I stopped playing TF2 when I kept getting popups about having too many unopened loot crates or some shit.
Be on the lookout for TF2 Classic which getting an unofficial release soon.
It’s a pre-2010 era TF2 experience.
I’ll be the first to say I don’t like Linux gaming’s dependence on valve. I wish steam wasn’t the best experience, and I applaud all the effort that the FOSS community puts in to keep them honest.
But for the “gambling” monetization in particular, this is really a “don’t hate the player, hate the game” situation. It’s on people/govts to regulate this. If Valve said tomorrow, “you’re right, we’re not going to monetize gambling anymore because we think it is unethical”, they would just lose to a competitor who is less ethical.
It’s the same as saying, “if you’re rich and are pro higher taxes, why don’t you just choose to pay more? Nothing is stopping you.” Because that’s not going to fix anything, it’s just a losing strategy. What you need is a system where everyone is required by law to behave in a way that benefits the society.
To that end, Valve’s most ethical move would be to lobby the govt to ban unethical monetization. I know they’re making bank, but whether they’re making enough to out-lobby all the others who are also doing this, I don’t know…also we all know the US is not exactly positioned for effective FTC policies right now…
What you need is a system where everyone is required by law to behave in a way that benefits the society.
That’s not feasible, but it’s probably feasible to require everyone to act in a way that doesn’t hurt society, and make restitution when they do hurt society.
For example, I’m okay with gambling in games being legal, but there needs to be rules:
- no kids
- pay into a fund to help those with addiction
- odds of winning are clearly posted in a way that’s accessible and understandable, and the odds are verified independently
- there should be a way to buy something instead of gambling for it
- must have a way to set spending limits to protect drunk gamblers
What you need is a system where everyone is required by law to behave in a way that benefits the society.
Yeah good luck with that.
He’s right. It’s despicable. Trading card games, too. The thing with Valve is that, outside of this monetization of online games, they’ve unquestionably had an enormous positive impact on all sorts of things in this medium just by way of sheer market forces. They’ve done a lot of great open source work, and they’ve helped create a viable exit ramp from Windows. Despite claims of monopoly on PC, they’ve created more market competition than we could have ever hoped to see otherwise. A lot of what they do is informed by what they would want to pay for if they were the customers. That stuff can be true, and at the same time, they have directed their online games in a data-driven way toward whatever creates the best results, and that result is legalized (mostly, for now) gambling for children and other addiction-driven spending behavior via battle passes. The worst part is that if they ever arrived here by accident, they’re not remorseful enough to stop, since it makes so much money.
Rejecting monetization strategies that look, function, and feel a lot like gambling doesn’t mean players will always appreciate their alternatives, however. Hall said that even he is frustrated by the “Paradox model” of paid expansion and DLC packs his studio RocketWerkz chose for its survival game Icarus after moving away from a free-to-play scheme.
It’s been years, and I still scoff at the criticism. The Paradox model is to ask a price for a good that they produced. If you don’t feel it’s worth it, you don’t buy it. They don’t obfuscate the details of what’s in the expansion; they don’t make things available for a limited time only; they ask what they feel is a fair price for a product. It’s the only method of monetizing a video game that doesn’t feel scummy to me. If Hall doesn’t like monetizing Icarus that way, he needs to scope his projects down so they can put a bow on the last one and move on to the next one more quickly.
Yeah, tho, looking up a Paradox game and seeing it has 800€ just on DLC is off putting
The price is off-putting because we can see the sticker in order to get sticker shock. But lootboxes and gambling have no upfront sticker, the true cost is obfuscated and extended over years. In that regard, Paradox is much more transparent than Valve.
That being said, my beef with them is their “subscription for DLC” model, at least the version I saw being rolled out for EU4. That and the free updates tend to be fairly unbalanced if you don’t also buy the corresponding DLC for that update. That seems skeevy… but still not as skeevy as lootboxes.
That’s like 10 development years worth of additional content. There’s not many games that get that much post release dev time without a valid monetization strategy.
You have a point but the cost of Paradox DLCs FAR exceeds the development time most of the time. You really have to do your research before buying anything
I feel like doing research shouldn’t be an issue for people playing Paradox games, where it takes hours of research in the tooltips just to understand the mechanics.
That said, my research for new Paradox DLC usually consists of hovering over it in the store, ignoring anything with reviews less than mixed, taking interest in those with positive, and reading the first dozen reviews of the mixed ones, and that works well enough.
But the base game isn’t that expensive and most expansions are unnecessary game play wise. Even when I played paradox games I didn’t buy all the DLC
Im sympathizing with both sides of the conversation. Grand strategy games are so complex and can be supported for 10+ years so it makes sense that they regularly make DLCs to support development.
But they’re not totally optional/unnecessary. The problem is that many games are balanced around the new DLCs that sometimes you’re at a disadvantage if you dont buy them. I remember some drama around crusader kings where some mechanics don’t make sense unless you buy some DLCs
I agree. Strategy game do occupy a weird space, EU4 was a go to game for me for like 10 years. I appreciated the support for the game and did buy the DLC that changed mechanics (skipping most flavour packs). I remember people complaining about janky mechanics without DLC, but I know others would rollback to previous versions.
Funny thing is that despite playing EU4 for years and really enjoying the game. I feel little urge to upgrade to EU5.
I think that’s a fair critism, but also it’s not like people get a dlc buying addiction. It’s not necessarily predatory (although it could be if the base game was incomplete and needed to be fixed by DLCs) like gambling is
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The subscription is €5 a month
The only DLC thing I hate is when there is DLC for sale on the same day of launch. That should be in the base game.
The thing with Valve is that, outside of this monetization of online games, they’ve unquestionably had an enormous positive impact on all sorts of things in this medium just by way of sheer market forces. They’ve done a lot of great open source work, and they’ve helped create a viable exit ramp from Windows.
I don’t know about the exit ramp for a casual user, if you mean ditching Windows altogether, since that’s not really happening. But what did happen - Microsoft didn’t get to own the central position in gaming on their own platform, and Steam is a program that installs other programs uninterrupted - just to take a sense of what rights it has there for almost two decades. They had GFWL, now MS Store, integrated with XBOX, and they still aren’t mentioned as a PC marketplace anywhere besides having a monopoly on Minecraft. There hasn’t been their IE for games, and it’s awesome. I can’t say Valve and MS even compete there, but having eggs in two different baskets is better than having them in just one. Two different monopolies instead of one.
We are basically getting a casino shoved in our faces most online games we play now. Not sure why this isn’t outlawed, it is absolutely having an effect on the population, not the mention the growing population specifically (growing as in kids being shoved this in their face while they grow up).
The only time I ever tried loot boxes was with TF2 and Dota2 back in the early to mid 2010s.
I very quickly realized that this wasn’t what I was looking for in gaming. These days I mostly play indie games where monetisation is not issue. Even gave up on Paradox because I am not okay with their DLC approach. I don’t mind paying for DLC, but one has to look at their release of Cities: Skylines 2 to see that they’ve really become the “EA of Europe”.
Fun trivia time!
It’s the beloved economist Yannis Varoufakis himself introduced drop trading and marketplace to TF2, which eventually spread everywhere else.
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Anytime I’ve ever complained about lootboxes/gacha/gambling mechanics, I’ve not been excluding valve. That said, there is a contingent of people that likes to chime in to conversations about steam to say people shouldn’t use steam because valve does lootboxes, and I don’t think it’s terribly relevant in those conversations.
If you take a look at all the loot box mechanics out there honestly theirs is the least bad. STILL BAD and shouldn’t be a thing, but they’re way less in-your-face and also you can sell the boxes that you get for free just by playing and use that to buy games.
I think it’s more bad because they were the first one to introduce all those predatory mechanics
I’m not defending lootboxes but I will defend history. They weren’t the first one. The physical implementation of the same concept has been around for decades (gatchapon in the east, baseball cards in the west), the first digital implementation was in Maplestory about half a decade before Valve and the first implementation in a western game was in FIFA (whichever it was that contained the ultimate team) about a year before Valve made their implementation.
There’s plenty of blame to throw at Valve, but some of the lootbox blame, namely the one you’ve brought up, should be thrown at EA because EA was first in the western market and the industry would’ve gone down the lootbox route even if Valve hadn’t done anything.
You’re right.
In Western regions (North America and Europe) around 2009, the video game industry saw the success of Zynga and other large publishers of social-network games that offered the games for free on sites like Facebook but included microtransactions to accelerate one’s progress in the game, providing that publishers could depend on revenue from post-sale transactions rather than initial sale.[23] One of the first games to introduce loot box-like mechanics was FIFA 09, made by Electronic Arts (EA), in March 2009 which allowed players to create a team of association football players from in-game card packs they opened using in-game currency earned through regular playing of the game or via microtransactions.[26] Another early game with loot box mechanics was Team Fortress 2 in September 2010, when Valve added the ability to earn random “crates” to be opened with purchased keys.[13] Valve’s Robin Walker stated that the intent was to create “network effects” that would draw more players to the game, so that there would be more players to obtain revenue from the keys to unlock crates.[23] Valve later transitioned to a free-to-play model, reporting an increase in player count of over 12 times after the transition,[25] and hired Yanis Varoufakis to research virtual economies.[27] Over the next few years many MMOs and multiplayer online battle arena games (MOBAs) also transitioned to a free-to-play business model to help grow out their player base, many adding loot-box monetisation in the process,[25][28] with the first two being both Star Trek Online[29] and The Lord of the Rings Online[citation needed] in December 2011.
He’s not wrong.
I often see gambling ads on my local TV channels that are from the government basically saying if you’re going to gamble at least gamble on stuff we profit from instead of giving your money to an out of country company. Is it fair to say it’s the same for valve doing good work with bad money that people would have spent gambling anyways? Idk i’m connecting the two but they might just both be bad XD
He is right. And remember you pay for a subscription you don’t own the game or dlc :
“As a Subscriber you may obtain access to certain services, software and content available to Subscribers or purchase certain Hardware (as defined below) on Steam. The Steam client software and any other software, content, and updates you download or access via Steam, including but not limited to Valve or third-party video games and in-game content, software associated with Hardware and any virtual items you may acquire in a Subscription Marketplace are referred to in this Agreement as “Content and Services;” the rights to access and/or use any Content and Services accessible through Steam are referred to in this Agreement as “Subscriptions.””
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Valve has one for the few lootbox systems that you can actually get value back out of outside the game. While they deserve all the same criticism of every lootbox game, they probably also deserve some praise for that.
That’s like giving a drug dealer praise for not selling the harder drugs.
Valve doesn’t deserve praise for being slightly less shitty when they’re doing one the shittiest things in gaming.
No it’s like praising a dealer that will buy back some drugs as well as sell them.
If you want to get specific it’s not praising the dealer for buying back the drugs. It’s praising the drug dealer for allowing the customers to sell those drugs to others while taking a small cut from every sale. But they still shouldn’t get any praise because they shouldn’t be doing that in the first place.
And casinos deserve a praise because you can win back some of the money you wasted.
The casino is honest about what they do compared to say Genshin Impact.
Genshin shows odds, Valve shows nothing.
Genshin directly shows you the stuff, Valve has a slot machine like animation.
I have students who play both Genshin and CS2 and spending money them. In Genshin they spend to get a character they want, in cs2 is to try to make money…
And casinos can hardly be honest given the couple of time I read about cases in which a customer wins at slot machine and casino claims it was faulty.
Wel atleast the casinos are established entities with decades of precedence while the other is weeb shit.
I don’t really care. Idiots are easily parted with their money. Thats their fault. I’ve played CS for decades and never paid for a chest or whatever. Never had an interest.
You know that gambling addiction is an illness?
After they start and get addicted. You’re not ill when you start . Unless you have something else going on not related. You have full power not to start. Just play the game, kill the other guy, have fun with your team. Thats all you need to do in any game. Thats all I’ve ever done in a game like CS. I don’t even notice all the other stuff. I play the game.
Congratulations on not having an addiction problem. If you can “not notice it” and still play the game, you’re not the target.
There was a ballot proposition in my state some years back to build a local casino. I’m not a gambler, but we all have our vices, and it’s possible it could stimulate the local economy, so I looked into it. Of the research I could find, the best-case scenario seemed to be that it maybe had no ill effects on the local populace. The worst case was that people susceptible to gambling addiction were now exposed to it when they otherwise wouldn’t have been, and that was devastating on those people’s lives. Not only is online gambling accessible to us anywhere, which is proving to be systemically problematic in things like sports betting apps now, Valve skirts current regulations to make it available to those under 21.
You should educate yourself on how addiction works if you don’t want to sound like an idiot yourself.
I think people just want someone to blame. It’s as stupid as blaming a scummy car salesman because you bought a car you can’t afford. You let yourself be talked into it. You let somebody sell you something. They didn’t take the money from your pocket. Maybe I just don’t understand because I didn’t grow in the privilege to have money to waste on digital shit in digital crates. And if my parents did (they didn’t) they would’ve never ever given me access to their banking. Thats foolish.
It’s like people who expect things to be censored because they’re too lazy to monitor their children or learn router and dns level blocking. Or for gods sake, don’t give you child a smart phone.
You share that opinion with the many libertarians in this world, but unfortunately it is not that simple (and has not that much to do with financial privilege). I know it is en vogue to dismiss scientific insight, but sociology, psychology and medicine paint a very complex picture with many internal and external risk factors.
Exposing children and young adults to a gambling system with a very low entry barrier in a space that is hard for parents/guardians to oversee means malevolently accepting that you‘ll turn some of them into addicts that would not be otherwise. It’s like selling meth at a school yard fence.
If you are not an addict, that just means that you haven‘t been in the right (wrong) situation (yet). That of course is a true privilege.
You know, we restrict and ban certain drugs like fentanyl and heroin respectively because their addiction potential is so high and can cause a lot of harm at the population level.
Sure people have individual responsibility, but it’s also unrealistic to expect most people to resist an entire social and structural environments geared around certain behaviours, like drinking alcohol or smoking back in the day. Not everyone has the same has the same ironclad will and perfect emotionless reasoning as you, especially youth–remember they used to have smoking ads aimed at kids? And now it’s vaping.
While a lot of things I can easily resist, like narcotics and alcohol, I still get influenced by certain types of ads to try things, get addicted to certain games, and eat way too much junk food. For a lot of things, you can’t know it’s going to be a problem for you until it’s a problem. Plenty of people buy a few loot boxes here and there and don’t develop a gambling addiction. That doesn’t mean gambling addiction isn’t a risk and problem to take seriously and address at the systemic level, not just leave it to the individual.
Casinos and gambling venues IRL are almost always their own thing, you can’t go one by mistake and you shouldn’t see them surfacing in unspecialized common spaces, e.g. on Olympics stadium.
In videogames the casino element penetrates recreational spaces that were mostly safe from that for years. Not as a shadow scheme with reselling/gambling on some third party site - this can’t be stopped - but in the game itself. Valve’s promotional algorythm walks around the lobby giving everyone free spins coupons, that not only reaches mentally unstable addicts, but also normalizes the practice of jerking the slot machine from time to time for the larger userbase. Every actor in that trend is a self-serving agent, but their collective influence puts a foot in the door and proclaims that gambling is a casual part of a daily life and there’s nothing wrong in seeing it everywhere, even parting with a couple of bucks recreationally, that in the end makes bazillions to the house.
