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Valve Made $1 Billion From CS Cases Last Year, Data Claims - Insider Gaming
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this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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Yeah, it’s literally unregulated gambling.
I would say yes, they are unregulated gambling. People also spend ludicrous amounts of money on cards. Though I don’t think that should factor into whether or not something is or isn’t unregulated gambling. It’s the chance product, not the money spent on it.
Valve literally runs a marketplace that allows people to sell their skins for cash.
This is like playing for tokens that the store across the street will conveniently purchase from you.
Trading cards and gambling addiction have been studied for years. TCGs may not function the same as a slot machine, but it does trigger the same thing in your brain.
And that is what’s dangerous.
You're right. TCGs with blind draw boosters are also bad. I didn't complain about Pokemon cards back in 2000 because I was a child and didn't comprehend that that was what I was doing. I definitely stopped partaking in Magic: The Gathering as an adult though when I realized it was a neverending gambling treadmill. Today I frequent fighting game locals that are kept afloat by Yu Gi Oh gambling addicts who fill the trash cans with booster wrappers as they go back to the counter over and over again to buy more packs.
There have definitely been complaints about gambling in relation to collectible cards. I don't think anything has come of them in legal terms, but many complaints have been voiced.
Here's one: Trading cards are something you own. Skins are limited to a game you're licensing.
Here's another: trading cards are portable; they can be put in a collection for display, put in a safety deposit box, etc. When CS goes, all the skins go with it.
Another minor one: baseball cards are informational, the skins are cosmetic only.
Mind you, I think both are forms of unregulated gambling and trading cards as well as loot boxes should have better societal scrutiny, but they aren't identical.
Edited for typo
Yepp, while there are some fundamental differences, I think all these things are a form of unregulated gambling.
Fuck it, throw blind boxes in too.
Many would say so. Wizards of the Coast, the makers of Magic the Gathering, have worked very hard at balancing the two sides of the coin. On one side, they design cards such that power levels determine the demand (and thus price) for rarer cards on the resale market, and on the other they argue that the cards have no intrinsic value so that buying packs can't count as gambling since there's technically no expected profit for the buyers.