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New York sues Valve for 'letting children and adults illegally gamble' with loot boxes
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this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2026
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~~Love how they chose Valve specifically. I'd think it'd be better going after the companies making those games rather than a distributor.~~
~~Not really gonna discourage the game creators from making loot box mechanics.~~
~~Though I will say that I think any and everyone profiting from loot boxes should get fined wherever and whenever possible. I'd just start somewhere more impactful.~~
Edit: I see I had a proper logical short circuit in my original statement.
I only considered loot boxes as mechanics required for game changing advantages, gear, and loot. Not things like cosmetics.
Last time I played CS it didn't even have cosmetics, I only played DOTA as a Warcraft 3 mod, and I thought TF2 was limited to hats and sidegrades that could be unblocked through playing and achievements still.
Furthermore, I didn't stop to consider that people would actually gamble their money away on in game cosmetic items.
That's on me, not taking the time to consider things properly in the early morning hours.
I'd like to thank the people who pointed out my error, and I'm pleasantly surprised about how civil and to the point everyone was. A nice throwback to how I remember the internet used to be, though I'm probably looking at that with rose tinted goggles too.
Cheers!
Believe it or not, Valve do actually make games too, and these games do contain lootboxes. From the article:
They have been burnt for this in some other countries in the past and so they have developed alternatives which are location specific. Not sure if New York would've been too specific a place for this to be enabled or if they just didn't care enough here.
Valve do have a history of popularising shading monetisation techniques e.g. battle passes. They are better than a lot of the competition, but far from being the saint that a lot of gamers believe them to be.
In NL and BE opening crates /cases is disabled, because of a lawsuit.
The fun part is that in NL if you are 18+ you are allowed to gamble, online or offline. So I contacted steam a couple years back asking why I could gamle my lifesavings away, but why I am not allowed to spend 2 bucks on a key to open a crate for a virtual item.