Oh, I thought this was going to be about the trading cards they implemented in steam. Those are so lame and cheap I wasn’t bothered by this.

For any non-readers-of-articles, this is about a loot box mechanic added to counterstrike (which is fair criticism imho)

ah yes dean “jump the ship” hall who fucked off dayz development when it released very half baked which almost killed the games future

screw lootboxes too

From my perspective its because they’re still somehow not even among the worst. Their only way of advertising their gambling is by giving the player a crate. This crate can be opened for $2.50, or sold on the marketplace to someone else who wants to open it. This money can be spent on buying real games.

In cod, you get full screen advertisements on the regular for $10+ skin bundles. In almost every game as a service you get progress in a battle pass that ALWAYS directly contrasts your usually untradeable rewards with what you could be getting if you paid this month’s subscription fee.

Valve does have a scummy system, but they make it less annoying and if you choose to not participate you usually benefit with real funds to use on steam. Its hard to hate that over the aggressive advertising of its competitors.

All IMO, though. I’m no psychologist.

I don’t want to defend them too much but honestly out of all the loot boxes out there theirs is the least bad. You can even just sell the boxes you get for free by playing and buy shit (on Steam) with the money.

I was going to say… I literally had zero clue what the hell they were talking about. So Valve implemented a crappy moneymaking mechanism in one of their various games that can actually be used to leveraged to purchase games on Steam…

I may start playing Counter Strike again just to sell loot boxes to other people and make my games cheaper.

Flack? Giving someone some slack is giving them a break. Giving someone flack is giving them a hard time. If something’s outside someone’s control, giving them slack about it is a kind thing but giving them flack would be unfair.

This, I bought a Triple A title once with money from drops without never interacting with this shit. I would play anyway but I got “paid” while playing. It’s a marketing tactic and we need to be aware of this, some people will see the opportunity to “make money” playing and will invest a shit ton of cash to maybe drop a rare item but if you don’t do that you just getting a little bit of money to buy games with.

Cause Gaben. He’s your cool buddy uncle guy that’s into video games, hunting and sous dive and not another billionaire. He’s a cool good billionaire! His yacht is a cool yacht!

I definitely don’t deify him but it does help that he’s not taking his billions to try to weaken democracy… at least that we are aware of.

Brand and billionaire loyalty.

Selling is the problem, it makes it actual gambling.

Oh sure, brainfog on my part

For most people it’s harder to hate Valve with the positive things they do. Obviously they shouldn’t get a pass for this, but forming a conflicted opinion seems to be against human nature.

No, being able to find items for free and sell them is not the problem or what makes it gambling

This is half true at least. It’s not just insane nonsense.

Someone get ja rule on the phone

Counterstrike has had loot boxes for many years, they weren’t recently added. What was recently added was a mechanic that allows 5 lower value items (certain gun skins) to be exchanged for a random higher value item (glove or knife skins). It’s acting to level the market. If anything, this change serves to inhibit loot box gambling by cutting the possibility of hitting a real money jackpot.

They do.

Flak. If you think the spelling is weird, it’s someone’s name.

This guy will get tons of flak and maybe even death treats for criticizing Valve. For whatever reason there is a rabid cult like following for Valve and Gabe Newell. I remember several years ago I said something like “Valve is still a company that’s out to make money at the end of the day” and several of my gaming friends instantly were no longer friends. It’s quite hilarious for me to just think about that even today.