Valve have updated the developer guidelines for releasing a game on Steam, making it clear that the scourge of mobile gaming advertising-based business models are not going to work on Steam.
Lootboxes are at least a conscious action you must take. They definitely have the same problems as gambling (because that’s what they are), but you can also choose not to engage with them. Ads however, are forced upon you, and do things that you cannot see (track you) and cannot turn off.
Well apart from anything else rare cards actually are worth real money. But there’s no legitimate way to sell loop boxes if you decide you want to get out of it.
Rare cards are only worth real money because there is a secondary market for them.
As I understand it, the same is true for lootbox drops. The only difference is in how rare an item actually is, but that is also reflected in price, since the resale is entirely market driven.
You could say that Valve rigs the drop rate, but you could say the same thing for Magic. It’s all manufactured shortage.
You could say that Magic items are tangible…but honestly I don’t see how that’s an argument in the modern digital-first era.
I’m not trying to defend lootboxes…not directly, at least. Just trying to understand the hypocrisy in the gaming community comparing these two.
But trading cards are real physical things that you can sell loot boxes and virtual goods that will disappear if the game developers ever decide that they’ll go and you also can’t sell them.
The problem with the CS go gambling site was that that was an extra thing on top of the skins. The gambling was added by a third party.
No one’s gambling with Pokémon cards. Any attempt to do so and the Pokémon company would come down on you like a ton of bricks they’re about as ligacious as Nintendo.
There two big differences to me are scale and value. A ccg has rare cards, but they aren’t actually that rare compared to loot boxes. Loot boxes tend to have both lower drop rates and pollute their drops with lots of garbage, even for rare drops. Secondly, physical cards have value, you can sell or trade them, you can buy singles of cards you want. You can use them for things other than the game as well.
Aside from drop rates everything you said applies to Valve too. Counter Strike skins can be traded or sold for real cash (tied to steam wallet, but still), and you can purchase singles of what you want.
I know other games loot boxes dont follow this, but its interesting for the sake of comparison.
From my POV, there isn’t a difference, other than a CCG gives you physical objects so wotc can’t just up and decide that they don’t want to run magic anymore and make all of that loot disappear.
But from the gambling perspective, it’s exactly the same. Oh, actually one other difference, electronic gambling can fuck with the odds in real time while physical cards need to be determined when the pack is assembled. But it’s still based on false scarcity.
I read that games with ads were already banned from Steam a long time ago. That explains why we don’t have more junk in the Steam store. Judging by how many never completed early access asset flip games there are, it would be a complete cesspool with ad-supported games. Good decision by Valve.
Valve applying a bit of regulation (the right way) and still making piles of money, weird how that works.
I’ve been saying for years that if we want healthy economies, compare to human health. When the factors keeping growth at a controlled rate are disrupted, you end up with cancer.
Rant is related although covering hardware manufacturing rather than software:
Commodore manufactured in the USA and Europe some of the best-selling personal computers ever under lack of regulation. When the market became dominated by IBM-compatibles and Macintoshes, Commodore folded and left Superfund sites all over. (Superfund is basically EPA disaster declaration allowing for taxpayer funds release for large-scale cleanup operations.) Privatize the profits and socialize the losses. (lack of regulation led to the wrong way)
I strongly recommend going to this government website and checking out the superfund sites located in your area. If you live anywhere east of the Mississippi, your chances of living near or not far from an illegal dumping site are really high.
I almost wish I hadn’t looked; knew my area had paper mills and wood processing, they’ve been dredging the waterways for PCBs (chlorinated organics) for decades.
I work with electronics and have heard from multiple older gentleman that when they were young, they saw old high-voltage transformers from power poles being replaced which would be leaking off the backs of the trucks until empty or even purposely tipped into the storm drains. Why is healthcare so expensive? 🤔
No apologies for being politics-adjacent in the Gaming community, billionaires aren’t keeping their hands out of anything either. Keep rewarding Valve and the good companies and shitting on the bad ones!
Haven’t seen a game that uses ads like this, but very good that it’s strictly prohibited now. That shit should never have taken off on mobile, but alas. At least we can prevent it on PC.
If you see Google launch a “free game only” store for PC, get worried.
I would be astonished if there was anything good on it though. If you are going to make a microtransaction game you probably don’t want to put a lot of effort into it because people won’t play it for more than about a week. This stuff’s only profitable if you can shovel new games out of the door on a regular basis.
Oh there wouldn’t need to be anything actually good on it.
You just need Superbowl advert money and suddenly you’ve got millions of users with no money.
I suspect the only reason this hasn’t happened already is that those millions of users are already on mobile, being flashed with garish noisy adverts every two minutes of gameplay, and moving them to PC some of the time wouldn’t really increase ad revenue…
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Common valve W
That’s nice and all,
but when will they tackle loot boxes?
That shit has pushed plenty of minors into gambling addictions, but they don’t crack down on it, since they get a sweet cut of it all.
Valve in general isn’t the worst company,
but they’re far from innocent as well.
They won’t, because loot boxes are their main source of income.
And this is exactly why “good companies” like Valve cannot save us. Good companies will never be a substitute for good regulations.
Once loot boxes stop buying yachts.
I agree with the overall sentiment, however:
Lootboxes are at least a conscious action you must take. They definitely have the same problems as gambling (because that’s what they are), but you can also choose not to engage with them. Ads however, are forced upon you, and do things that you cannot see (track you) and cannot turn off.
I get the hate for lootboxes, but as a casual who hasn’t played PC games in forever…what makes the lootbox mechanic any worse than CCGs?
Couldn’t it be said that MtG and other CCGs have been guilty of the exact same thing since their inception?
Well apart from anything else rare cards actually are worth real money. But there’s no legitimate way to sell loop boxes if you decide you want to get out of it.
Rare cards are only worth real money because there is a secondary market for them.
As I understand it, the same is true for lootbox drops. The only difference is in how rare an item actually is, but that is also reflected in price, since the resale is entirely market driven.
You could say that Valve rigs the drop rate, but you could say the same thing for Magic. It’s all manufactured shortage.
You could say that Magic items are tangible…but honestly I don’t see how that’s an argument in the modern digital-first era.
I’m not trying to defend lootboxes…not directly, at least. Just trying to understand the hypocrisy in the gaming community comparing these two.
But trading cards are real physical things that you can sell loot boxes and virtual goods that will disappear if the game developers ever decide that they’ll go and you also can’t sell them.
The problem with the CS go gambling site was that that was an extra thing on top of the skins. The gambling was added by a third party.
No one’s gambling with Pokémon cards. Any attempt to do so and the Pokémon company would come down on you like a ton of bricks they’re about as ligacious as Nintendo.
There two big differences to me are scale and value. A ccg has rare cards, but they aren’t actually that rare compared to loot boxes. Loot boxes tend to have both lower drop rates and pollute their drops with lots of garbage, even for rare drops. Secondly, physical cards have value, you can sell or trade them, you can buy singles of cards you want. You can use them for things other than the game as well.
Aside from drop rates everything you said applies to Valve too. Counter Strike skins can be traded or sold for real cash (tied to steam wallet, but still), and you can purchase singles of what you want.
I know other games loot boxes dont follow this, but its interesting for the sake of comparison.
From my POV, there isn’t a difference, other than a CCG gives you physical objects so wotc can’t just up and decide that they don’t want to run magic anymore and make all of that loot disappear.
But from the gambling perspective, it’s exactly the same. Oh, actually one other difference, electronic gambling can fuck with the odds in real time while physical cards need to be determined when the pack is assembled. But it’s still based on false scarcity.
CCGs hasn’t had a massive, massive Epic Games-paid astroturfing campaign against valve/steam like ‘lootboxes’ has. That’s the difference.
Mate, they practically invented them.
Valve are the ones that popularized loot boxes. They’re never going to tackle them.
I read that games with ads were already banned from Steam a long time ago. That explains why we don’t have more junk in the Steam store. Judging by how many never completed early access asset flip games there are, it would be a complete cesspool with ad-supported games. Good decision by Valve.
Valve applying a bit of regulation (the right way) and still making piles of money, weird how that works.
I’ve been saying for years that if we want healthy economies, compare to human health. When the factors keeping growth at a controlled rate are disrupted, you end up with cancer.
Rant is related although covering hardware manufacturing rather than software:
Commodore manufactured in the USA and Europe some of the best-selling personal computers ever under lack of regulation. When the market became dominated by IBM-compatibles and Macintoshes, Commodore folded and left Superfund sites all over. (Superfund is basically EPA disaster declaration allowing for taxpayer funds release for large-scale cleanup operations.) Privatize the profits and socialize the losses. (lack of regulation led to the wrong way)
to anyone reading this comment:
I strongly recommend going to this government website and checking out the superfund sites located in your area. If you live anywhere east of the Mississippi, your chances of living near or not far from an illegal dumping site are really high.
https://www.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-where-you-live
I almost wish I hadn’t looked; knew my area had paper mills and wood processing, they’ve been dredging the waterways for PCBs (chlorinated organics) for decades.
I work with electronics and have heard from multiple older gentleman that when they were young, they saw old high-voltage transformers from power poles being replaced which would be leaking off the backs of the trucks until empty or even purposely tipped into the storm drains. Why is healthcare so expensive? 🤔
No apologies for being politics-adjacent in the Gaming community, billionaires aren’t keeping their hands out of anything either. Keep rewarding Valve and the good companies and shitting on the bad ones!
Haven’t seen a game that uses ads like this, but very good that it’s strictly prohibited now. That shit should never have taken off on mobile, but alas. At least we can prevent it on PC.
Well you can prevent it on Steam. And I don’t think Epic really have an ad network to abuse for this either.
If you see Google launch a “free game only” store for PC, get worried. Although Google being Google, it will be deleted within two years anyway.
I would be astonished if there was anything good on it though. If you are going to make a microtransaction game you probably don’t want to put a lot of effort into it because people won’t play it for more than about a week. This stuff’s only profitable if you can shovel new games out of the door on a regular basis.
Oh there wouldn’t need to be anything actually good on it.
You just need Superbowl advert money and suddenly you’ve got millions of users with no money.
I suspect the only reason this hasn’t happened already is that those millions of users are already on mobile, being flashed with garish noisy adverts every two minutes of gameplay, and moving them to PC some of the time wouldn’t really increase ad revenue…
common Valve W
A good move. Nip that shit in the bud right now.
The mobile stores are fucking unusable, a sea of ad-ridden garbage.
You can always tell when a game has been ported over from PC due to the fact the game takes up the whole screen.
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