that he's done just screams to me like he's trying to eliminate any and all competition in the gambling scene. While initially I though "he thinks gambling CS skins is illegal unless he does it", and while it is still true, this might be his ultimate goal- a CS gambling site monopoly of sorts. But then again, he's facing the same problem as Valve. The hydra effect kicks in again because of the gambling scene's decentralized nature. But there's also the fact, that, in some ways, maybe the Arms Deal update changed EVERYTHING. Maybe that was one of the keys to Counter-Strike's unprecedented success. Valve really can't afford to fuck it up even with a knife to their throat, because it has become so crucial to its success, that thwarting it would completely stunt the growth of the game- it has become a necessary evil of sorts (and the data proves that as ever since the release of the update in August of 2013, CS:GO has seen a great rise in playercount, that in 2 years, the playercount was 15x bigger than during the first few days of the Arms Deal update)
A lot of TF2 youtubers were promoting a website that allowed you to pay real money to buy skins, that were either otherwise locked to lootboxes or more expensive through the official shop. I bought a couple of skins through this website, and was wondering how this was even possible. Why would people be selling the skins for cheap? NOW I think I understand what was happening: This website was probably set up to allow gamblers and other gray/black market participants to cash out their skins for real money. This also explains why TF2 and DOTA2 both almost completely stopped letting players straight up buy skins; Almost every single lootbox comes with a "super rare item with less trade restrictions" likely designed specifically to fuel this economy. It's sickening. You're expected to shut up about these things because this system enables people to play for free, but doing so at the expense of allowing such fraudulent systems to form, is a bit hard to stomach.
@EidolonKaos I'm talking about CS skins being crucial to the game's success. Who knows where the game would've gone had the Arms Deal update never happened?
dota 2 and tf2 are both valve games. a bit sus that these games also include a huge gambling aspect as well as cs2. its like maybe valve actually does profit from gambling, regardless if its 1st or 3rd party
"as an adult we understand this" im an adult and i barely followed along, i suck at probability math. no wonder its such an insanely higher risk for kids that understand chance even less than i do...
i remember this teenager on irc begging me for cs go money so he could use these gambling sites. he got hooked on some "strategy" where you just bet double every time you lose until you win and he thought he was coming out on top. this was happening like 8 or so years ago. can't imagine what kids r doing these days.
The idea that we have owned any games on the last several console generations is wrong, even if you have a physical copy. as soon as we are unable to log into our console and therefore unable to use it, we lose the game. What steam/epic/ea/ubisoft/etc does is just extending the same concept to PC. anything requiring online features to work will no longer work if the servers turn off or the company goes under. I buy games on steam knowing that its designed to work like a console in this way without a known EOL. it could be 5 years from now or 50. I am simply betting its closer to or beyond 50. The only exception might be GOG (but only if you archive all the game installers and updates yourself and the games can be played completely offline).
I feel like you're missing some critical context here. Yes, Valve is making a lot of money from CS2 gambling-related sales. Also, the amount of money Valve makes from this, is peanuts next to Valve's main revenue source, which is Steam. The bad press alone makes maintaining this situation not worth it for Valve- if their leadership is competent (and it is), they'll take drastic action to nip this issue in the bud- or at least, before it balloons into anything bigger than it already is.
u cant stop that, ever, unless you remove steam users ability to trade items. id rather u gamble ur life and savings and everything u own away, before I even consider giving up any of those features, soley because u cannot control your behavior, or parents failing to parent their kids as they should.
It's not really clear how Valve's gambling revenue compares to its other Steam revenue. I don't see it as a a given that the gambling revenue is 'peanuts' in comparison, when they're making $1B+ every year from keys alone.
Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much they do or don't make from the skin gambling. Because how much they make from it isn't the issue. The issue is that they're letting it continue to happen because they believe it's more financially advantageous to let it continue than to intervene in any meaningful way. They're destroying kids' lives, regardless of the profit margins. THAT is what's unacceptable. If they're fined for it more than they make from it, then they'll stop, but making them stop is what matters.
While I agree with you, that the logical move here would be to make a couple simple fixes to address the issue, but the fact is they've known that this has been an issue for years and have done nothing. I'm honestly surprised they haven't done anything about it, because as you pointed out, compared to the rest of their business, this seems like a rather insignificant hill to choose to die on.
16:14 how valve is supposed to "react"? Completely remove their platform APIs? Whole this story is practically not about valve at all, but about gambling sites who suppose to be regulated, valve have nothing to regulatory and cannot enforce it legally
@@IanaChannel Explain how. If they block individual sites, those sites will access the API via 3rd party / other routes. Bellular said it himself, new sites keep springing up even when some of them get shut down. So Valve would have to block the API for all these items entirely. What other ramifications would that have? Can you think of some? I agree that gambling should be shut down. But complaining is easy. Solutions are hard. Beware of people selling you simple narratives. It's often deceptive, not just in politics.
Are you actually unable to understand that they just need to disable skins being traded off-platform? Are you seriously arguing that you think the API in its entirety needs to be disabled? Wow...
7:35 as of cs2's release, the drops themselves don't appear randomly. You need to level up your rank and for the first level up of the week, you'll get to pick between a case and three skins/grafitti. The items themselves are, however, random
I'm not loyal to my "favorite" corporations. Corporations wage war against consumers and even employees. More people MUST understand this dynamic. They are not your friend. Not even when you're their customer.
Something small that people don't mention when talking about this: when you win the gamble and get an expensive skin, you can get cash directly from it. If you know a skin trader or collector (either personally or UA-camrs/Streamers who do it), you can get wired the money directly and completely avoid getting Steam credit for it. This gamble is not as likely or common for the average person bc it only happens for really high value skins, but it's yet another reason to continue to gamble. Love the video!
The worst I've spent is 100 dollars. Not on gambling, on a Dota battle pass. I made almost half of it back in steam credits, bought games with it... and I made most of the money back from the random CS drops and occasional dota drops Valve needs to fix the gambling issue, maybe steal an idea from GoG and let us own at least single player games
Honestly, whenever questions "think about the children" come up I ask myself who does it benefit? Because most of the times it is actually about the money, control and surveillance and not because of some altruistic cause to help people or protect them. As far as I know to even own a Steam account that can trade and get drops and stuff you have to make a purchase and for that you either have to have access to a credit card, own one or have hard cash. So for a child to get into gambling it means its getting funds from parents that should monitor where kid is spending it. This whole thing is not about children gambling or illegal gambling. Its about money that doesn't go into pockets of governments and other big players on the field. They see Steam as a problem because Steam actually provides good service to people. Why is it a problem if someone earns money through selling skins and crates to buy themselves a Steamdeck? If xQc is willing to spend tons of money on gambling and on the other hand it results in me getting enough funds to buy myself a game, a steamdeck and Steam earns profit... whats the harm? Steam is just in bullseyes now and if market all together dissapeared tomorrow, mark my words they would find something new about Steam to push. Because Steam has quality products, they are in hardware market, they made steamOS which is desired by many people to become available for PCs, they make video games so they are into software market and they provide quality deals on video games and tend to preserve them as much as it is in their power even when they are pulled off the market if you bought it you will still have access to it for most of the time. Steam is a thorn in many other much more greedy and shady companies. And lets not forget that most of the justice system all over the world is as shady as skins markets if not more.
The only part about the entire thing that doesnt make any sense(also for coffeezillas video): So the skins have value because you can cash them out via 3rd party sites... How does that play into people wanting to open cs cases to then use in casinos? Coffeezilla really missed the point that cash out sites and gambling sites are not the same thing? I don't think anyone thinks "I want to play this casino site, so lets open cs cases to use the skins I get to use there". They just directly pay the casino site, buy from the steam store(the worst option, also the only one valve would get anything from), or use one of the marketplace sites to buy the skin cheaper than on the steam store. Also "gambling keeps the skin prices up" no? Why should it? The user or casino doesn't care if its 1 skin they can trade for 100 tokens to gamble, or 100 skins for 100 tokens. Skins having a high value is nice and great for the casinos to show as a "look what you could win", but the skins don't have that value because of the casino, but because of supply, demand, and it being usable in cashout sites. You don't gamble skins to cash them out.
They keep comparing it to the Yakuza run pachinko parlors but that all ignores the fact that the pachinko parlors and "cash-out" areas are owned and operated by the Yakuza. Valve (hopefully) doesn't directly run the casino sites, therefore the comparison is fallacious.
@@TaylorMorgan-y2z It's also unlikely that Valve does run these casinos and capture that profit themselves. Unless you've got evidence, you'd best be careful making such assumptions.
@@smithynoir9980 Why? It seems pretty obvious. Hundreds of hardcore libertarians with no oversight are watching billions of dollars flow through a digital economy that they completely control. And not a single one of them decides to get a taste? Impossible.
Technically it's not on their platform. You are willingly gifting digitial items to other steam users and after that you are doing the gambling with the said user. Steam has no control over your decision to willingly gift a skin.
you dont own a game anymore if you buy it. if you want to own a game, ironically you have to get it for free. otherwise it can be taken away from you at any point. its a weird world we live in.
@@lycanwarrior2137 as long as your console isnt connected to the internet. if it is you need an update every damn time you insert the disc, and have to wait ages. but yeah, you are right, luckily you still can buy some games on physical discs on consoles. too often most/all of the game still needs to be downloaded though, and the disc itself is basically just to prove you own it and allow the download. if they ever remove it from the servers you wont be able to play.
@grandgibbon2071 you owned the disc though. I still have games from og Xbox, playstation 1, playstation 2, Xbox 360 and old PC games that still work. Heck, I have a few Sega master system cartridges that probably still work.
19:15 The reason valve likely wont do this is that they'd be ackowledgeing that they're helping facilitate gambling. Which they've tried to fight tooth and nail to be able to keep operating the stores without that perception
13:49 Explain how. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. They can't block individual sites because those sites would find workarounds. So Valve would have to shut down API access for these items entirely. What other ramifications would that have?
This is very surface level reporting on your part and I unfortunately have to say that I ended up blocking your channel because of it. I agree that gambling is bad, and that something should be done to stop it. I don't think you've done the legwork that explains how Valve is more to blame than these gambling sites, and how Valve could actually, feasibly, stop it -- beyond conjecture and wishful thinking. You've said it yourself, more gambling sites keep popping up even after some of them get shut down. If you've got no insights, don't put out videos.
nothing says "surface level" like just saying that these sites would develop magic workarounds that will leave valve defeated at every turn anyways since this comment is so surface level i'll have to resort to blocking you because that's what rational people do
@@johnathanthin hes right, belular has become a hitpiece factory, very poorly researched too. this is the 4th video in a months time that is incredibly poorly done. factually and ethically. he spent 90% of the video repeating the previous video when it could have been summed up in a sentence too. wasting everyones time for that sweet ad revenue.
@@Yutani_Crayven This is an insane take. Valve operates the entire ecosystem and has direct oversight of all transactions and logins on all of these gambling sites. They are billionaires who own Steam. They can do almost literally anything that can be done by humans. And you think they're incapable of shutting down the use of their own network by casinos? Absolutely detached from reality.
public cheats for the systems that qualify players as professional are the bigger scandal. 1. nobody can possibly go pro without cheats, the lower parts of competitive play are riddled with them - the only people winning are cheaters themselves 2. player organizations, teams and tournament organizers are turning a blind eye to this (again, if anyone can get cheats for faceit, how is anyone qualifying legitimately for RMR?) 3. large sums of money are being wagered despite obvious lax integrity - if the team owners, players and tournament organizers know that any tier 3 player might be cheating how can they condone gambling on their matches? - because probably they bet on these matches too, why would someone do that if they know some players could be cheating? because it's organized crime, they matchfix at the highest level by knowing who has cheats / facilitating cheats for teams (thats the only reason pro cs could ignore the problem for all this time, they are profiting from it all themselves)
technically you still press accept and use their services regardless and I don't know about you but I don't want my signature being stored on poorly secured servers of companies that get hacked all the time, same reason why requiring IDs for age verification would be an absolute nightmare when it comes to cybersecurity and identity theft.
Valve is profiting from gambling.......so is blizzard, Warner Brothers, fortnight, gacha games, loot box games, and every other in-game purchase-random-item for real money games. unless these things are addressed as gambling nothing can change. It sounds like 3rd party groups selling items outside of Valve that is causing issues. In addition things like this is a common occurence on the internet - so many scammers ruining perfectly good things (not saying in-game marketplaces featuring irl money is good - just saying Valve does have regulations for that to mitigate most of the negative aspect). Also - if your child is playing a game like CSGO then the fault lies with the parents for letting a minor participate in these adult marketplaces - it should have parental consent/steam accounts for kids under 16 should only be able to gain steam credit from parents account/consent form or something. at the very least the parents should be aware that this can/does happen.
So are TCGs like Pokemon and MTG. Should we destroy all of Magic just because a Black Lotus can go for several million dollars on the second-hand market? Technically unopened alpha/beta packs still exist, so the gamba is there.
fortnite has some shit monetization models, but how are you getting gambling from any of it???? they have literally no loot box esque mechanics if your going to criticize a game, criticize it for the right reasons
@@DarkRavenhaft Yes, it is ALL gambling and needs to end. Magic doesn't have to be destroyed, they can easily adapt; they can stop the gambling booster packs and and sell the entire card sets.
I should fucking hope so. Thousands, if not millions of peoples livelyhoods depend on them and their platform, the last thing they need to be doing is making thoughtless split second decisions on behalf of everyone who sells and owns games on their platform. This is what bugs me about peoples argument that 'the government forced them to offer refunds', as if Steam, the first and biggest global distribution platform should have already made that decison FOR every developer (who would not be happy about it, if it weren't enforced by law) ---- the problem with being the first person who has to make decisions like these, as no other company has been reponsible for an innovation of this scale before which is so complex and multi-faceted, is that you have nothing to go off in debating whether a choice is the right choice or not, and people eternally judge you for it if you make the wrong one, e.g skyrim paid mods. It's easy to look at these and be like "year well the decision was obvious they should have already offered refunds!' ---- it would have been them making a decision for hundreds of other game developers on their platform. They have to protect them, too. The absolutely are correct in not playing government ruler of the land, and instead they keep their mouth shut and listen, and fundementally are allowing the people who should be making these kinds of decisions, step up and make them. The government wont shut down real casinos. They won't shut down valves video game platform that has nothing to do with the off-shore gambling websites. Attacking valve for this issue is like saying that the government should take away everyones money because people gamble in the real world, and buy drugs, etc. The root cause is deeper than Valve, it all starts in the home, we're failing the youth, and instead of taking responsibility, just want to point fingers.
@batrickpateman that makes no sense in the slightest. If you notice your child has an addiction, get them help. Work with them. Be there for them. Blaming valve is like blaming breweries because you're son's an alcoholic. Maybe you should address the underlying issues.
Its like a kid needing to walk past a stripper bar every time on their way back from school, and the strippers are in glass displays on the front of the business.
I honestly find the whole thing annoying. To me it looks like this. Company A makes hammers. A section of the people buying those hammers and somehow turning them into bombs. Now people are pissed at company A because they enable people to make bombs and it's hurting people. Valve didn't make the gambling site. They just so happened to make the tools that those sites function off of. I don't gamble because I understand how it works and I'd rather waste my money doing something else. I don't blame the casino for enabling me to go throw my money at them. Can valve change their api to stop the gambling? Yeah, but honestly why should they?
I partially agree. The issue of gambling sites is governments not recognizing skin gambling as gambling so, site are not legally required to know their customer. That being said, Valve does the same allowing to gamble in-game for anyone as low as 14 (that's a minimum age in the Steam user agreement IIRC)
@@telephrag And yet counterstrikes own rating is M for mature so if you let a 14 year old play that, that is not on valve to fix. Parents are responsible.
So in short, you're not capable of comprehending that Valve is earning billions as a direct result, because it's somehow not obvious enough for you. Why should they disable API for skins? Because it enables gambling sites preying on children - and to earn billions on that is morally wrong.
Always good to see companies held to standard when they act out of turn, I presume the next Helldivers video will be the one that mentions the rootkit.
@@Somedude317 it's the kernel level anticheat that people keep yapping about yet continually install EAC or battleeye like they arent the exact same thing
Just to clarify all keys cost the same those inflated prices for some of the keys are just because there are a limited number of tradeable keys since they were made untradable when you buy new keys back in 2019(?)
19:29 "do we like that?" - That sounds a lot like you want to moral police adults. Preventing children from gambling is the obvious right decision, but I do not agree with you trying to hint at some kind of moral high ground for what other adults should be able to do or not. That's simply none of your business, and what you like or do not like is completely irrelevant. Trying to blame Valve for other adults freely gambling is some puritan bullshit, and using your platform to spread that message is a bit cancel culture-ish. As long as all relevant laws are followed, you have no business forcing your morals on other people. What's next? Banning violent games?
Gambling is not just a moral matter and has very real and material implications. That’s why it’s outlawed in so many places across the globe. It literally ruins societies
@@EggEnjoyer You are correct that it does have very real implications, in which case the "relevant laws" part would apply. Just saying, summoning an internet mob to bully people just because you think the local laws are too lax is not the way to go. If you are dissatisfied with people being law abiding citizens (even to their own detriment), then go vote to change those laws, or protest in the streets. To be clear, I don't have a problem with either allowing or banning gambling. I do have a problem with the methodology. In many places, society has deemed it acceptable for adults to gamble, and thinking ones views are somehow above that because they have a platform/following is fucked up. If this was a video encouraging people to contact their politicians to ban gambling, that would be completely fine since the change would be through official channels. Internet mob "justice" that try to bypass or override local laws is wrong though.
@ Where in the video does he direct a mob of people to bully anyone? You’ve seem to come to this conclusion just because the topic is gaining traction. Like you’re actually offended whenever a group of people actually have opinions on society. You’re saying go vote but you’re not actually Pro Democracy as you dislike the form democracy materially takes. And what local laws is anyone overriding?? Like where are you getting all this from
Yes, thats what happens to an economy that has been botted for pretty much a decade and the big traders have all the control because getting into trading is a joke now :^)
Keys literally have not changed in price since 2010, with the exception of currency conversion rates. Also, you say unusual hats are overpriced, but they're not required to play the game, so why does that matter?
I have friends that buy rust skins to flip them when not playing rust itself and have gambled away $100s over the years not realizing it. The only good thing in it is being able to hold a skin when you have money to sell for a game you want later as long as you accept you WILL lose money doing that.
Used to be subbed, I'm getting the channel out of my recommendations now due to long winded, repeated information. The language used is messy, not concise, and an unenjoyable way to consume video game news. I'm leaving this comment as my feedback for the content, not trying to flame or shit talk. Best of luck with your endeavors
Coffeezilla did quite an expose on the gambling. It was crazy how deep he went, and it all falls on Valve at the end of the day. Will a company walk away from billions? I'd be surprised.
i dont think there is a way of solving this issue unless they remove trading aspect of it since Valve Doesnt ENDORSE these websites plus it would be like battling piracy a waste of time and money
@ - Valve technically could shut it down if they wanted to. But why would they? The amount of money it brings in is more than most game publishers literally ever make.
Part 1 and 2 were great. Part 3 was a nothing-burger. He hyped it up so much and it revealed nothing new, said nothing new, and made no real discoveries.
@@SamMontoya There would be one scenario. Valve could decide to voluntarily end their gambling practices, in anticipation of a legal ban, since they'd lose it anyway and this way it could become a PR win, but it is still very unlikely.
Fun fact: Keys are not bought through the marketplace. Those on the marketplace are old and still able to be sold, while new keys are bought directly in the game
I like steam as a platform. I haven't liked valve as a company in years because I read their TOS and all these small stories coming out everyone else ignores or shouts down. Theyre doing some disgusting and shady stuff. I'm glad people are noticing now.
Wait a minute. There's No Gambling on Steams platform. There Is gambling on 3rd party platforms not associated with Steam. Why is Steam culpable for anything? Kia isn't responsible for the actions of the Kia Bois stealing their cars, seems the same applies here.
@@ButHearMeOut that part is True... but Also let me Ask you this... Why they Attack Valve Now.. ? When there is still Tons of Gacha Game that are Available... i found this kind of thing suspicious... its like there is Reason or somthing more then Gambling stuff behind it....
@@ButHearMeOut No they're not. If cases are gambling, then what are the odds of winning and losing, and what are the payout percentages? Yeah, I didn't think so.
I've seen a lot of videos on this topic and I cannot for the life of me understand what is actually bad that is going on? Is anybody being robbed of anything? Or is this just a "gambling = bad" type of thing? Who knows...
THİNK OF THE CHİLDREN type of thing going on even though its from other sites not offical valve thing so if you try to get rid of it there will always be new ones popping up
@@LTDLetsPlays Yeah, because Valve let new ones pop up. Because it drives their sales. Remember, all of these sites use Valve's APIs, they don't work without it. Valve have full control over who can and cannot use their APIs.
@@plcdfa They don't really now though, since all the older bans that took place. They now use a peer to peer system where the sites have no bots with items and users just interact with one another bypassing what Valve put in place in the past. The sites will always work out a work around, the only true way for Valve to put them away is to make skins completely non tradable, but question is will they because the game evolves around them now.
just sold my csgo inventory i spend 10 euro on in the december sale and got around 200 Euro out. Some cases where around 7 euro, wtf, i remember them being 20 cents.
Tbh I don't mind gambling in any form. If someone is addicted to gambling, that is no more my problem than if they were a drinker or smoker or drug addict. Alcohol is physically dangerous and addictive. Should having a glass of wine be mase illegal and made punishable by law? Would you personally force a glass from someone's hand? The newer generations drink less than than any other without having experienced any new legal pressures while THC use is nearly ubiquitous among them despite RABID persuit from the legal system. Never have any of these, we'll call them "personal freedoms" laws or legislations ever actually "fixed" anything before. The absolute best you can hope for is that the emergent black market doesn't become active cartels or that the counterculture becomes dominant anyway/faster.
Truth is these cases are the only thing keeping CS2 alive. Most people ingame don't even play the game, they just open cases. Playing it, at times game shows you notifications that there are 9 players for the map in your area, the popular map. People in game instead of focusing on the game, they open cases, losing the game. Others - like me - know the game is borderline unplayable, but I keep playing it, because I can drop case once a week, then I can sell it on the steam market and I have around $1 discount for any game I will buy later. If not the cases that I can sell on steam market, I probably wouldn't touch this game ever again.
@@XBluDiamondX this makes zero sense its a LEGAL gambling site operating in a country that ALLOWS ONLINE GAMBLING. Is that a hard concept? Valve makes ZERO money from THIRD PARTY TRADES OR SALES. They ONLY make money on the STEAM MARKETPLACE and the GAME STORE... Valve is not liable for anything and has nothing to do with gambling.
6:49 brother. this was typical EU Merkel brainlet move. not all EU countries have purchase parity. like yea it's a way to tell the "poorer" countries to step it up, but abolishing the three Euro zones Steam offered, was consumer unfriendly. after all, it's publishers setting the prices, not Steam. Steam just offered price guidance per GDP for EU countries. it was literally a nothingburger. typical EU seeming busy. sort of when youtube cycles new designers. 12:00 i do not care. where do kids get the money from? if they win it on the internet, good on them. if their parents give it to them, where is Valve at fault? if you look beyond the headline, it's a controlled environment to realize a teenager is prone to gambling, but this would require parents to care what their kid is spending THE PARENT'S OWN MONEY ON.
Wait, why is this even Valves problem? If people are gambling with their own digital items isn't that 100% on the gambling sites and the users themselves? I feel like this is getting mad at the government for printing the money you lost at a casino. The only way that it would make sense that this is valves responsibility is if the items one is gambling are technically valves and as such they are responsible for their use?
People just don't want to have any accountability themselves, the same way that parents don't want to do the job of a parent, and keep an eye on their credit cards / children, but wants to force companies to do the parenting for them instead
@@ALEXANDERdk007 by this logic bars and weed dispensaries should allow children in because its the parent's responsibility to not let children consume those products, thats not how society works
@@brunoyudi9555 No it does not, are Valve running the 3rd party gambling sites or are the only crime the fact that Valve are selling loot boxes (that are the same as TCG booster packs / loot bags just digital instead) / allow Steam users to trade items with each other? it would be like punishing the producer of the weed because a legit store (dispenser) was selling the weed illegally to kids, or gun manufacturers for a gun store selling a weapon that then later ends up in the hands of a criminal
@@ALEXANDERdk007 they are legally liable because they profit off the system, if you got a restaurant and allow an illegal cassino to run in the back room it doesnt mean you are not responsible as well.
Valve's based in Washington state, where it's a felony to run (or even be a customer of) an online gambling site. They can't make it official like that without getting in a massive world of trouble.
@@SimuLord Oh, please, as if international corporations would need to care for that. Make a separate company, registered where it's legal, then simply not ban them from accessing your API, while chocking out the rest, done.
@@palastathe gaming industry is in bad shape for AAA companies only lol. Take a look at palworld or marvel rivals or black myth wukong. Heck even balatro and Terraria are doing better than AAA companies. Maybe when they actually make a decent game then the "gaming industry" will be in better shape lol.
"nothing wrong" is a very funny way to spell "created the current case gambling epidemic" maybe its really not such a bad thing when you consider the fact that they are vanilla terrible and not (average game company) terrible.
Corporate bootlickers always fascinate me. I'm old enough to remember when everyone hated Steam. Valve forced you to install their "spyware" just to play Half Life 2. Imagine having to connect to the internet just to play the game you bought? Outrageous right? Now that an entire generation has grown up with it and doesn't know any better we get reactions like yours.
@@Byrvurra Consoles are more or less the same these days, but worse since you can only get games from their respective store and once it's shutdown for the old console so are your games, I don't see much outrage over that though...
For everyone in the comments saying that "valve will leave the EU" because of the fines, in case you are not familiar, Valve was already slapped with a €1.6 million fine for breaking anti-trust laws. This was a lawsuit about practices that Valve and 5 other publishers were practicing for over a decade. The total sum of the fines, to all companies was €7.8 million. Neither Valve or said publishers stopped operating in the EU. Also, according to a 2022 statistic, the US holds a 28% share of Steam's market, while Germany, France, Poland, Czech and Sweden together make 24%, and while all the remaining 22 countries in the EU, will have smaller share, I have no doubt that the sum of all the EU share either reaches or surpasses the 28% of the US. Bottom line is, Valve will not leave the EU, because it would lose between 1/4 and 1/3 of their global business. Even if they breach EU laws, they will still gain more by just paying the fine, when the judgment is finally done by EU courts. Google was fined by a whopping €2.4 billion, and has Google left the EU? Nope! This is a no brainer, and that's what all companies do. While the lawsuits take time and are being delayed, they keep selling and pocketing cash. Only a simple mind, cannot understand that this is what big corporations do, whenever they get the chance.
So, I think you brought up something interesting.. The cases are very close to trading cards? Yes.. there's the animation that is basically a slot machine, but that could likely be changed. Functionally I guess, I'm wondering what the difference besides that is? When I was growing up, 16 or so, I would go buy magic packs just to hope to sell a card back to the shop to go to taco bell that night. I remember one of my first packs I pulled a Jace, Mind Architect and the shop gave me 40 bucks for it on the spot! I never knew what cards I was getting, the shop probably sold that card for 50 bucks, I was a minor, we were dealing in dollars.. Now I think what valve is doing can be far more damaging, parents, watch what your damn kids are doing. But it is functionally the same though no? Genuinely, what comparison am I missing?
@@ozonecandle No real difference. The only big thing is that there are third party sites that take those "cards" and let you use them as an option to buy in and gamble properly as you would in any normal casino. I don't think case opening inside the game is so bad in it's own it's just that gambling exists around the value generated by the case opening. Using steam to cash out is a bad way to pretend that valve is directly braking us gambling law as that requires the ability to cash out which steam doesn't provide. The steam deck argument is stupid because in theory you can do the sell on ebay thing with literally any item on steam be that a game or gift card, as you can just agree to exchange a game for cash, at which point u can just agree to exange skin for cash. Third party cash out sites are basically an organized way of players offering each other real money for skins, avoiding that money ever touching steam so hard to blame valve for that. What is strange everyone is so quick to feel bad for gambling addicts and the money they lost, but are willing to completely shutdown trading in cs and wipe out 4 billion dollars of people's money. Seems a lot of people have a problem with game cosmetics having a value and not being a worthless money sink. Which imo is stupid as if people are wasting their money on cs skins atleast that value doesn't get wiped out likely actually stays the same, while if you buy into bs pay to win systems like in warthunder or gatcha games, they just take your money and light it on fire.
That's a reasonable question. It's a question of scale. Are there online casinos making $50M/month from kids gambling with Magic card packs? Does WOTC get a cut of all secondhand transactions, and maintain an API and marketplace for them? Are there kids building gambling empires out of MTG packs and then committing murder-suicides when WOTC cuts them off? No, that's all unique to Valve.
@@TaylorMorgan-y2z yes there was gambling with magic cards online in the past and there still is through MTGO through third party sites. Wotc doesn't take a direct cut of second hand sales, but they definitely use the second hand market as a tool to sell more cards. They so have an online marketplace for virtual cards once again MTGO. And you can directly cash those cards out for money or a physical set that can then be sold.
@@TaylorMorgan-y2z The only reason why scale so big because thing easier to do online. I must say TCG is more gambling than any online skin cases, you literally can open a pack today, if there a buyer you can get REAL money from it instead of steam wallet from steam market. If you say "they can just cash out from other website" the said website is illegal and against steam ToS, it just too impossible to know which trade is real life money trading or just friend trading with each other.
@@gordonfreeman1163 So if you spread malware in the systems of some furniture store, you want them to be able to break into your house and just take all the chairs and tables etc. you bought from them? Without giving your money back of course? Or better yet, should they be able to do the same thing because you used a "naughty word" while in their store? Just take away everything you bought from them because you _said_ something they don't like?
@@Serjo777 I assume you have indisputable proof of complete account terminations for just saying something "bad" in steam forums? Because as far as I'm aware you really have to go out of your way to achieve this outcome. No, you're not spreading malware in the furniture store's systems. It's more akin to swapping telephone numbers in their ads (especially the physical ones) to a scam call centre's. And no, they won't take away the furniture you bought. They'll just sue you dry.
@@gordonfreeman1163 Doesn't matter if you "have to go out of your way" for that or not, you can still lose your account for using words. Also Steam is not the only platform out there. EA has terminated people's accounts, making them lose all their games, for calling people "gay". That needs to be illegal. And that last part of your comment made no sense. That wouldn't give them the right to just take away things you bought from them either.
It's a very easy problem to solve, make skins tradable one (1) time after you receive it from a box, that also so happen to make Valve get compensation for the impossibility of third-party Casinos being able to continue operation.
Can somone tell me what other use the Steam API has other than gambling? I mean, the api is good for external profile lookup websites, sure, but why are you able to do anything with your items outside of steam? Why are they purposefully allowing external trading of items?
In the EU, i'm seeing strict definitions of gambling to cover online gambling, regulating laws, and forced age verification using hte EU's upcoming digital age verification system coming 2030 or so
Nothing better than an unelected body of bureaucrats knowing everything about you and what you do online. Especially if stuff like this with servers in Zimbabwe will ultimately not be affected.
They just stole the entire healthcare data systems from all of Germany, +70 mil people's personal and HEALTHCARE data taken. If there is one body I trust even less with data than companies it's the modderfugging government (of any nationstate or supernational political bloc, anywhere, anytime).
@@shadeblackwolf1508 I honestly do not understand this aversion people have against this... The only explanation is that they have some reason to hide. It's fair to argue about how feasible it is to implement it, but why the aversion to use it, I don't understand.
hed use none if he could get away with it, but he has to show u something to keep you watching the same video he now did 4 times in a row. they just grab whatever they can that kind of fits the narrative to keep you watching.
Click this link sponsr.is/bootdev_bellularnews and use my code BELLULARNEWS to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev. Sponsored by Boot.Dev.
I'm one of the people affected by valve not regulating their gambling at all.
I gambled between the ages of 12 to 16, Influencers were the ones that drawed me to it.
Valve has never done anything about it, and they accept money from black market conpanies like 1xbet.
I still don't understand why Valve is being sued in the first place, what are they doing wrong???
I am ok with Valve taking a hit IF there is evidence that they were specifically not intervening for business reasons. But I have to ask, are the parents also getting sued for allowing their kids to do this? At what point are we now expecting business to do parents jobs for them? If they find direct evidence that Valve said didn't stop that because it helps make them money, then they should be hammered. But if the evidence isn't there, then at what point to people have to take responsibility for their own children and choices? I know it's not worth as much, but why not go after then gambling sites that are allowing something illegal directly? The car companies can stop almost all car accidents. They could lock vehicles down to 5 or 10 miles an hour if they wanted. People don't sue them because a car can go over the speed limit. They sue when the car company knows that product is directly responsible for the accidents because of defect, not because someone used it in the wrong way.
As for game ownership, that one I wish there were rules on. There should be a minimum availability time that comes with the purchase and it should be in big letters so people can decided. If a company closes the game down before reaching that time, then refunds should be required. If you know that the company says we will support and provide access to X game for a minimum of 7 years and you choose to still buy it, then it's on you. If they decide to remove it after 5, then they didn't meet the purchase agreement and should have to refund you. Valve should be required to track that.
Wait, why exactly does Steam need to use this in their legal battle?
@@teaser6089 Valve has been illegally raising prices on other stores. They do this by threatening to ban developers from Steam if they pass on savings from lower commissions onto customers through lower prices. This has harmed developers by artificially supporting their 30% commission, and harmed customers by inflating prices to compensate for that commission.
Just a note: The suit receiving class status doesn't mean it actually has any additional power. It just means that the court has agreed that there is a group of persons/entities that would qualify under the same conditions. That's it. It's a tool for the courts to combine lots of possible court cases into a single case preemptively to save the court's time. It has no legal impact.
That's true -- it was always going to be a class action lawsuit. The certification only matters in that it closes off Valve's last real chance of avoiding a high-stakes trial or expensive settlement ($1B+). Those are the only two options remaining, unless Valve can somehow win on summary judgment, which is unlikely after a certification decision like this.
@@TaylorMorgan-y2z Sorry to break it too both of you, it wont be a $B or more, and a Class only ensures that if people who were affected are affected all in the same way.
@@AEixilimar What makes you say that? The class was determined to include all developers in the world. If it is determined that the commission should have been 20%, then Valve will have to give up all their revenue from commissions above that rate since 2017, retroactively, times three (treble damages). You think that total is less than $1B? That seems like an underestimate, if anything.
@@TaylorMorgan-y2z Not really? As i said, there's NOTHING about it being a class action case that makes Valve's defense weaker or the plaintiff's case stronger. It's just a classification, and class action lawsuits "fail" to yield any rewards for their clients all the time.
It doesn't mean the trial will be more expensive, it doesn't mean valve's potential damages are higher, it doesn't mean punitive damages could be higher. All that's happened is the Judge said it's a fruit and not a vegetable.
this only happens AFTER discovery happens and it's possible there's someone wrong. the fact the judge LET and increased the lawsuit to Class action level proves there's a case.
EU court has already ruled in 2011 that you own the games on Steam, as you own any other digital puchase if there was no set license time set on time of purchase and if you did not have to pay for it again after that time. It has not been ever needed to be tested in court yet. But if it will, the customers will win and Valve will weep. Because there already is an EU court precedent. It was a big thing for digital purchases when it happened, but people have forgotten. But the lawyers will pull that decision, if need be.
Do you have a source for this please?
@@R4ZORLIGHT google exists
probably wont work for non EU clients tho?
I wonder, if you want to get a useful precedent against a multi-billion dollar company, is it possible to sue someone very small and weak over it (possibly even a "friend" that you will bail out regardless of the result), and then they do a terrible job of defending their position, perhaps intentionally, and they lose, and now the precedent is what you wanted it to be, even if a competent lawyer could have made a much stronger case against your position. Then later when a multi-billion company tries to fight that precedent, it would be much harder for them.
@Aquelll "as you own any digital purchase"
So, not at all. As you yourself said, licensing them.
you should NOT BE EVER LEGALLY ABLE to "waive" ANYTHING by just pressing a button on your computer. this is ridiculous
I agree. I think things like that should require an in person signature after a full reading and understanding of the contract.
Yes you should, boomer
Off the mark here. These rights shouldn't be waived, and no such waiver should be hidden in a tos or eula. If something of a 'paperwork' nature exists then it absolutely needs to be modernized to be doable electronically.
Care to elaborate?
In the UK you can't
EU has not really slapped Valve with anything serious yet. If they start fining "percentage of company global revenue", which is a level of fine in almost all EU customer protection laws, then we are starting to talk about serious shit.
I always find it funny that the EU is an absolutely dead economic zone and for whatever reason the only thing they seem to produce for international markets is a bevy of new and absurd laws to leech wealth from other nation's corporations every year.
if the EU decides to do that, valve will just close up shop in EU specific countries. The EU is probably a tiny percentage of their global revenue
@@moonasha keep coping. Valve would come to an agreement and keep doing business. Just like others that ran afoul of EU laws
@@moonasha are you insane?! the EU market is huge there is no way on earth they would close up it would be like cutting your nose off to spite your face
@@moonasha Yes, I think increasingly this is going to become the outcome. The EU only seems to produce regulations these days. It's becoming increasingly hostile to global companies doing business in the market, and I think it's going to lead to a lot of companies choosing to not do business there over time.
From what I understand, all or most forced arbitration clauses are legally unenforceable, the companies just rely on normal people not knowing that and using intimidation tactics to make them think they have no choice.
Exactly. In most coumtries a base legal essential is that you simply can't take away anyone's right to sue. That might be different in crazy America where companies basically have no rules to abide by, which is how companies got so much ridiculous power to begin with. But this is the case in most of the rest of the world. Any agreement licence or otherwise specifying that someone can't sue, or specifying HOW someone can or can't sue, for any reason, is completely illegal in most countries. The problem is that a lot of people don't know that, even in our countries outside America, so of course, American people are even less likely to know these things. It's bizarre that Steam ever got away with having that as part of their agreement, since America is only one country, albiet an overly powerful one. That doesn't fly anywhere else other than America, where companies can do whatever they want.
@@fransmith3255 Valve operates according to the laws of its headquarters.
And the State of Washington is no Delaware or South Dakota. We'd be practically European if we were an independent country.
Long story short 99% terms of services have ilegal parts and they hope you dotn see it
I literally have a laptop that part of the advertising was the option of adding a disk and RAM (standard but it was in the advertising on the manufacturer's website)
According to the product warranty, opening the product terminates the warranty
so the action is advertised which is illegal from the perspective of their own rules... taking into account advertising laws and product warranty rules in the EU... they have no right to deny me the repair because of this. of course, official repair services have different solutions, e.g. dust particles on the fan XD
putting unenforcable clauses in a legal document should waive the entirety of the legal document.
Yes this is true, but in this case Valve did this to favor you, the consumer. Chances are, your case isn't about getting loads of money back and they can foot the bill for the arbitration. Now you have to pay for it, this was actually an overall loss for the consumer. Not all arbitration clauses are bad. Thank the scummy lawyers for ruining it for the consumer.
Minor correction. Discovery is the process between the respective parties. Court is usually not involved, unless it's to compel one party to completely answer the other party's discovery requests. Ultimately, documents provided will be used at trial, providing it gets to that point.
"Court is usually not involved, unless it's to compel one party to completely answer the other party's discovery requests."
For a hilarious example of what happens to people who try to ignore this, refer to the Alex Jones/Sandy Hook lawsuits.
@@SimuLord You mean kangaroo court.
The documents are also frequently attached to motions and other pre-trial filings, which is how we've seen them so far in these cases.
@@dakota9821 Tell me you're a MAGA without saying you're MAGA
@@arthuralford no, he's right. He a) was literally not alowed a defense, and was found guilty on default, following which the trial was only qbout how much he owes. b) when asked to present evidence at discovery, they did.... and the court said that they didn't....
I dont understand how gacha games are completely fine, mobile games(which have even more gambling and used more by kids) have more gambling, but only Valve get in the news about it. the whole industry should be affected, Valve included.
Kids all over are litterally groomed to be gamblers from the age of 4
gacha isnt gambling because you cannot make money back, once you put cash into it it's gone, gacha games are more like candy machines than a casino
@@massimilianozamagni4851 Its even worse because it makes people lose money harder then gambling.
@@massimilianozamagni4851 That might be the literal legal definition of it, but mechanically (and, importantly, psychologically) it is gambling.
alright, it's bad that kids are being groomed, but we should then also go after these youtubers (who can easily see their demographic are underaged) since they're the groomers at the end of the day.
But also, WHERE ARE THE PARENTS IN THIS?
why are parents just getting a free pass to be terrible parents, the 1st thing a parent should say if their child wants to enter a casino is "no" meanwhile parents can get away buying their kid a device and let them do whatever with 0 supervision, this isn't early 2000s anymore where this was all new and very little parental controls, EVERY DEVICE nowadays has fairly strict parental control settings, to setting what type of content someone can access, to how many hours said person can spend on the device etc. (sure, kids are clever and can get around it, but it's a simple fix as "you did this to get around it, fixed it and now your new method is gone"
Had this with the middle of the 3 younger brothers, I trusted them a bit too much, thinking a verbal warning of "don't buy anything without first asking me" was a good way to show I trust him to not do something stupid.
he then went on and spend 89 euro's in the span of 5 minutes, when I found out, I first tried to refund everything. (I got around 40 euro's back) I then changed my password and enabled a 2FA code to always be required for any purchase from my Paypal account, it was my mistake that this happened, it won't happen again and it never did either, if any of the 3 brothers want to buy anything from the google playstore, they have to go through ME, they can't access my email or phone for the 2FA code either, so effectively I fixed the issue, but I also acknowledge that it's MY mistake for trusting a child.
You gotta always start with something achievable and move your way up. Your statement doesn't invalidate seeking justice where we can
Finally, lawyers can get rich again while people who sign up for a class-action can get that check for $1.25.
Historically, many companies doing pretty terrible things-- for example, dumping toxic, cancerous waste into rivers and lakes-- have been stopped by huge class action judgments against them, making it cheaper for them to start following the law than to break it while paying out individual judgments. I agree that it seems like individual plaintiffs rarely receive anywhere near what the judgment makes it seem like they should, but that doesn't mean the process doesn't provide a net societal good sometimes. In this particular case, if Valve was taking responsibility by (for example) making sure that no external site could be linked to a steam account that was owned by someone under 18 years of age (or maybe 21, I'm not sure what the legal age is on a state-by-state basis), I wouldn't care that much. But gambling addiction is literally one of the most hopeless addictions; statistically, you're more likely to overcome a heroin addiction than you are to quit a gambling addiction. So I have pretty strong feelings about a company that is hugely profitable making even more profit by setting up an infrastructure that makes it easy for other companies to let kids gamble (and get potentially hooked for life before they're mature enough to even know what's going on), observe that this is going on, and then make only token efforts to stop it. If a class action suit makes it more profitable for them to put some guardrails on, then I'm all for it.
Hey, just enough for another case. Let’s go!
In this case, it's not JUST about the payout for consumers. It's about stopping the creation of new gamblers and the vicious cycle that exists between casinos, sports, and streamers, where everyone is incentivized to promote gambling.
Sucks there isn't a bigger payday at the end of it, but at least this might cause positive change
We all know only the lawyers are getting any compensation.
thats not he point of class action lawsuits
11:22 “If you lose, you lose your skin.” seems a little extreme but I’m not a legal expert or a doctor
I lost my skin :(
Rattle ratle
It'd be funny if there was one guy who goes around to get the skins off losers.
"Em sorry, just doing me job."
*pulls out your skin like a velcro suit*
*walks away*
Valve banned millions of skins from people that sold skins to gambling sites last year.
They are fighting it but in valve time. So really slow.
@@bailvik6390 only because they were caught up in drama. They're doing the bare minimum to look like they're fighting it without really effecting the market
While making Valve levels of profits due to all the income it gives them.
They're not really. Coffeezilla said it himself. They want the good PR. They like making themselves look the good guys by "fighting" the gambling sites when in reality they could just end them in an instant if they wanted to.
Nonono. They created the system to make this "economy" possible. Yes, Valve could simply change the system and end it in one big swoop. Anything else is pure BS.
@@valmiro4164 How could they end the third-party gambling sites in an instant if they want to? I realize Coffee said it but he doesn't mention how they could. To be so sure that a company *should* do something suggests knowing how they could go about it. So, how could they go about it?
Psychology correction here: Knowing the law of large numbers doesn't prevent anyone from being addicted to gambling the same way knowing how bad alcohol is doesn't prevent you from developing a dependance. It's the emotional tie and the development of the craving that is relevant, not your knowledge about the subject. The reason why it's especially bad for adolescents is that their brain develops addiction much faster than an adult brain for neurological reasons. In metaphoric terms: If you think about the adolescent brain as you would building a house then reserving one room or an entire floor for addiction is much more integral and faster than structural changes or changes in furniture after the house is build.
@renzuki5830 just to add: the more the addiction is habituated, the more difficult it is to break. And as the above commenter said, it's not about knowing vs not knowing, it's about humans being biological machines with cause and effect relationships between the brain and habituated a tions, especially ones with big percieved emotional significance. It is also why a person cannot think their way out of depression, it causes changes to the brain you can't just flip a switch to dissociate out of, unless you want things to get worse later on.
This kind of hit home as someone who has smoked marijuana on a daily basis and has wanted to stop for a long time now, but the psychology behind it really makes it difficult even if thc is considered 'not an addictive drug'. There are plenty of things in this world people may not consider addictive, but it most certainly can be. Pornography is another field people tend to be surprised to hear about.
The whole “you only own a license” needs to end. New laws are needed for consumer protection
So, it depends. While I agree that anything that you can download in its entirety and run locally should be your own copy to do with as you please, the license language is necessary for software and games with live services and to assert copyright. The license clarifies that the purchaser has bought the right to use the game, but not sell or otherwise distribute it. For live service software and games, it clarifies that the purchaser has bought access to the live service, not a complete copy of the game or software. I agree that companies should not be using overly restrictive license to unnecessarily exert control over responsible use of the software, however licenses are still necessary. It would also be great if companies were willing to publish server files when they stop live services, however I hesitate to suggest mandating it. The main reason is that while it seems reasonable to ask massive companies with thousands of employees and millions if not billions of dollars in revenues, the law would have to apply to everyone, including small teams of developers for whom it would be a considerable burden, particularly if their software were not a financial success.
🤣🤣 the timing you have chosen for this comment, if u did not have noticed: corpo corruption runs amok.
@@michaelbaker2718 sure, but most games and software are not live service products.
Or simply choose better companies to shop at. Take GOG for example.
They remove DRM from games, patch old games to work on new computers, and they also straight up give you the installers on your computer so that even if the company goes down, you can still install and play the games you've purchased.
@@Elrohof GOG would have a lot more customers if they actually stocked as many games as Steam..
I live in the EU. I'm not signed up to any services that force arbitration. Or at least, not in a way that is enforceable...
Forced arbitration only applies in jurisdictions where it is legal to have Arbitration and legal to bind someone into it. The EU nullifies Forced Arbitration
People that put ANY monetary value on skins are the real problem haha
Genuinely they are literally worthless and inflated. It’s like playing cards. They really aren’t worth that much but artificial rarity has people drive up the prices by a shit ton
I'm guilty of buying skins and DLC early when I started PC gaming. Since then when I've repented for my wicked ways. I've never bought new game at launch price ever and refuse to buy DLC (unless it has substantial meaningful content ala CDProjectRed)
i dont think skins having value is a problem but that’s because i own skins lol I feel like they’re close to pop figures or Pokémon cards. they dont do anything but i do like my knife and my usps skin they make me feel cool everytime i spawn in. plus they’ve only gone up in price. i feel like if valve went after gambling sites they could fix this… but at the same time if you take down the “trusted” sites how long until a fake pops up that instead of “scamming” you through gambling just api scams you. they have to be very careful because they could alienate
vast majority of their player base and kill all esport funding just like that.
@@kadin9897 Uh... skins are not real tangible items.they are artificially finite entities. They are closer to NFT's than the pokeymans cards and poop figurines. You got played sir.
@@TKwoN87 i think the monetary value was heavily influenced and encouraged by valve themselves, sure you and I make these decisions to participate in a useless online market or not but valve definitely knew what they were doing 100%.
Funny thing not enough people have taken notice of, there has been a case recently where a legal firm got a bunch of people who would normally be represented in a class action, and instead filed tens of thousands of cases for arbitration, which was so expensive for the company they removed the arbitration clause from their contracts. The video mentions this. In theory, you can apply this strategy anywhere, as long as enough people are irritated enough
That's how scientology got classified as a religion by the IRS. Huge numbers of expensive lawsuits against the IRS and the government folded.
@@colemanroberts1102and we have south park to talk sense to the people afterwards
Companies already know about this and most of them updated their arbitration agreement to either force users to pay for arbitration themselves, or to say that you can't file arbitration as part of a collective group
While it is true that this case happened somewhat recently, it is also true that many companies jumped on the bandwagon of changing how arbitration works shortly after that case.
Are you referring to Patreon? In this case, Patreon was stupid in that the wording of their terms of service tried to prevent you from filing a class action by making it so that you had to go through their arbitration process in which they had to pay for the filing fees. What Patreon didn't realize was that this clause could actually bankrupt them because now they were effectively fighting and paying for a "class action" for each and every individual filing for arbitration. You can look it up yourself with the name Owen Benjamin but from what I recall, this ultimately backfired on him because it was deemed frivolous and he got counter sued. Patreon didn't exactly come out a clear winner either because it still cost them a lot of money to fight this. Of course they changed their terms of service when this happened because if tens of thousands of people actually attempted this, they wouldn't still exist right now.
12:43 Completely the opposite. 97% means the casino/gambling owner makes 3% in the long run.
Right after, he wildly overestimates the ability of adults to understand probabilities and basic statistics. The fact that he's made this basic error himself really underscores that this is not intuitive or easy to grock.
(Though he says it correctly also, so I think the statement you've tagged was just a writing error, not misunderstanding)
As long as there are trade involved in a game. The game with high demand will create black market.
It is in every game. And no one will ever talk about it.
Here are some examples aside from Valve
- Sell Valorent account stacked with skins
- Roblox Game that involves trading in game.
- Call of Duty Skin account trade.
Etc etc
Ooooo, ooo, diablo2 soj (stone of jordan) trades. Oh, how I miss those days
To add on to this, back in the early days of MMOs like Everquest and WoW, you had people playing on multiple accounts to acquire rare gear which they sell off by 3rd party means for real world currencies.
This sort of problem exists since the dawn of time at this point. People will find a way to cash in by selling accounts of multiple games regardless of what text book definition tell you otherwise.
Everything gets shittier when money gets involved
yeah but valve is allowing it by letting the sites interact with their api, they could easily disallow them from doing it
Yes, correct. Except that those are entirely difficult to trace back (as they involve offline/off-platform transactions), while Valve's is literally just a change in API if they wanted to block that functionality perfectly because the network uses Valve's own system.
Why don’t casinos only allow exchanging chips for prepaid gift cards? Then it wouldn’t be legally considered as gambling
Aloha Michael and Happy New Year to you. Living in Hawaii, I probably wake up and start my day with a bit of news. Ironically I’m gonna guess that your day is probably coming to a close. My point here is that you and your team are above and beyond the title of journalist. I love what this channel does to improve my and better my understanding of the *NEWS.*
I tip my hat to you my good sir and wish you a wonderful 2025 year to you and your awesome team.
I mean... this is not the video to be praising Bellular for. He just ripped off Coffeezilla's deep dive to make a video of his own. There's nothing special about what Bellular has done except to spread the word to those who have no idea who coffee is.
@@XBluDiamondX Same diff. Did I become omniscient yesterday?...
Just wait until Coffeezilla finds out about TCG booster packs, or wait for it, digital TCG digital booster packs.
u can’t trade them for real money tho? They all worthless i think we know it.
I love this non-compsarison
@OverbiteGames I'm aware. Totally fair
TCGPlayer and Card Market are playing poker in the corner, wondering who's talking shit.
While TCG are scummy, digital booster packs, like those paid for in MTG Arena are disgusting.
You all keep talking about valve, but another big and even worse is rollblox and that market is 99% kids that have te same if not worse problems than steam.
well that would be worse as the games in Roblox are hosted on the Roblox site, and are not a completely 3rd party website
Yeah but Roblox isn't held by a private company that has outright refused to play ball with the current "race-to-the-bottom/enshitification" CEOs of the gaming industry, therefore they don't get targeted by lawsuits and rapid-fire bad press the moment any weakness is scented; the corpos want "their" cut of that revenue stream.
@ALEXANDERdk007 well from my understanding its the same system as in cs for gambling your skins in rollblox as it its for cs, i see it on No Text To Speech as he tries to prevent scamers that take advantage of kids then go to resell the skins on those kinds of sites, i am not 100% sure since i havent used rollblox but its prety much the same from what i have seen in some of his vids
Valve is not a corporation, politicians can't get their cut, and that just won't stand in the "legal system".
@@wrongthinker843 Valve Corporation is a corporation and they pay taxes and give political donations like everyone else.
although CS:GO/CS2 is the primary focus of this black market gambling issue, it should be noted that CS2 is not the only game of Valve's with a micro-economy like CS2's. TF2 suffers from the same issues even if to a lesser extent and still rakes in millions for Valve. if Valve loses the CS2 gambling case, it'll also effect TF2 and they won't be able to use the same monetization model for their future games like Deadlock. it's more than just the money from CS2 that's on the line, it's their entire business model for their multiplayer games.
Crazy how much all of this stems from parents failing to monitor their children's online activities.
INB4 "you cant watch them all the time!!!" No shit, thats why we instill values in our children that let them know gambling is addictive and bad before they get hooked. Especially if youre a gamer parent, you should be making your kids aware of the negatives in these games before your kid gets to it. Ive never gambled in any game, i play gotchas completely f2p, and have never paid for a loot box in my life. Same goes for most of my friends (one does have a slight spending problem on Dokkan Battle, but its like less than $100 a year) this is because we were made aware of the dangers and addiction that are implemented into these games, because our parents warned us. Crazy concept.
So let me get this straight. There are a bunch of sites that are not hosted by, promoted by, or even affiliated with valve in any way who are using CS skins as gambling currency (illegal gambling?)...... and because they are using Valve IP.... Valve somehow becomes responsible for that?
So, if a bookie gets caught doing illegal sports gambling does that mean the sports league becomes responsible for that crime because the sporting events are easy to bet on?
valve profits and benefit from those sites, that being from transaction fees or bringing more players, THATs what makes them liable
@@brunoyudi9555 sports teams benefit from ticket sales/ad revenue from people illegally gambling on the games, so they should be responsible?
That argument makes no sense.
It's not just the IP they're using Valves API which makes them responsible for how it's being used. Valve could make this all go away with a few lines of code but yet they do nothing.
@@brunoyudi9555 because they use valves own market to transfer the items right?
@@TheUncleRuckus Only if you want all trading and account sharing disabled for all users, they don't use the front facing API anymore and haven't for a while, its all done through account trading inside steam.
The reason I quit TF2 back in 2018 was because I got addicted to the gambling. I was VERY fortunate and only come out ~$120 in the hole, but I know and have heard of people who are hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands down the drain because of their addiction.
I'm all for harmless cosmetics. I just don't want them only accessible via putting money into the game.
Tbf, even paid cosmetics are ok for most people (me included). The problem is with paid lootboxes specifically. Paid skins can exist without having gambling as an entry barrier, which makes it so there's a clear price on every piece of cosmetic, and it's up to you to choose if it's worth your money or not.
Bruh $120 is *nothing* unless you were 12 or something
lol, lmao even
There's no such thing as gambling addiction. You're just an emotionally incontinent person looking to externalize blame you should be reserving for yourself. Learn to be virtuous and study stoic philosophy.
Who the eff plays TF2 for the cosmetics? :D :D :D
how the hell? You want the cosmetic it is available in the mann co store, and if you desperately want the cool unusual you should use that money to go to the therapist. Don't blame the game for your own shortcomings.
Go to 2:11 to skip the ad read.
just install SponsorBlock
Install sponsorblock so it happens automatically.
Honestly it’s the only ad I’ve ever been interested in after 10 years on the site
I love you
How would you "shut it down in an instance" at a technical level without hurting legitimate users? There is no official API to perform player trading on Steam, only unauthorized use of the private API used by the client. Short of just flat out disabling trading I don't see a way to prevent it.
Why should legitimate users be hurt? Valve has more than enough billions to cover the costs...
Just looking at Steam usage patterns would make it immediately obvious who is gambling. It would be equally obvious who is a student.
Right, and that's the reason I think behind their inaction. They don't want to do something rash or wide-reaching that's going to affect ordinary users. Any intervention in the market *will* have this effect.
HOW would users get hurt by disabling third party skin trading? Explain.
@@PropaneWP As far as I know, when you use these sites you're just trading items on steam to a bot that the gambling website controls to facilitate your deposit. If valve removed the ability to trade skins between players entirely, these sites wouldn't be able to take deposits. I've made a handful of trades with other users over the years, and would be a little put out if that option was removed.
I've never got the fascination with skins on CSGO, it doesn't change anything, it's just a cosmetic. Why do people spend so much of their money on aesthetics when it doesn't impact the gameplay at all...
Social bragging right, like kids will mock the one that has an old smartphone instead of the latest model
Rarity, because someone is bound to be willing to pay real cash in a backdoor deal to obtain it : real money incentive
If they are using these like chips in their gambling frenzies, are they even using them as actual weapon skins?
Its not about the cosmetics, its about making actual money.
You sell it for steam currency, buy a valve index or steam deck, sell it second hand as new, and bam, real money.
Ever heard of jewelry or nice clothes?
unresponsible baby mans with disposable income without any parent control.
Valve is being singled out for being a private company that is not beholden to share holders. If they went public today all these cases would disapear tomorrow
Gaming industry will actually enter the dark ages when Gaben dies and all those shares are no longer all held by one man.
@@VladLad If memory serves, Gabe talked about this in an interview. He set it up that his son will inherit the whole company once he's gone, who apparently shares his ideas and values. Will see, how that works out, but he is aware of the possibility.
OH RLY?
6 years ago:
"EA, Activision Blizzard, and Valve found in breach of Belgian gambling laws"
@@Warfoki What interview was this? His sons absolutely do not share his ideas and values.
@@palasta I guess TCG packs are in breach of the same laws then
It's worth mentioning that CS isn't the only game that spawned a gambling environment from its in-game item economy. TF2 was the origin of all of this. Dota 2, Rust, PUBG, also have stuff like this. That was one major criticism about Coffeezilla's trilogy on gambling CS items that I had. He's fearless, that's very respectable. But I fear he's just at the tip of the iceberg.
Valve definitely knows all too well at this point. For all of their games that support item trading, a feature that has been in Steam since 2011, the decentralized and unregulated nature of gambling skins/items there is just too hard to control. It's unfortunately another big case of the hydra effect. Valve tries to shut down a gambling site, a few more pop up. We can definitely leave the skin trading sites alone, though.
On the topic of Monarch, the stuff that he's done just screams to me like he's trying to eliminate any and all competition in the gambling scene. While initially I though "he thinks gambling CS skins is illegal unless he does it", and while it is still true, this might be his ultimate goal- a CS gambling site monopoly of sorts. But then again, he's facing the same problem as Valve. The hydra effect kicks in again because of the gambling scene's decentralized nature.
But there's also the fact, that, in some ways, maybe the Arms Deal update changed EVERYTHING. Maybe that was one of the keys to Counter-Strike's unprecedented success. Valve really can't afford to fuck it up even with a knife to their throat, because it has become so crucial to its success, that thwarting it would completely stunt the growth of the game- it has become a necessary evil of sorts (and the data proves that as ever since the release of the update in August of 2013, CS:GO has seen a great rise in playercount, that in 2 years, the playercount was 15x bigger than during the first few days of the Arms Deal update)
A lot of TF2 youtubers were promoting a website that allowed you to pay real money to buy skins, that were either otherwise locked to lootboxes or more expensive through the official shop. I bought a couple of skins through this website, and was wondering how this was even possible. Why would people be selling the skins for cheap? NOW I think I understand what was happening: This website was probably set up to allow gamblers and other gray/black market participants to cash out their skins for real money.
This also explains why TF2 and DOTA2 both almost completely stopped letting players straight up buy skins; Almost every single lootbox comes with a "super rare item with less trade restrictions" likely designed specifically to fuel this economy. It's sickening. You're expected to shut up about these things because this system enables people to play for free, but doing so at the expense of allowing such fraudulent systems to form, is a bit hard to stomach.
No it isn’t very hard to control. The moment valve set a fixed price for skins or remove all of them altogether from the game the problem stops
What makes it a "necessary" evil? They get 30% of every sale on steam. Why is 30% of everyone else's revenue on their platform not sufficient?
@EidolonKaos I'm talking about CS skins being crucial to the game's success. Who knows where the game would've gone had the Arms Deal update never happened?
dota 2 and tf2 are both valve games. a bit sus that these games also include a huge gambling aspect as well as cs2. its like maybe valve actually does profit from gambling, regardless if its 1st or 3rd party
"as an adult we understand this" im an adult and i barely followed along, i suck at probability math. no wonder its such an insanely higher risk for kids that understand chance even less than i do...
Did you give your kids a credit card? No? Well there ya go.
i remember this teenager on irc begging me for cs go money so he could use these gambling sites. he got hooked on some "strategy" where you just bet double every time you lose until you win and he thought he was coming out on top.
this was happening like 8 or so years ago. can't imagine what kids r doing these days.
The idea that we have owned any games on the last several console generations is wrong, even if you have a physical copy. as soon as we are unable to log into our console and therefore unable to use it, we lose the game. What steam/epic/ea/ubisoft/etc does is just extending the same concept to PC. anything requiring online features to work will no longer work if the servers turn off or the company goes under. I buy games on steam knowing that its designed to work like a console in this way without a known EOL. it could be 5 years from now or 50. I am simply betting its closer to or beyond 50. The only exception might be GOG (but only if you archive all the game installers and updates yourself and the games can be played completely offline).
we never owned any of it to begin with, the second your disk stops working you need to buy a new one.
If the forced arbitration wasn't legal to begin with, said parents should reopen the cases.
I feel like you're missing some critical context here. Yes, Valve is making a lot of money from CS2 gambling-related sales. Also, the amount of money Valve makes from this, is peanuts next to Valve's main revenue source, which is Steam. The bad press alone makes maintaining this situation not worth it for Valve- if their leadership is competent (and it is), they'll take drastic action to nip this issue in the bud- or at least, before it balloons into anything bigger than it already is.
There is no way to stop it without completely disabling all trading on steam
u cant stop that, ever, unless you remove steam users ability to trade items. id rather u gamble ur life and savings and everything u own away, before I even consider giving up any of those features, soley because u cannot control your behavior, or parents failing to parent their kids as they should.
It's not really clear how Valve's gambling revenue compares to its other Steam revenue. I don't see it as a a given that the gambling revenue is 'peanuts' in comparison, when they're making $1B+ every year from keys alone.
Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much they do or don't make from the skin gambling. Because how much they make from it isn't the issue. The issue is that they're letting it continue to happen because they believe it's more financially advantageous to let it continue than to intervene in any meaningful way. They're destroying kids' lives, regardless of the profit margins. THAT is what's unacceptable. If they're fined for it more than they make from it, then they'll stop, but making them stop is what matters.
While I agree with you, that the logical move here would be to make a couple simple fixes to address the issue, but the fact is they've known that this has been an issue for years and have done nothing. I'm honestly surprised they haven't done anything about it, because as you pointed out, compared to the rest of their business, this seems like a rather insignificant hill to choose to die on.
The most shocking part of this is that people are still playing Counterstrike. I had no idea.
16:14 how valve is supposed to "react"? Completely remove their platform APIs? Whole this story is practically not about valve at all, but about gambling sites who suppose to be regulated, valve have nothing to regulatory and cannot enforce it legally
Maybe make it so these 3rd party sites can't access those APIs, duh.
@@IanaChannel ?! You understand nothing
@@IanaChannel Explain how. If they block individual sites, those sites will access the API via 3rd party / other routes. Bellular said it himself, new sites keep springing up even when some of them get shut down.
So Valve would have to block the API for all these items entirely. What other ramifications would that have? Can you think of some?
I agree that gambling should be shut down. But complaining is easy. Solutions are hard. Beware of people selling you simple narratives. It's often deceptive, not just in politics.
Are you actually unable to understand that they just need to disable skins being traded off-platform? Are you seriously arguing that you think the API in its entirety needs to be disabled? Wow...
@@PropaneWP skins are not being traded off-platform. skins stay within the platform forever.
7:35 as of cs2's release, the drops themselves don't appear randomly. You need to level up your rank and for the first level up of the week, you'll get to pick between a case and three skins/grafitti. The items themselves are, however, random
Do you still have to buy keys to open them?
@@ROMECKO yeah 😂
@@josue8322 so it isn’t worth it unless you sell the cases for money
I'm not loyal to my "favorite" corporations. Corporations wage war against consumers and even employees. More people MUST understand this dynamic. They are not your friend. Not even when you're their customer.
Something small that people don't mention when talking about this: when you win the gamble and get an expensive skin, you can get cash directly from it. If you know a skin trader or collector (either personally or UA-camrs/Streamers who do it), you can get wired the money directly and completely avoid getting Steam credit for it. This gamble is not as likely or common for the average person bc it only happens for really high value skins, but it's yet another reason to continue to gamble.
Love the video!
The worst I've spent is 100 dollars. Not on gambling, on a Dota battle pass.
I made almost half of it back in steam credits, bought games with it... and I made most of the money back from the random CS drops and occasional dota drops
Valve needs to fix the gambling issue, maybe steal an idea from GoG and let us own at least single player games
Honestly, whenever questions "think about the children" come up I ask myself who does it benefit? Because most of the times it is actually about the money, control and surveillance and not because of some altruistic cause to help people or protect them. As far as I know to even own a Steam account that can trade and get drops and stuff you have to make a purchase and for that you either have to have access to a credit card, own one or have hard cash. So for a child to get into gambling it means its getting funds from parents that should monitor where kid is spending it.
This whole thing is not about children gambling or illegal gambling. Its about money that doesn't go into pockets of governments and other big players on the field. They see Steam as a problem because Steam actually provides good service to people. Why is it a problem if someone earns money through selling skins and crates to buy themselves a Steamdeck? If xQc is willing to spend tons of money on gambling and on the other hand it results in me getting enough funds to buy myself a game, a steamdeck and Steam earns profit... whats the harm? Steam is just in bullseyes now and if market all together dissapeared tomorrow, mark my words they would find something new about Steam to push. Because Steam has quality products, they are in hardware market, they made steamOS which is desired by many people to become available for PCs, they make video games so they are into software market and they provide quality deals on video games and tend to preserve them as much as it is in their power even when they are pulled off the market if you bought it you will still have access to it for most of the time.
Steam is a thorn in many other much more greedy and shady companies. And lets not forget that most of the justice system all over the world is as shady as skins markets if not more.
The only part about the entire thing that doesnt make any sense(also for coffeezillas video): So the skins have value because you can cash them out via 3rd party sites... How does that play into people wanting to open cs cases to then use in casinos? Coffeezilla really missed the point that cash out sites and gambling sites are not the same thing? I don't think anyone thinks "I want to play this casino site, so lets open cs cases to use the skins I get to use there". They just directly pay the casino site, buy from the steam store(the worst option, also the only one valve would get anything from), or use one of the marketplace sites to buy the skin cheaper than on the steam store. Also "gambling keeps the skin prices up" no? Why should it? The user or casino doesn't care if its 1 skin they can trade for 100 tokens to gamble, or 100 skins for 100 tokens. Skins having a high value is nice and great for the casinos to show as a "look what you could win", but the skins don't have that value because of the casino, but because of supply, demand, and it being usable in cashout sites. You don't gamble skins to cash them out.
They keep comparing it to the Yakuza run pachinko parlors but that all ignores the fact that the pachinko parlors and "cash-out" areas are owned and operated by the Yakuza. Valve (hopefully) doesn't directly run the casino sites, therefore the comparison is fallacious.
@@DarkRavenhaft It's implausible to believe that Valve would allow anyone other than themselves to run these casinos and capture all that profit.
@@TaylorMorgan-y2z It's also unlikely that Valve does run these casinos and capture that profit themselves. Unless you've got evidence, you'd best be careful making such assumptions.
@@smithynoir9980 Why? It seems pretty obvious. Hundreds of hardcore libertarians with no oversight are watching billions of dollars flow through a digital economy that they completely control. And not a single one of them decides to get a taste? Impossible.
@@TaylorMorgan-y2z One or more Valve employees hypothetically opening casino sites doesn't mean Valve owns them? Your train of logic seems flawed.
Technically it's not on their platform. You are willingly gifting digitial items to other steam users and after that you are doing the gambling with the said user. Steam has no control over your decision to willingly gift a skin.
It’s beyond unreasonable that such important waivers can happen with a simple click-this needs to be rethought entirely.
you dont own a game anymore if you buy it. if you want to own a game, ironically you have to get it for free. otherwise it can be taken away from you at any point.
its a weird world we live in.
Or get physical games which are still available on consoles. Yes, they are not the most recent up-to-date versions but they are playable.
@@lycanwarrior2137 as long as your console isnt connected to the internet. if it is you need an update every damn time you insert the disc, and have to wait ages.
but yeah, you are right, luckily you still can buy some games on physical discs on consoles. too often most/all of the game still needs to be downloaded though, and the disc itself is basically just to prove you own it and allow the download. if they ever remove it from the servers you wont be able to play.
you never did. back in the day if you lost the CD key, or your disk got damaged you didn't get a replacement without paying.
@grandgibbon2071 you owned the disc though. I still have games from og Xbox, playstation 1, playstation 2, Xbox 360 and old PC games that still work. Heck, I have a few Sega master system cartridges that probably still work.
19:15 The reason valve likely wont do this is that they'd be ackowledgeing that they're helping facilitate gambling. Which they've tried to fight tooth and nail to be able to keep operating the stores without that perception
13:49 Explain how. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. They can't block individual sites because those sites would find workarounds. So Valve would have to shut down API access for these items entirely. What other ramifications would that have?
This is very surface level reporting on your part and I unfortunately have to say that I ended up blocking your channel because of it. I agree that gambling is bad, and that something should be done to stop it. I don't think you've done the legwork that explains how Valve is more to blame than these gambling sites, and how Valve could actually, feasibly, stop it -- beyond conjecture and wishful thinking. You've said it yourself, more gambling sites keep popping up even after some of them get shut down.
If you've got no insights, don't put out videos.
nothing says "surface level" like just saying that these sites would develop magic workarounds that will leave valve defeated at every turn
anyways since this comment is so surface level i'll have to resort to blocking you because that's what rational people do
@@johnathanthin hes right, belular has become a hitpiece factory, very poorly researched too. this is the 4th video in a months time that is incredibly poorly done. factually and ethically. he spent 90% of the video repeating the previous video when it could have been summed up in a sentence too. wasting everyones time for that sweet ad revenue.
Are you trying to pretend that Valve can't specifically block the functionality of skins being traded off-platform?
@@Yutani_Crayven This is an insane take. Valve operates the entire ecosystem and has direct oversight of all transactions and logins on all of these gambling sites. They are billionaires who own Steam. They can do almost literally anything that can be done by humans. And you think they're incapable of shutting down the use of their own network by casinos? Absolutely detached from reality.
public cheats for the systems that qualify players as professional are the bigger scandal.
1. nobody can possibly go pro without cheats, the lower parts of competitive play are riddled with them - the only people winning are cheaters themselves
2. player organizations, teams and tournament organizers are turning a blind eye to this (again, if anyone can get cheats for faceit, how is anyone qualifying legitimately for RMR?)
3. large sums of money are being wagered despite obvious lax integrity - if the team owners, players and tournament organizers know that any tier 3 player might be cheating how can they condone gambling on their matches? - because probably they bet on these matches too, why would someone do that if they know some players could be cheating? because it's organized crime, they matchfix at the highest level by knowing who has cheats / facilitating cheats for teams (thats the only reason pro cs could ignore the problem for all this time, they are profiting from it all themselves)
Yeah, companies claiming EULAs and ToS just waiving stuff without signatures is just wild. Glad people are waking up to corporate scumbaggery
technically you still press accept and use their services regardless and I don't know about you but I don't want my signature being stored on poorly secured servers of companies that get hacked all the time, same reason why requiring IDs for age verification would be an absolute nightmare when it comes to cybersecurity and identity theft.
Valve is profiting from gambling.......so is blizzard, Warner Brothers, fortnight, gacha games, loot box games, and every other in-game purchase-random-item for real money games. unless these things are addressed as gambling nothing can change. It sounds like 3rd party groups selling items outside of Valve that is causing issues. In addition things like this is a common occurence on the internet - so many scammers ruining perfectly good things (not saying in-game marketplaces featuring irl money is good - just saying Valve does have regulations for that to mitigate most of the negative aspect). Also - if your child is playing a game like CSGO then the fault lies with the parents for letting a minor participate in these adult marketplaces - it should have parental consent/steam accounts for kids under 16 should only be able to gain steam credit from parents account/consent form or something. at the very least the parents should be aware that this can/does happen.
So are TCGs like Pokemon and MTG. Should we destroy all of Magic just because a Black Lotus can go for several million dollars on the second-hand market? Technically unopened alpha/beta packs still exist, so the gamba is there.
so is any companies selling TCG packs by your logic
fortnite has some shit monetization models, but how are you getting gambling from any of it???? they have literally no loot box esque mechanics
if your going to criticize a game, criticize it for the right reasons
Only Valve's system meets the definition of getting literal monetary rewards. I.e. GAMBLING...
@@DarkRavenhaft Yes, it is ALL gambling and needs to end. Magic doesn't have to be destroyed, they can easily adapt; they can stop the gambling booster packs and and sell the entire card sets.
Knowing Valve, they are just gonna do what they do best, absolutely nothing... at least until they think of a way to do it in their favor.
I should fucking hope so. Thousands, if not millions of peoples livelyhoods depend on them and their platform, the last thing they need to be doing is making thoughtless split second decisions on behalf of everyone who sells and owns games on their platform. This is what bugs me about peoples argument that 'the government forced them to offer refunds', as if Steam, the first and biggest global distribution platform should have already made that decison FOR every developer (who would not be happy about it, if it weren't enforced by law) ---- the problem with being the first person who has to make decisions like these, as no other company has been reponsible for an innovation of this scale before which is so complex and multi-faceted, is that you have nothing to go off in debating whether a choice is the right choice or not, and people eternally judge you for it if you make the wrong one, e.g skyrim paid mods. It's easy to look at these and be like "year well the decision was obvious they should have already offered refunds!' ---- it would have been them making a decision for hundreds of other game developers on their platform. They have to protect them, too. The absolutely are correct in not playing government ruler of the land, and instead they keep their mouth shut and listen, and fundementally are allowing the people who should be making these kinds of decisions, step up and make them. The government wont shut down real casinos. They won't shut down valves video game platform that has nothing to do with the off-shore gambling websites. Attacking valve for this issue is like saying that the government should take away everyones money because people gamble in the real world, and buy drugs, etc. The root cause is deeper than Valve, it all starts in the home, we're failing the youth, and instead of taking responsibility, just want to point fingers.
The old tactic of
>does nothing
>wins
@@eclectic1602 Make your comment shorter please.
You explained a complicated problem really well. It was well-paced and explained difficult topics in an easy to digest manner.
To be fair, as a parent, I don't have an issue with valve. How about parents just be involved in their kid's lives 🤯
what about parent with kid who has addiction. have ever think of that. or are you just this shallow.
@batrickpateman that makes no sense in the slightest. If you notice your child has an addiction, get them help. Work with them. Be there for them.
Blaming valve is like blaming breweries because you're son's an alcoholic. Maybe you should address the underlying issues.
Its like a kid needing to walk past a stripper bar every time on their way back from school, and the strippers are in glass displays on the front of the business.
A systemic problem should be solved as a system.
@@prize9550 I agree the parent system needs to be better.
I honestly find the whole thing annoying.
To me it looks like this. Company A makes hammers. A section of the people buying those hammers and somehow turning them into bombs. Now people are pissed at company A because they enable people to make bombs and it's hurting people.
Valve didn't make the gambling site. They just so happened to make the tools that those sites function off of. I don't gamble because I understand how it works and I'd rather waste my money doing something else. I don't blame the casino for enabling me to go throw my money at them.
Can valve change their api to stop the gambling? Yeah, but honestly why should they?
I partially agree. The issue of gambling sites is governments not recognizing skin gambling as gambling so, site are not legally required to know their customer. That being said, Valve does the same allowing to gamble in-game for anyone as low as 14 (that's a minimum age in the Steam user agreement IIRC)
@@telephrag And yet counterstrikes own rating is M for mature so if you let a 14 year old play that, that is not on valve to fix. Parents are responsible.
Indeed. Bad parents trying to shift the blame here. This whole video is a nothingburger.
So in short, you're not capable of comprehending that Valve is earning billions as a direct result, because it's somehow not obvious enough for you. Why should they disable API for skins? Because it enables gambling sites preying on children - and to earn billions on that is morally wrong.
@@Yami2311 CS2 has no rating.
I will never gamble on any scale, gone super dry on enough drops in old school RuneScape that I know better.
Always good to see companies held to standard when they act out of turn, I presume the next Helldivers video will be the one that mentions the rootkit.
Helldivers rootkit? When was this?
@@Somedude317 it's the kernel level anticheat that people keep yapping about yet continually install EAC or battleeye like they arent the exact same thing
@@stormjet814 they don't understand that the apps don't need kernel access to do whatever they want on their pc.
@@stormjet814 Ah, gotcha
@@Somedude317 From the moment it launched on PC.
Just to clarify all keys cost the same those inflated prices for some of the keys are just because there are a limited number of tradeable keys since they were made untradable when you buy new keys back in 2019(?)
I couldn't care less what does or does not go on in Counterstrike, I just hope none of it spills over to Steam.
It technically applies to any game with tradeable items on steam
It's part and parcel of the Steam Marketplace.
@@lycanwarrior2137 Who cares though, is my point. It has nothing to do with the games.
@@timogul exactly, these people are mad about nothing.
@@timogulAh, so CS is the only game with gameplay and purchases tied to the Steam Marketplace?
19:29 "do we like that?" - That sounds a lot like you want to moral police adults. Preventing children from gambling is the obvious right decision, but I do not agree with you trying to hint at some kind of moral high ground for what other adults should be able to do or not. That's simply none of your business, and what you like or do not like is completely irrelevant. Trying to blame Valve for other adults freely gambling is some puritan bullshit, and using your platform to spread that message is a bit cancel culture-ish. As long as all relevant laws are followed, you have no business forcing your morals on other people. What's next? Banning violent games?
my morals are right and yours are dumb and wrong albeit
Gambling is not just a moral matter and has very real and material implications. That’s why it’s outlawed in so many places across the globe. It literally ruins societies
@@EggEnjoyer You are correct that it does have very real implications, in which case the "relevant laws" part would apply. Just saying, summoning an internet mob to bully people just because you think the local laws are too lax is not the way to go. If you are dissatisfied with people being law abiding citizens (even to their own detriment), then go vote to change those laws, or protest in the streets.
To be clear, I don't have a problem with either allowing or banning gambling. I do have a problem with the methodology. In many places, society has deemed it acceptable for adults to gamble, and thinking ones views are somehow above that because they have a platform/following is fucked up. If this was a video encouraging people to contact their politicians to ban gambling, that would be completely fine since the change would be through official channels. Internet mob "justice" that try to bypass or override local laws is wrong though.
@ Where in the video does he direct a mob of people to bully anyone? You’ve seem to come to this conclusion just because the topic is gaining traction. Like you’re actually offended whenever a group of people actually have opinions on society. You’re saying go vote but you’re not actually Pro Democracy as you dislike the form democracy materially takes. And what local laws is anyone overriding?? Like where are you getting all this from
Its crazy and no one is talking about same thing happening to team fortress 2. How key are inflated and unusual are over price af
yep. its odd.
Don't buy them then
Yes, thats what happens to an economy that has been botted for pretty much a decade and the big traders have all the control because getting into trading is a joke now :^)
i mean ofc keys are gonna cost 60+ refined when refined is an infinite resource and thousands of weapons drop every day to be turned into scrap
Keys literally have not changed in price since 2010, with the exception of currency conversion rates. Also, you say unusual hats are overpriced, but they're not required to play the game, so why does that matter?
Whoah whoah whoah!!!
It's a very rare case of Valve not being able to win by doing nothing at all!
I have friends that buy rust skins to flip them when not playing rust itself and have gambled away $100s over the years not realizing it. The only good thing in it is being able to hold a skin when you have money to sell for a game you want later as long as you accept you WILL lose money doing that.
Used to be subbed, I'm getting the channel out of my recommendations now due to long winded, repeated information.
The language used is messy, not concise, and an unenjoyable way to consume video game news.
I'm leaving this comment as my feedback for the content, not trying to flame or shit talk. Best of luck with your endeavors
Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
@@XBluDiamondX Also seems like the community is pretty toxic. So I seems like a good decision to leave this channel
Coffeezilla did quite an expose on the gambling. It was crazy how deep he went, and it all falls on Valve at the end of the day. Will a company walk away from billions? I'd be surprised.
i dont think there is a way of solving this issue unless they remove trading aspect of it since Valve Doesnt ENDORSE these websites plus it would be like battling piracy a waste of time and money
@ - Valve technically could shut it down if they wanted to. But why would they? The amount of money it brings in is more than most game publishers literally ever make.
@@LTDLetsPlays watch this turn into a general ban on trading items in games
Part 1 and 2 were great. Part 3 was a nothing-burger. He hyped it up so much and it revealed nothing new, said nothing new, and made no real discoveries.
@@SamMontoya There would be one scenario. Valve could decide to voluntarily end their gambling practices, in anticipation of a legal ban, since they'd lose it anyway and this way it could become a PR win, but it is still very unlikely.
Sounds like the TF2 item market, with Mannco store, Marketplace TF, and Scrap TF. besides the gambling part.
Fun fact: Keys are not bought through the marketplace. Those on the marketplace are old and still able to be sold, while new keys are bought directly in the game
To play devils advocate, according to valve I am 126 years old
I like steam as a platform. I haven't liked valve as a company in years because I read their TOS and all these small stories coming out everyone else ignores or shouts down. Theyre doing some disgusting and shady stuff. I'm glad people are noticing now.
99% of gamblers quit before making it big.
Source: trust me 😎
Wait a minute.
There's No Gambling on Steams platform.
There Is gambling on 3rd party platforms not associated with Steam.
Why is Steam culpable for anything?
Kia isn't responsible for the actions of the Kia Bois stealing their cars, seems the same applies here.
Cases are gambling
@@ButHearMeOut Real world money being paid for these cases? Honest question. I have games on Steam, never played Counter Strike.
@@ButHearMeOut that part is True... but Also let me Ask you this...
Why they Attack Valve Now.. ? When there is still Tons of Gacha Game that are Available...
i found this kind of thing suspicious... its like there is Reason or somthing more then Gambling stuff behind it....
@@ciniapacifica8211 Because the gambling sites tried to bribe Coffeezilla.
@@ButHearMeOut No they're not. If cases are gambling, then what are the odds of winning and losing, and what are the payout percentages? Yeah, I didn't think so.
I've seen a lot of videos on this topic and I cannot for the life of me understand what is actually bad that is going on? Is anybody being robbed of anything? Or is this just a "gambling = bad" type of thing? Who knows...
THİNK OF THE CHİLDREN type of thing going on even though its from other sites not offical valve thing so if you try to get rid of it there will always be new ones popping up
@@LTDLetsPlays Yeah, because Valve let new ones pop up. Because it drives their sales. Remember, all of these sites use Valve's APIs, they don't work without it. Valve have full control over who can and cannot use their APIs.
@@LTDLetsPlays pretty sure kids are more into V-bucks or whatever it is Fortnite uses, but otherwise, that is exactly what it sounds like.
It's people trying to skirt accountability for their own actions or bad choices and parents not wanting to raise their kids.
@@plcdfa They don't really now though, since all the older bans that took place. They now use a peer to peer system where the sites have no bots with items and users just interact with one another bypassing what Valve put in place in the past. The sites will always work out a work around, the only true way for Valve to put them away is to make skins completely non tradable, but question is will they because the game evolves around them now.
just sold my csgo inventory i spend 10 euro on in the december sale and got around 200 Euro out. Some cases where around 7 euro, wtf, i remember them being 20 cents.
I always get downvoted all over reddit whenever I point out that Steam is shitty DRM. People are so willfully ignorant.
That repeated B-roll of out of date CSGO being used a dozen times made me feel like I was in a fever dream
Tbh I don't mind gambling in any form. If someone is addicted to gambling, that is no more my problem than if they were a drinker or smoker or drug addict. Alcohol is physically dangerous and addictive. Should having a glass of wine be mase illegal and made punishable by law? Would you personally force a glass from someone's hand? The newer generations drink less than than any other without having experienced any new legal pressures while THC use is nearly ubiquitous among them despite RABID persuit from the legal system.
Never have any of these, we'll call them "personal freedoms" laws or legislations ever actually "fixed" anything before. The absolute best you can hope for is that the emergent black market doesn't become active cartels or that the counterculture becomes dominant anyway/faster.
Hooo someone is holier than crap!!
"Tbh I don't mind gambling in any form."
In other words, you don't mind vulnerable people being preyed upon.
@BloodwyrmWildheart Ad hominems indicate you have no argument
Wasn't expecting a Babylon 5 reference, but I'm here for it.
Truth is these cases are the only thing keeping CS2 alive. Most people ingame don't even play the game, they just open cases. Playing it, at times game shows you notifications that there are 9 players for the map in your area, the popular map. People in game instead of focusing on the game, they open cases, losing the game. Others - like me - know the game is borderline unplayable, but I keep playing it, because I can drop case once a week, then I can sell it on the steam market and I have around $1 discount for any game I will buy later. If not the cases that I can sell on steam market, I probably wouldn't touch this game ever again.
I like how valve is blamed for casino websites breaking the law
Like the website is responsible for checking who plays, not valve
Valve can solve this issue single-handedly, but their greed apparently takes precedent.
@@XBluDiamondX this makes zero sense its a LEGAL gambling site operating in a country that ALLOWS ONLINE GAMBLING. Is that a hard concept? Valve makes ZERO money from THIRD PARTY TRADES OR SALES. They ONLY make money on the STEAM MARKETPLACE and the GAME STORE... Valve is not liable for anything and has nothing to do with gambling.
@@XBluDiamondX They can't.... But ok...
@@nono-yw3tv Can they not stop the linking of a steam account?
By stopping the transfer of skins for some credits you can literally brick the entire system
6:49 brother. this was typical EU Merkel brainlet move. not all EU countries have purchase parity. like yea it's a way to tell the "poorer" countries to step it up, but abolishing the three Euro zones Steam offered, was consumer unfriendly. after all, it's publishers setting the prices, not Steam. Steam just offered price guidance per GDP for EU countries.
it was literally a nothingburger. typical EU seeming busy. sort of when youtube cycles new designers.
12:00 i do not care. where do kids get the money from? if they win it on the internet, good on them. if their parents give it to them, where is Valve at fault?
if you look beyond the headline, it's a controlled environment to realize a teenager is prone to gambling, but this would require parents to care what their kid is spending THE PARENT'S OWN MONEY ON.
Wait, why is this even Valves problem? If people are gambling with their own digital items isn't that 100% on the gambling sites and the users themselves?
I feel like this is getting mad at the government for printing the money you lost at a casino.
The only way that it would make sense that this is valves responsibility is if the items one is gambling are technically valves and as such they are responsible for their use?
People just don't want to have any accountability themselves, the same way that parents don't want to do the job of a parent, and keep an eye on their credit cards / children, but wants to force companies to do the parenting for them instead
because they profit from it, thats what makes them legally liable
@@ALEXANDERdk007 by this logic bars and weed dispensaries should allow children in because its the parent's responsibility to not let children consume those products, thats not how society works
@@brunoyudi9555 No it does not, are Valve running the 3rd party gambling sites or are the only crime the fact that Valve are selling loot boxes (that are the same as TCG booster packs / loot bags just digital instead) / allow Steam users to trade items with each other? it would be like punishing the producer of the weed because a legit store (dispenser) was selling the weed illegally to kids, or gun manufacturers for a gun store selling a weapon that then later ends up in the hands of a criminal
@@ALEXANDERdk007 they are legally liable because they profit off the system, if you got a restaurant and allow an illegal cassino to run in the back room it doesnt mean you are not responsible as well.
Very good Video and I like how he linked all his sources in the description
5:23 I absolutely love this way of describing it.
personally i would be alot more okay with an offical valve gambling website with HEAVY procedures in place to check age
Valve's based in Washington state, where it's a felony to run (or even be a customer of) an online gambling site. They can't make it official like that without getting in a massive world of trouble.
@@SimuLord oh yeah welp shit
@@SimuLord Oh, please, as if international corporations would need to care for that. Make a separate company, registered where it's legal, then simply not ban them from accessing your API, while chocking out the rest, done.
@@Warfoki Bud do you read before you type out bullshit?
@@Warfoki That wouldn't protect valve.
Valve has done nothing wrong and these vultures are going to fuck over the main company holding PC gaming afloat.
Lol, holding PC gaming afloat. Valve is the one of the big reasons why the gaming industry is in such bad shape.
@@palastathe gaming industry is in bad shape for AAA companies only lol. Take a look at palworld or marvel rivals or black myth wukong. Heck even balatro and Terraria are doing better than AAA companies. Maybe when they actually make a decent game then the "gaming industry" will be in better shape lol.
"nothing wrong" is a very funny way to spell "created the current case gambling epidemic"
maybe its really not such a bad thing when you consider the fact that they are vanilla terrible and not (average game company) terrible.
Corporate bootlickers always fascinate me. I'm old enough to remember when everyone hated Steam. Valve forced you to install their "spyware" just to play Half Life 2. Imagine having to connect to the internet just to play the game you bought? Outrageous right? Now that an entire generation has grown up with it and doesn't know any better we get reactions like yours.
@@Byrvurra Consoles are more or less the same these days, but worse since you can only get games from their respective store and once it's shutdown for the old console so are your games, I don't see much outrage over that though...
Hmm. A lot of parallel to US laws trying to legitimatize and protect Online Sports Gambling.. Even showed up on California ballot, 2024 or 2022 iirc.
I miss the days when they couldn't advertise it. The only place they can't is Utah, and mormons are nice, but I prefer NC.
I never understood why CS knives were worth so much money when it is a shooter game.
The problem in the US is if the gambling involves "under 18 children". That gets attention in the US.
For everyone in the comments saying that "valve will leave the EU" because of the fines, in case you are not familiar, Valve was already slapped with a €1.6 million fine for breaking anti-trust laws. This was a lawsuit about practices that Valve and 5 other publishers were practicing for over a decade. The total sum of the fines, to all companies was €7.8 million. Neither Valve or said publishers stopped operating in the EU. Also, according to a 2022 statistic, the US holds a 28% share of Steam's market, while Germany, France, Poland, Czech and Sweden together make 24%, and while all the remaining 22 countries in the EU, will have smaller share, I have no doubt that the sum of all the EU share either reaches or surpasses the 28% of the US.
Bottom line is, Valve will not leave the EU, because it would lose between 1/4 and 1/3 of their global business. Even if they breach EU laws, they will still gain more by just paying the fine, when the judgment is finally done by EU courts. Google was fined by a whopping €2.4 billion, and has Google left the EU? Nope! This is a no brainer, and that's what all companies do. While the lawsuits take time and are being delayed, they keep selling and pocketing cash. Only a simple mind, cannot understand that this is what big corporations do, whenever they get the chance.
>Lets people trade stuff
>Some people do bad things
"OMG valve is going to be in trouble"
So, I think you brought up something interesting.. The cases are very close to trading cards? Yes.. there's the animation that is basically a slot machine, but that could likely be changed. Functionally I guess, I'm wondering what the difference besides that is? When I was growing up, 16 or so, I would go buy magic packs just to hope to sell a card back to the shop to go to taco bell that night. I remember one of my first packs I pulled a Jace, Mind Architect and the shop gave me 40 bucks for it on the spot! I never knew what cards I was getting, the shop probably sold that card for 50 bucks, I was a minor, we were dealing in dollars..
Now I think what valve is doing can be far more damaging, parents, watch what your damn kids are doing. But it is functionally the same though no? Genuinely, what comparison am I missing?
@@ozonecandle No real difference. The only big thing is that there are third party sites that take those "cards" and let you use them as an option to buy in and gamble properly as you would in any normal casino. I don't think case opening inside the game is so bad in it's own it's just that gambling exists around the value generated by the case opening.
Using steam to cash out is a bad way to pretend that valve is directly braking us gambling law as that requires the ability to cash out which steam doesn't provide. The steam deck argument is stupid because in theory you can do the sell on ebay thing with literally any item on steam be that a game or gift card, as you can just agree to exchange a game for cash, at which point u can just agree to exange skin for cash. Third party cash out sites are basically an organized way of players offering each other real money for skins, avoiding that money ever touching steam so hard to blame valve for that.
What is strange everyone is so quick to feel bad for gambling addicts and the money they lost, but are willing to completely shutdown trading in cs and wipe out 4 billion dollars of people's money. Seems a lot of people have a problem with game cosmetics having a value and not being a worthless money sink. Which imo is stupid as if people are wasting their money on cs skins atleast that value doesn't get wiped out likely actually stays the same, while if you buy into bs pay to win systems like in warthunder or gatcha games, they just take your money and light it on fire.
That's a reasonable question. It's a question of scale. Are there online casinos making $50M/month from kids gambling with Magic card packs? Does WOTC get a cut of all secondhand transactions, and maintain an API and marketplace for them? Are there kids building gambling empires out of MTG packs and then committing murder-suicides when WOTC cuts them off? No, that's all unique to Valve.
@@lacothebest3191 not just CS2 but all trading on steam
@@TaylorMorgan-y2z yes there was gambling with magic cards online in the past and there still is through MTGO through third party sites. Wotc doesn't take a direct cut of second hand sales, but they definitely use the second hand market as a tool to sell more cards. They so have an online marketplace for virtual cards once again MTGO. And you can directly cash those cards out for money or a physical set that can then be sold.
@@TaylorMorgan-y2z The only reason why scale so big because thing easier to do online. I must say TCG is more gambling than any online skin cases, you literally can open a pack today, if there a buyer you can get REAL money from it instead of steam wallet from steam market. If you say "they can just cash out from other website" the said website is illegal and against steam ToS, it just too impossible to know which trade is real life money trading or just friend trading with each other.
Valve shouldn’t have the power to destroy our _ownership_ of paid games under whatever pretense they deem valid for locking steam accounts.
"I just spread malware on your platform, why are you taking away my games? Valve bad!!!"
That sounds nice until tried in real life.
@@gordonfreeman1163 So if you spread malware in the systems of some furniture store, you want them to be able to break into your house and just take all the chairs and tables etc. you bought from them? Without giving your money back of course? Or better yet, should they be able to do the same thing because you used a "naughty word" while in their store? Just take away everything you bought from them because you _said_ something they don't like?
@@Serjo777 I assume you have indisputable proof of complete account terminations for just saying something "bad" in steam forums? Because as far as I'm aware you really have to go out of your way to achieve this outcome.
No, you're not spreading malware in the furniture store's systems. It's more akin to swapping telephone numbers in their ads (especially the physical ones) to a scam call centre's. And no, they won't take away the furniture you bought. They'll just sue you dry.
@@gordonfreeman1163 Doesn't matter if you "have to go out of your way" for that or not, you can still lose your account for using words. Also Steam is not the only platform out there. EA has terminated people's accounts, making them lose all their games, for calling people "gay". That needs to be illegal. And that last part of your comment made no sense. That wouldn't give them the right to just take away things you bought from them either.
It's a very easy problem to solve, make skins tradable one (1) time after you receive it from a box, that also so happen to make Valve get compensation for the impossibility of third-party Casinos being able to continue operation.
Can somone tell me what other use the Steam API has other than gambling? I mean, the api is good for external profile lookup websites, sure, but why are you able to do anything with your items outside of steam? Why are they purposefully allowing external trading of items?
The API is also really useful for money laundering and fraud!
In the EU, i'm seeing strict definitions of gambling to cover online gambling, regulating laws, and forced age verification using hte EU's upcoming digital age verification system coming 2030 or so
Nothing better than an unelected body of bureaucrats knowing everything about you and what you do online. Especially if stuff like this with servers in Zimbabwe will ultimately not be affected.
digital age verification can shove it. i simply won't use products that require it; it's nobody's business.
@alicevioleta3184 yet you sign contracts that include minimum age clauses all the time.
They just stole the entire healthcare data systems from all of Germany, +70 mil people's personal and HEALTHCARE data taken.
If there is one body I trust even less with data than companies it's the modderfugging government (of any nationstate or supernational political bloc, anywhere, anytime).
@@shadeblackwolf1508 I honestly do not understand this aversion people have against this... The only explanation is that they have some reason to hide. It's fair to argue about how feasible it is to implement it, but why the aversion to use it, I don't understand.
Why is he using the same game footage over and over again? It's so bad
hed use none if he could get away with it, but he has to show u something to keep you watching the same video he now did 4 times in a row. they just grab whatever they can that kind of fits the narrative to keep you watching.
The 'influencers' are quite dispicable.
God i hate UA-cam. You made one Star Wars reference and now Star Wars is a third of my recommendations.
A good reminder that there are no good megacorporation, even if they're not at the mercy of shareholders.