this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
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First of all, I trust Ubi and WB way less than valve.
Yeah.
Because it violates their policy. That's not a "threat", those are the terms of the contract Ubi and WB agreed to. Terms that everyone has to follow.
Heck, Ubi and WB should be hit with a counter suit for trying to leverage their market position to exert control over valve and getting unusually favorable terms.
Clown suit. Ubi and WB are mad they can't break their contract with valve in a one sided way.
edit: I forgot some context:
The deal between valve and a publisher or dev is: they can sell on steam and elsewhere if steam is at least tied in price, or cheaper, but when they sell somewhere else, that includes the steam key and access to steam and steam's distribution at no cost.
What the devs and publishers wanted to do was leverage other features of steam and the steam ecosystem, while undercutting steam's price.
They are always free to just not sell on steam for a cheaper price. That's not what this is about.
edit2:
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
"Steam Key Rules and Guidelines"
You shouldn't trust any of them. No billionaire has your best interests at heart. Even Gabe.
That is true, definitely a "lesser evil" situation.
And in this specific situation, it's valve doing the evil.
How?
Raising the price of video games artificially by abusing their market position to force other storefronts to also raise their prices... Like the suit you didn't read says.
stop acting like prices going down wasnt a play that long term wouldnt result in fucking consumers, stupid to trust ubi
how long has epic games been running on negative profits?
walmart was cheaper than local grocery stores once too
supporting a false race to the bottom is some silly shit
I'm inclined a little to agree with you, but it's not like he made his money because Gabe refused to be run by anyone. He pays his employees really well. My dad's friend still is working at Valve after going there 20 some odd years ago. He rakes in money like no ones business. But they are all benefitting from the work they have done.
Secondly, nobody knows how charitable he is in his private life. The fact that he's so private about it, inclines me to believe he's probably a decent guy, who just doesn't like the spotlight. He may be a billionaire, but how many billionaires have their employees love them like at Valve?
Lastly, most of his money is tied up in shares of the company, as he is 50%+ owner. He may use that to leverage cash loans, but he's also just smart. He doesn't really do that all that much, except when he's buying his research yachts. And those shares are only accessible by the workers, as it's a private company. Why? Because the money belongs to the laborers who produce the goods.
Now, I'm willing to change my view if there's ever a situation in which Gabe Newall is intentionally trying to avoid paying taxes, but that hasn't happened yet.
Bezos, Musk, Gates, Trump, Zuckerburg, Page, Brin, Ellison, Dell, Huang, the Waltons, Blomberg, Thiel. There's so many worse people out there. I do agree wealth is bad, but what the aforementioned are doing is significantly worse.
What about exploiting child gambling? Valve's value, and thusly Gabe's value, skyrocketed after introducing lootboxes to TF2, CSGO, DOTA2, etc. He can be as charitable as he fucking wants, but he still defends lootboxes while taking little to no efforts to ensure that children aren't gambling on his platform. He's had... how many years to fix this problem now? Too many. He's not fixed the problem, and continues to reap the rewards in the meantime.
As far as I'm concerned, he's just as much of a piece of shit as any other billionaire. The only difference is that he makes toys that a lot of us really, really like; toys that we apparently like so much so that we're willing to handwave child gambling as long as it doesn't get in the way of making it moderately convenient to download DRM-infested games.
Mate, I did not know parents were not responsible for their own children. That is on me. I'm glad to hear all the work I've done on my network and computers to make them safe for my children was a moot point.
Adults like gambling. It's not Valve's fault that children are using it cause their parents are ignorant of their own child.
As far as the DRM stuff goes, that's all based on the publisher. And it's not that difficult to bypass. Valve has shown time and time again, that they are a business for their customers. Their customers like a solid platform that works and is easy to use and has a community.
Let's take a look a Linux real quick. If it wasn't for Valve, Linux gaming wouldn't be what it is today. They did that and gave it to the community. I'm sorry other platforms can't be bothered to put in that kind of effort. If you wanna play with the big dogs, you gotta get off the porch. And Ubisoft wants to take the easy way out through a lawsuit. They need to do better with their storefront. Offer good exclusives. Try to actually appeal to your customers.
I still remember when everybody bitched about Steam when half-life 2 came out. It was kinda bad, and people were mad about it. But Valve was just ahead of the curve. It allowed them to publish updates, patches, anti-cheating. And soon enough, the community grew to love it. It just worked. If something broke in your game, it was probably fixed in a week if it was a Valve game. It gave so much to PC players.
That's a whole lot of distraction from the point, mate. If you found out that a casino was allowing children to gamble on their property, would you not want to shut down that casino?
Yes, the parents shouldn't be allowing the kids to gamble. But parents don't always "allow" their kids to do the things they do in the first place. You know damn well you did things as a child that you weren't "allowed" to do, things that you were told specifically not to do. You know that you successfully hid things from your parents, but expect other parents to find everything? Most of this happens completely under the parents' radar.
Addicts steal, and that's no different for children, either. Often they'll take their parent's credit card in hopes that the charge goes unnoticed, or they'll obfuscate the charge by spending money on another currency that gets converted after the fact to one used for lootboxes.
There are even worse things that an addict will do for money. Some may resort to scams; sometimes they'll set up catfish social media profiles to bait gooners into paying them gobs of money for fake pictures. Some may resort to worse behavior; I've seen instructional TikTok videos for children to lure adults onto Roblox for sexual acts, to be paid in Robux, which can then easily be converted into just about any other game's currency. Literal child prostitution.
But sure. Let's blame the parents, instead of the billionaire's child casino.
I could not give a shit. I am a parent of two and no, you cannot watch them every second. But you can watch your bank accounts. You can watch your child play. You can watch your child's behavior change if they start getting really into gambling.
I had an older child I kinda took care of, who thinks of me as a father figure; he has none. He called me one night cause he was 16 and drunk and high and didn't want to drive home. He said, "I called you, because you always said to call you if this happened. I'm so sorry“. I picked him up and helped his hangover the next morning and we had a long talk. That kid is on the ocean sending underwater robots to explore as an electrical engineer. Cause he liked that I did that. EE, not the water stuff lol.
Parents are responsible for their children and children have to learn responsibility for their actions. And that is a lesson that you have to teach your children. The best way is through learning. I've watched my mom raise an addict, so don't you fucking dare try to appeal to me. She was the perfect mom. He just got in with the wrong crowd and went downhill. He's sober now, but it was rough growing up. But she put in a hell of a lot of work into him.
I tell you that, because I'm not here to say we should ban public schools, because that's where my brother tried heroin. I'm not here to say we should fund private schools with taxpayer money, because there are drugs in our schools. It's a fucking bad stroke of luck. Fire and damnnation, this got me hot. Don't fall off your pedestal as you get on your high horse.
I can tell, since nothing else about your comment was at all related to what I was saying.
You're right, I just gave you my personal experiences about parenting children. I even brought up my brother in recovery, distinctly because you brought up addicts. I still stand by it being a parental issue. Don't have kids if you don't want that responsibility. This kind of argument has the same vibes as, "we need age verification on websites". No, we don't. Parents need to be better. I'm a millennial parent and I know how the internet works. I also know that every app nowadays has parental controls built in. Moreso, I can specifically block things on the router. The tools are there. Just be a parent. How many children do you have?
We're really far from the point now.
Remember how you found ways to circumvent those things in your youth without your parents knowing? Guess what? Kids still do that. Parental controls only work on children who lack creativity.
You aren't going to be there 100% of the time for your kids. No parent would be. It would be abusive to be present 100% of the time. You're going to trust your kids with a certain level of autonomy, and they're occasionally going to do things with that autonomy that you disapprove of; that's an important part of growing up. Maybe it's swearing, maybe it's getting into fights, maybe it's cheating on homework, or maybe it's buying lootboxes. You can't block everything.
Nobody's saying that you shouldn't try to prevent your kids from falling into these traps. By all means, you should. But you shouldn't expect to be successful 100% of the time. You're going to slip. They're going to slip. That's life.
However, the fucking CHILD CASINO still exists. Maybe you can keep your kids out of it, but there are still kids getting addicted to gambling because nobody is shutting down the child casino. The fact that it exists, at all, should be appalling to any parent; but instead, some of them are defending it because "ohh but they did some good things for Linux gaming". Get real, my guy.
You're right, we are far from the point. At what step in the loot box/gambling process is money exchanged. Then tell me how gambling works. Then tell me if they are the same.
Holy shit, Gabe's really got you by the balls, eh. We've reached the "actually lootboxes aren't gambling" arc.
Insane, the lengths some will go to defend shitty behavior from shitty billionaires.
If it's gambling, loot boxes should be items of value, redeemable for cash, correct? And Valve should be the one providing that cash, as they are the child casino, correct?
The fact that you aren't answering is an answer in and of itself. You can reduce yourself to insults, but it only harms your arguement.
It is gambling, but only as much as Pokémon and Disney's Lorcana. And that's perfectly legal. You would need to go after those practices too. But I think you'd find a hard time with that. You know why? Cause it was dismissed in 1999 in New York v Nintendo of America. Gotta change the law for what you want, friend.
Yes, that's literally how the Steam marketplace works. Where am I losing you?
Play game. Get loot box. purchase key. get skin...fuck how do I get actual money. Got it, I'll sell it on the market. DAMN, I got steam wallet funds. Okay, if I get $750 worth of items on the store. Okay, that took forever. Now I can purchase a Steam Deck and then I can sell it when it gets here. But let's try to use a different method. There's some third party sites that buy directly, cool. I'll just go through this shady as fuck trade to a random Steam not and get some money in my PayPal.
At which point in either of these processes are you getting USD cash for the items, directly from Valve?
Oh, so now we're at the "pachinko isn't gambling because you have to go across the street to get cash for your prizes" argument. Knew we'd eventually get there.
You see, in Japan, pachinko parlors are "technically" not gambling because you exchange your winnings for cheap toys, similar to exchanging tickets at the Chuck E Cheese counter. Except there's a store directly across the street from the pachinko parlor that buys those toys for, well wouldn't you know it, the exact amount of your winnings!
And since it's "not gambling" in the eyes of the law, it's not damaging, right?
https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article-abstract/49/suppl_1/i17/105541
Oof.
Yes, it's still gambling even if you have to access a grey market to obtain fiat currency. Why? Because obtaining fiat currency isn't a defining factor of gambling.
Where will you take those goalposts next?
Okay, let's get rid of all TCG too. I never argued against the dangers of gambling. I never said it wasn't, it is gambling. But that's not what this post is about. This post is specifically about a NY case against Valve. That requires knowledge of the NY Penal Code. But if you want to continue being self-righteous rather than actually debating the points, then you're welcome to continue this debate with me.
If adults want to gamble, fine. Let's enforce gambling laws and get this over with. It would also solve the children gambling problem because that would be illegal. But this is why Valve's gambling service is indefensible. Valve is actively trying to prevent the gambling classification because if it gets treated like actual gambling it most likely stops being profitable. I don't necessarily have an issue with gambling, I have an issue with it not being treated as gambling. And all the other things Valve has done that have been positive for gaming do not justify giving Valve a free pass on gambling.
To bring it back to Gaben, he isn't avoiding taxes but he is avoiding the (gambling) law because it makes him more money, so is it that different from avoiding taxes?
That is a fair point. However, I must ask, what is the different between what Valve is doing with loot boxes v. every single trading card game out there. MTG, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Disney's Lorcana? You are purchasing an item that has items in it that are random. The only reason they have value is because people have the option to just buy skin they want on Valve's marketplace. Just like people have the option to buy a specific Pokémon card from a third party.
The other thing that Valve has done is, there's no inherent value to the item. You can sell items for Steam Wallet funds, to then use in the marketplace. So, to me it seems, it's really easy to set up a Steam account to not be allowed to purchase items. Which would include adding money to a Steam wallet for the marketplace. So, no this is not a "think of the children" issue. It's yet again, another people are bad parents and can't be bothered to use parental controls on their children's electronics. Or take steps to prevent them from spending real money. Or take steps to prevent them from playing too much.
I don't see how that matters at this point, you've already called it gambling. Are you going to walk that back to defend Valve? After all the only reason to bring up this point is to claim it's not actually gambling. And to address your point, yes I also consider MTG, Pokemon and most trading card games the physical equivalent of a lootbox and a form of gambling. I also know they're not gambling in a legal sense but we'll get to where Valve differs in the next part.
Actually that's no longer true and that's why there was a lawsuit filed against Valve at the start of this year. The items now have a value because you sell the things to get Steam credit and then use Steam credit to buy a Steam Deck and then sell the Deck for real money. It's no longer a closed system, you can get the money out. And once again, this wouldn't be an issue if Valve either a) stopped their gambling or b) adhere to gambling laws.