Valve loot boxes have always worked that way. They didn’t change them to skirt regulations. I don’t really find it very scummy at all. Nothing in the loot boxes can give you an advantage in the game. Most of the games that include this feature are free to play. This is how they make money from their game. The vast majority of people don’t pay very much at all. You can play the games and have tons of fun and never interact with the loot box system. It’s an optional thing for people who like the game so much that they want to pay. It’s basically donate to valve and have a chance to unlock a cosmetic item in game.
This completely ignores the fact that teenagers play the game, it’s essentially gambling, streamers spending decent time opening cases, FOMO, the status that comes with rare skins, skin markets and so on. I sorta of get what you’re saying insofar as not being PTW and cosmetics being the least obnoxious of this type of practice but it’s still super scummy. To the exclusion of CS2 and maybe a handful of other being free is the point, so they can get you into the slot machine that is these sort of mechanics and squeeze money from people (mostly kids). Don’t get me started on Valve generating billions from this and CS2 is still a mess.
Some good points.
I can’t remember where I saw this, but a game recently made their loot boxes randomly generate loot which was then shown to the player who had the choice of whether or not to open a box. This is much better than blindly opening boxes where you won’t know whether or not you will want the item inside.
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Valve loot boxes have always worked that way. They didn’t change them to skirt regulations. I don’t really find it very scummy at all. Nothing in the loot boxes can give you an advantage in the game. Most of the games that include this feature are free to play. This is how they make money from their game. The vast majority of people don’t pay very much at all. You can play the games and have tons of fun and never interact with the loot box system. It’s an optional thing for people who like the game so much that they want to pay. It’s basically donate to valve and have a chance to unlock a cosmetic item in game.
This completely ignores the fact that teenagers play the game, it’s essentially gambling, streamers spending decent time opening cases, FOMO, the status that comes with rare skins, skin markets and so on. I sorta of get what you’re saying insofar as not being PTW and cosmetics being the least obnoxious of this type of practice but it’s still super scummy. To the exclusion of CS2 and maybe a handful of other being free is the point, so they can get you into the slot machine that is these sort of mechanics and squeeze money from people (mostly kids). Don’t get me started on Valve generating billions from this and CS2 is still a mess.
Ok so morning outrage clicks for naught?
Some good points. I can’t remember where I saw this, but a game recently made their loot boxes randomly generate loot which was then shown to the player who had the choice of whether or not to open a box. This is much better than blindly opening boxes where you won’t know whether or not you will want the item inside.