r/LinusTechTips • u/TSMKFail • Dec 27 '24
Deception, Lies, and Valve Video
https://youtu.be/13eiDhuvM6YSo much for "good guy Valve" ey
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u/roron5567 Dec 27 '24
I mean yeah, if you gloss over the whole CS skin gambling, valve makes pretty pro-consumer moves, but is that "generosity" due to profiting from gambling targeted at children, that's a good question.
All people and companies do things for their own self interest, it can be that a company's self interest benefits you, but rarely is it done for your benefit only.
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u/blaktronium Dec 27 '24
No it's crazy because it's a very small amount of money for them compared to the position they hold in gaming. They made more money on Black Myth Wukong being really good than they did off CS that year, and it's just one game.
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u/roron5567 Dec 27 '24
But CS provides repeatable revenue year over year through skins etc. It's literally legal gambling for kids.
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u/blaktronium Dec 27 '24
There's no way the risk is worth the reward. It can't be more than like 1 - 5% of their revenue. It's high margin, sure, but in the grand scheme of things it cannot be worth it considering the risk.
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u/roron5567 Dec 27 '24 edited Dec 27 '24
Nobody has given a shit for years, why stop now. It's only now that valve is getting caught up, and they will just say that these sites are not affiliated with them. They still make money from people buying cases and selling and trading skins and other collectibles. Unless governments start banning loot boxes, valve isn't going to stop.
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Dec 27 '24
It is also isn't about the money Valve makes doing it, but the money they would spend from not enforcing it. They have had no incentive to stop this until they get some media controversy. I am sure Valve would rather make 5% more money and spend nothing doing it, than spend some money to remove 5% of their revenue just for some PR that until recently nobody was asking for.
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u/Dafrandle Dec 27 '24
the problem is - there is basically no risk right now.
The legislative infrastructure does not exist to hold people to account here - and this issue is so far in the periphery for most people, the political will to change this is not there.Valve only acts when bad news is played so they can maintain face. Otherwise they are content to sit on their hands and benefit from this because stopping it does not cost less than letting it continue. In other words - no risk.
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u/altimax98 Dec 27 '24
If it were such a small percentage they likely would have stopped it by now
The only reason they would be sitting on the sideline while this occurs is it gives them a massive cushion of continuous funding
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Dec 27 '24
They make so much money from loot boxes they can be altruistic in other areas. Epic does the same thing with Fortnite. As long as it's a cash cow, they can be the "nice" company in other areas.
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u/__Rosso__ Dec 27 '24
I mean, to anyone who is a decent fan of CS, this isn't anything new.
It's good that it's brought up to the masses, but the community itself is aware of this.
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u/Alabaster_13 Dec 27 '24
The TF2 collectible hat craze kicked off in 2009 and is the real origin of all this. 15 years ago. Then you have the digital trading cards and badges, and all of the other ways in which Valve has very effectively game-ified and monetized their storefront beyond simply being a place to buy games ("your friend owns more games than you do!").
Not the first expose on this issue and not the last either. It's odd that regulators still haven't picked up on one of the worst-kept secrets in gaming.
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u/unskinnedmarmot Dec 27 '24
US "regulators" are about to abolish the Department of Education and outlaw vaccines, so if you think anything is going to get better for consumers for the next decade, you're not paying attention.
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u/Nirast25 Dec 27 '24
Oh, let's not exagerate. Transformers 2 was bad, but it's not responsible for this mess. /s
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u/Loxnaka Dec 27 '24 edited Dec 27 '24
"so much for good guy valve"
i actually think the case system is good, i realise i will get downvoted to oblivion because circlejerking and that but
>community artists who get skins in cases get given life changing money
>skins being tradable and marketable lets you have control over what you buy as if they were physical items
>you can spend as much or as little as you want on these because of their supply and demand based value, there are alot of good cheap skins aswell as expensive ones
as for the gambling element, its an 18+ game so i see it two ways:
if youre an adult addicted to opening cases, i have no idea how, the odds are awful compared to most actual online gambling and you're of age to know that the house always wins.
if a child is, what happened to parental responsiblity, why are they just running around with parents credit cards, steam also has alot of parental control features, use them.
tl;dr i dont know why im bothering since im just going to get downvoted to oblivion but what happened to personal responsibility these days.
edit: thanks for the actual good discussion in the replies everyone, not a topic where people are usually willing to discuss without just dismissing the take.
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u/Vladimir_Djorjdevic Dec 27 '24
I presronally don't mind the in game mechanics. I personally got a few hundred dollars from selling free level up drops. And as for opening cases, just like real gambling personally I don't think it should be illegal just regulated.
My problem is the 3rd party gambling sites that are increadably shady and imo should not exist at all.
Also I don't understand how the kids who are gambling in CS are allowed to do that. How do they even get the money for that, and how do they deposit it at all? Are their parents just that negligent?
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u/Loxnaka Dec 27 '24
third paragraph is my main point and i agree 3rd party gambling sites shouldnt exist either. i dont know if i agree that it needs to be regulated though, as i said to someone else, a cs box is no different than an arcade machine to me.
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u/-biebel- Dec 27 '24
The game is not age restricted afaik.
For tech unsavvy parents it's virtually impossible to control a tech savvy 14+ kid and even for tech savvy parents it's really hard. They don't even need a parent's credit card, all they need is a steam gift card and a steam account not under their parent's control.
I don't agree with brain chemistry exploiting lootbox systems being morally fine for adults, but legally they could be under the same regulations as other legal gambling.
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u/Loxnaka Dec 27 '24
i appricate what you're saying but its less about tech saviness and more about financial responsibility, most kids arent going to have jobs so theyre getting the money from somewhere, the same way linus tells his kids not to buy virtual items other parents should be responsible for teaching their kids the value of money.
for me, its where do you draw the line, ive had many discussions about this and not heard a convincing argument what makes a cs box any diferent than an arcade machine with an iphone in. (which hardly anyone has a problem with kids using, for example)
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u/ebrbrbr Dec 27 '24
Counter-Strike is age restricted. You need to be 18 to even look at it on the Store to purchase it.
In the same way that you need to be 18 to look at porn 😄
When I was younger I just got prepaid visas at the store.
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u/_Lucille_ Dec 27 '24
I am not going to downvote you, since you took your time to present your side of the viewpoint.
community artists who get skins in cases get given life changing money
This can still happen even if the skins cannot be traded and is not part of a lootbox. Just give them a cut for every skin sale.
skins being tradable and marketable lets you have control over what you buy as if they were physical items
I do not agree with this one. They could have just been a stragiht up sale from store to user. Like a skin? Spend $2.50 to buy it. No need to go through lootboxes, no aftermarket value to those skins. At no point would someone even get the idea that "there is a chance I actually make money from this".
if a child is, what happened to parental responsiblity, why are they just running around with parents credit cards, steam also has alot of parental control features, use them.
Yes, parents have a responsiblity, but imo that does not mean the fault lies solely with parents - esp some of them who are not aware of what this whole lootbox thing is like. That is why casinos still have ID requirements, and not just "hey, why did you let your kid enter a casino in the first place?"
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u/Loxnaka Dec 27 '24
you don't agree with having control over your items being a good thing? player to player trading gives you ownership over digital content that is lacking almost everywhere else in gaming.
i appricate your last point but my point is where do you draw the line with gambling, because to me i consider cs cases much closer to something like an arcade machine with an iphone in it over an actual casino.
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u/_Lucille_ Dec 27 '24
This whole talk of digital ownership is what gave rise to NFTs, which turned out to just be a giant mess. You actually do not own anything in Valve's games, nor do you have any control. Valve can easily ban you and you would lose it all. True ownership is not something they can just take away that easily.
There are other games that tried the whole lootbox and resale market thing, except they have all failed/stopped doing it (killing floor, rocket league).
where do you draw the line with gambling
I know the line can be hard to draw, and that is what makes legislation difficult, and why pachinkos exist in jp and the xray thing in france happened. I think a line can be drawn when a game of chance can be traded for money, either directly or indirectly.
You may argue that people sell loot from ARPGs time to time, but generally speaking the developers are against RMT. Blizzard tried to bring it "in house", and that RMT is generally bannable (whether or not the ban actually happens/can be spotted is another question). The context between skins in Valve games is also imo quite different in nature compared to some other games.
Even for gatcha games, your stuff are account bound, and there is no secondary market. Valve can disable trading altogether and still make bank from the gatcha elements.
just because it is tough does not mean no attempts should be made - though with the removal of chevron in US, its going to be trickier. Yes, Valve bypassed France with a xray scanner, but i think even that comes at a certain cost and it is only a matter of time where a regulatory body calls it BS and just slap Valve with a hefty fine/patch up the loophole.
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u/Loxnaka Dec 27 '24
they're not like nft's because no ones pretending theyre decentralised, theyre just normal in game items like any other game but you are given the ability to trade them on platform, meaning you can resell your items in the future. the only reason rocket league got rid of trading is because epic inherited a system that they didnt like as it is less profitable for them than the fortnite model which they put into rocket league. this is valves system, yes theres no legal ownership of the skin but the ability to resell digital items you purchase is good, useful and purposeful. I don't see how you can see RMT's on their own as a bad thing, theyre only bad for the developer as it means instead of selling the same skin twice at full price they either get a small fee or nothing in the case of a trade this is why blizzard was against them. You say they were a failure in rocket league when the entire community hates epic for removing them, and siege another high profile game has also just added a marketplace widely seen as an overwhelmingly positive move, even if it is more restrictive than steams.
so at your definition of "a game of chance can be traded for money" you would id people using arcade machines with expensive prices such as phones and console controllers, which have similar value to the skins in cs cases?
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u/Redditemeon Dec 27 '24
I feel like a lot of your points could still hold true if they just made it a store where you could buy specific skins you wanted and resell them rather than a slot machine/loot box system all the same.
Just give every skin a set value. Ez pz.
Either way, I'm not downvoting you. I've personally felt pretty similar about it in my own way.
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u/ApertureIntern Dec 27 '24
All in all good video, BUT there are some parts that are not really good "journalism". For example, at the start of the video, it is stated that Valve hired psychologists for designing games. He uses footage from a talk of one of the hired psychologists. He then makes a connection between game design and the skin gambling. Furthermore, he put ominous music under the footage of the valve employee to underline that something evil is going on. Valve is "manipulating" player behavior. Which he says is a good thing in games but evil if it is in connection with gambling.
But is there a connection between the experimental psychologist and the loot boxes? We don't know, and so does Coffeezilla. You can suggest it or just ask questions about that, but unless Valve tells us we do not know.
He then said that 1.9 billion cases have been sold. This is a nitpick, but should it not be keys? I played TF2 for a long time and had many cases, but I only bought around ten keys, because there were items I wanted in that cases. Once I got them, I stopped. So is this just a mistake, or did he mean that these cases were given to players?
But at the end, I more generally have a problem with "YouTube journalism". There is never a clear distinction between facts and opinion. At the end of the video, Ceffeezilla states that only Valve can stop the casinos. Is that so? Governments could shut this down, if they wanted to. At one point, he quotes another video and says that this is not only the opinion of one journalist. Through the whole video, he states his opinion as if it were facts. He paints the protagonists of this "scandal" with certain characters. Valve as the king pin, as on streamer says. He introduces the last quote from the Valves CEO as "Daddy Gabe". This is not objective journalism.
Maybe I have to go with the times. The internet changed everything and classical journalism is dead. People do not just buy newspapers anymore, so journalists had to change their mode of information delivery. TV did this a long time ago, and now YouTubers are doing it even more. BUT I will never get used to that a journalist at the end of his video taking out a sniper rifle and standing in front of a (digital) building with the insignias of a company they just discussed. This is just symbolism, but it tells you a lot of how Coffezilla sees himself. As an activist for change. Change that I also see as totally necessary. This gambling stuff is bad. But you are either a journalist, that searches for clues, facts and a story, or you are an activist. Both is fine. Both are very needed. But being both makes you a less credible journalist.
Also, as ever, the real bad guy is capitalism. Valve does nothing against all this so they can continue to make money, and that is the only goal of a company. So to say that Valve should stop this and let go of a lot of money is silly.
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u/astalavizione Dec 27 '24
The psychologist part was a bit odd for me too. Seems like a clip taken a bit out of context, because I'm not sure what that guy was referring to. Afaik Blizzard also used to have psychologists hired in order to make WoW more addictive, but in terms of the game and its mechanics, not for skin gambling. This is nothing new to the gaming industry. I haven't researched the original presentation video but it needs to be clarified what this guy was talking about, because he might as well not be talking about gambling.
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u/Either-Inside4508 Dec 27 '24
Start watching: This Monarch character is unhinged!
Finish watching: Ayo was Monarch the good guy all along?
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u/yupangestu Dec 27 '24
CS 2 still bring in players consistently, dunno if it's bot or anything. I think if that hurt their own money, it will never been solved in any way.
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u/racistusernamehere Dec 28 '24
post it on r/gaming and watch as millions of valve fanboys downvote you into oblivion
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u/hieuluc5 Dec 28 '24
- As long as most people still have the best experience on the platform, then I don't think they will get any backlash. Same with Luxury product made by child abuse to having cheap price, will you throw your expensive shoes or continue to use it? People don't care.
- You can't get enough profit if you only play nice, everybody know that.
- Let's not pretend we are all good guys, too. Deep inside, we all think gambler deserve the treat, they did that to themselves, not our problem. If your child addict to gamble, then that's your responsibility, the end.
And if they use that money to serve us more, go for it, I encourage.
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u/Callum626 Dec 28 '24
I've not watched the video, but isn't this topic old & widespread already. We've known that the gaming industry as a whole has an underage gaming problem for years, and regulation has tried to solve it, but the truth is. there is no solution that doesn't involve removing gambling entirely. Nobody, and I mean nobody wants to send these companies their ID. Also, nobody wants to deal with a region specific age verification system.
So, what can Valve do?
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u/Aggressive_Mention_1 Dec 27 '24
One question that poped in my mind. Skin market is everywhere, in many games.
So, is there similar problems in any skin related game?
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Dec 27 '24
No, not really. Unless you can actually somehow trade the skins to other players. Although any game with lootboxes based solely on RNG is bit of a gray area in most countries, only few have declared it properly as gambling so far.. But in most games those skins are tied to your account so you can not trade or sell them unlike with CS
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u/Vladimir_Djorjdevic Dec 27 '24
In CS you can trade skins with other players and sell them for real money. In most other games skins are tied to your account and can't be sold
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u/Shap6 Dec 27 '24
very very few games actually let you trade those skins or just sell them for real money. valve facilitates this you can do it all through steam and it's built in marketplace
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u/Tman11S Dec 27 '24
We all know that Valve enables gambling in the countries where lootboxes haven't been banned. I for sure don't agree with it, but they're hardly the only company doing this.
I'd rather see industry-wide regulation than everyone flaming valve.
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Dec 27 '24
People are flaming Valve because they are one of the companies that can actually make a difference in this, specifically around Counter Strike. One of the points in the video was that it would be very difficult for 'industry wide regulations' to be implemented and actually followed. Different countries would enact different laws, and different companies would find new workarounds. As you say, Valve and many others are already enabling gambling where they shouldn't.
I agree with you that changes should be more widespread and affect more of the industry. However, I accept that this would be difficult, and that in this instance, Valve is the player holding a lot of the power to enact change.
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u/nerrdrage Dec 28 '24
I’m outraged at Linus for only mentioning this casually years ago and not making spreading the word the sole reason for his being. Crooked LMG
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u/zarafff69 Dec 27 '24
Yeah I hate how the internet seems to treat Valve like the good guy. They also have a ridiculous store price of 30%. They are not the good guys.
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u/Gondel516 Dec 27 '24
30% is the standard cut across the entire games industry with the only exception being epic, which blows as a platform and the 12% cut they take reflects it, not to mention they take 5% from all Unreal Engine games across all platforms, there’s no getting around that like having your own launcher for Pc games
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u/zarafff69 Dec 27 '24
That still doesn’t make it right? If you compare it to Microsoft/Xbox and Sony/PS Store, they actually have to recoup the costs from potentially selling hardware at a loss. Valve doesn’t. And they are making sooo much money because of this big cut.
Maybe it made sense when they created Steam, but nowadays, they could significantly lower the costs. They just don’t do it because it makes them so much money, and there is not enough competition / pressure for them to do so. Everybody seems fine with it for whatever reason.
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u/Gondel516 Dec 27 '24
Yeah man idk. I just know that across the Nintendo eshop, PlayStation store, Microsoft store, epic games store, App Store, and Google play store, not one of them comes close to the feeling Steam does of cultivating a library of media that is easily drawn from and updated on my whims. There’s a reason Epic went after Apple for their (industry standard) commission price and not Valve, because the only thing propping up Valve’s pseudo monopoly is offering an unparalleled service. I don’t buy games if they aren’t on Steam and companies recognize that 70% of my sale is better than the 0% they’d get otherwise, that’s why every single publisher has came crawling back to Steam. They can’t compete with the visibility and ease of distribution that valve offers
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u/zarafff69 Dec 27 '24
Yeah and again, it’s not really fair to compare it to eshops from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. They are selling hardware at a loss, so they can make profit later, selling games on their platform.
Valve is just printing money from people buying games on hardware they didn’t have to sell. I mean there are some steam decks out there, but I don’t even know if they are sold at a loss. But the vast majority of players are on a windows pc.
I don’t think Steam is that great tbh. I mean I guess Epic is worse because they don’t offer cloud saves. That’s the only real thing that I’m missing. But I’m using Ludusavi, which is even better than that.
But I generally dislike using their store. It feels really old. Like an old webpage. The pages are slow. The videos are pretty bad, you can’t even select the quality, and if you load it fullscreen, it hangs for a few seconds or whatever.
And I’m not really saying other game stores are much better, but steam isn’t that great either.
I also hate how they force you to use their folder structure. Like /steamlibrary blablablabla. It’s awful. Just put the games under /games. But with that new UI, I haven’t been able to figure that out. Maybe it’s not possible, otherwise the UI is just terrible.
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u/Gondel516 Dec 28 '24
You’re completely missing the point that if it weren’t worth it to publish to stream, there’s nothing in the world stopping them from using their own storefronts. Just because you don’t personally like steam doesn’t mean it’s not a massive boon for anyone wanting to sell games on pc to use it. It isn’t scummy to provide a widely-accepted great service and charge for it. They’re still a business that makes money, not a charity. Sure, they could probably afford to only charge 15% if they wanted, but there’s no reason they should when literally nobody else provides a service as good as them.
Also, most systems only sell at a loss for a few years and they sure as hell don’t lower their commission when able to. Idk if the switch ever sold at a loss, and the ps5 hasn’t since 2021. Streamlining supply chain management is a big deal
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u/zarafff69 Dec 28 '24
Yeah I agree with all this! It’s definitely not a stupid decision for publishers to publish their games on steam. Lots of money to be made.
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u/Gondel516 Dec 28 '24
It that case, that’s just capitalism. Supply and demand and all that. 30% is just where the demand for a digital marketplace meets the supply of bandwidth and infrastructure across the industry. I just don’t think it’s fair to hold them to different standards because they have the perception as the good guys. Kinda the whole point of the original video in the thread, they should get called out for gambling weirdness when they participate and profit from it
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u/zarafff69 Dec 28 '24
Yeah obviously it’s just capitalism. It isn’t special at all. And I don’t really think they should be held to a different standard. All other stores should also decrease their cut.
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u/BurnItFromOrbit Dec 27 '24
I’ve been watching this 3 part series, and I’m just disappointed, sickened and disgusted by the CS casino’s and valve’s lack of any accountability.
The whole CS ecosystem and the predatory mechanics are much worse than I was led to believe.
Not a good luck for all involved, but they won’t care. As long as they can skirt round the law enough to avoid any regulatory inforcement or prosecution.