AFAIK loot boxes are illegal in many European countries.
If you want to monetize, do it properly, and sell the skins where you can see what you buy, and eliminate the gambling aspect completely.
It's the only thing that should be legal, because it's the only thing that is morally defensible.
Sad that Valve is participating in this shit.
this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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Is Valve better than many other gaming companies? Yes. Is it because they have better morals? No.
It's because they're not publicly traded, so their practices focus on long-term profit and growth instead of short-term. They dont treat cusomer better than EA because it's the right thing to do. They do it because the short-term profits from it are less than the long-term profits from having a loyal customer base.
They still operate for profit above all else.
Gabe is a billionaire yacht collector. He's not your friend. He's a parasite with good marketing.
say it louder for the people who haven't internalized that there's no such thing as a good billionaire
What do you have against the people of Zimbabwe?
LMAO
We don't judge companies by their intent, but by their actions. Does it matter WHY Steam treats customers better than EA, as long as they do so?
Finally, a sane comment on valve
It’s because they’re not publicly traded
A privately-owned company has better morals by default. Most are also privately-owned because they want to keep their morals.
Valve's growth of Steam was flexibly scalable in a way that didn't require a huge capital investment like buying a bunch of real estate, so they didn't need the cash infusionoffered by going public. Keeping it private is more profitable.
so they didn’t need the cash infusionoffered by going public. Keeping it private is more profitable.
You think greedy corporations give a shit about "needs" or "long-term plans"? Keeping it private is more profitable in the long term, but most corporations don't think in those time periods. They think about the next quarter, making that line go up all the time, and when to cash out of their sweet infusion and dump the company.
Valve and, by extension, Gabe's decision to keep the company private is a choice. He wants a legacy that lasts, and you don't get that from fucking over your customers or making the company public.
I guess that's the sad truth.
Hey but some of his yachts have like, hospital beds and shit. No I don't know why that makes it better but apparently it does.
So, basically Apple?
parasite
How dare they exploit the human need for video game cosmetics!
Right? Heaven forbid anyone have any level of self fucking control.
Sad that Valve is participating in this shit.
Valve started this shit.
Valve is and always has been a scumbag company.
Goddammit you are right, this is what I got from a Google search:
Loot Boxes (2004/2010): While randomized items originated in earlier Eastern games, Valve introduced loot crates (crates and keys) to the Western market in Team Fortress 2 (2010)
I checked to verify the information, as it was part of an AI response. And it is true.
But at least it was a free to play game. Later other companies also had it in games that were charged full price for.
Rocket League went from crates to blueprints when the crates became illegal in games in the EU.
I stopped buying shit immediately. I went from shelling out ~$50/month (I had to set a limit on my create opening spending), to $0/month. Because now, the shit I would consider spending a create key on costs more than what I paid for the game, for a single little cosmetic item. Their prices are insane. So now they get nothing from me, and have done since.
It's definitely better than crates, because that was probably thousands of dollars I spent on basically nothing, but their prices are way too high now. They missed the mark.
Good thing you stopped wasting money on that shit. 👍
Yeah dude. Better to put that money on new games instead! 😅
The fucking hat simulator, who here remembers?
Fifa Ultimate Team which eventually made its way into Madden and then 2K with NBA
I don't mean anything by this question, but do you see any casino as a scumbag company too? or is there a difference in how valve is operating that puts them in that category?
Not the person you asked but I definitely see all casinos as scumbags, holy shit yes. Very exploitative business, definitely. Preying on weakness.
that's fairly true, preying on weakness and all that. I guess I shouldve angled the question a bit different.
is there any form of gambling that isn't scummy? I don't think gambling is inherently exploitative, personally.
I don't think we have always thought of gambling in general as scummy. Although maybe. I don't know. But inherently I think it is, because it exploits something we all share as humans — hope, without an innate understanding of probability and statistics. And I don't think the early gambling profiteers understood how much they were actually exploiting people. But I don't know much history there, so maybe they were. If so, more to my point of scumminess. 😅
Gambling among friends, without a 'house' to rake a percentage off the top, is arguably non-scummy.
Weird, I was told that Mass Effect 3 started loot boxes.
The other person who replied to you shows that loot boxes predated Mass Effect 3, which came out in 2012. (Fun fact: the Legendary Edition removes all that crap.)
Fifa ultimate team for video games pre-dates Valve doing crates in TF2
Mmm... you could even say that some people have a crippling predisposition towards surprises.
Company that sells gambling products and takes a cut when someone sells the item from said gambling says gambling is fine.
LETS STOP ALL GAMBLING GOYS!!!!!
Given I am a patient gamer who has some nostalgia for some older titles and loves mostly artsy indie games, my shift to GOG this year, as a new Linux gamer, after having been on Steam from day one, was painless.
Do you have issues with controllers? I feel like I would miss steam input a lot!
I am not a peasant. I don't play with controllers.
I wish I could go back to the days of CS 1.3-1.6.
And unreal infiltration. And UT99
And team fortress.
I suppose Valve's core argument isn't entirely unreasonable. I do think there's a bit of a difference between collectibles and lootboxes, in the sense that there's mystery boxes that have like one out of six equally distributed figurines (meaning each one has the same value basically) or a mystery box with a vanishingly small chance for an exceedingly rare item. I'd argue the latter is far closer to (problematic) gambling than the former. Valve's lootboxes fit into the latter category for the most part though.
Valve has gone EA?
~~Valve basically invented lootboxes. So no, it’s more like Valve paved the way for EA~~
EEDIT: not true, I was mistaken. It is more accurate to say Valve helped popularise the mechanic
Fifa Ultimate Team predates Valve TF2 crates
All these comments, and no one is talking about the hot rod computer in the photo?
Gamesradar's budget is not what it was.