Valve has stayed silent since New York Attorney General Letitia James brought a lawsuit against the company at the end of February, claiming its loot box mechanics allow “children and adults to illegally gamble for the chance to win valuable virtual prizes.” But today, the company finally broke its silence, publicly addressing the lawsuit via a lengthy post on Steam.
“You may have seen the New York Attorney General recently filed a lawsuit against Valve claiming mystery boxes (like crates, cases, and chests) in some of our games violate New York gambling laws,” Valve wrote in the post, which was aimed at players of Dota 2, Counter-Strike 2, and Team Fortress 2. “We don’t believe that they do, and were disappointed to see the NYAG make that claim after working to educate them about our virtual items and mystery boxes since they first reached out to us in early 2023. We rarely talk about litigation, but we felt we should explain the situation to you.”
Valve says it has explained to the New York Attorney General that loot boxes are widely used in gaming, and compared its loot boxes to collectible baseball cards, Labubu blind boxes, and Pokemon trading card packs. It also noted that players don’t have to open loot boxes to play Valve games.
“In fact, most of you don’t open any boxes at all and just play the games–because the items in the boxes are purely cosmetic, there is no disadvantage to a player not spending money.”
The comparison to physical collectibles might not fly in court–after all, if Valve were to end support for a game, players would not have a platform on which to use their loot box items, whereas physical items remain in their owner’s possession regardless of what happens to the parent company that created them. But Valve isn’t wrong about the fact that players don’t have to engage with loot boxes, nor the fact that these items have no effect on gameplay. Valve’s newest shooter, Deadlock, has not implemented any monetization tactics as it is still under development. Cosmetics are available, but are purchased with in-game currency and do not affect gameplay, nor do the cosmetics in Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, or Team Fortress 2.
Valve says it’s shared evidence of its “efforts over many years to shut down accounts found to be using Valve game items on gambling sites in violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement,” and the “extraordinary measures” it’s taken to stop these gambling sites from taking advantage of Steam accounts and in-game items. But the company has concerns about the changes Letitia James wants to see when it comes to in-game item trading, a feature Valve is outright refusing to remove.
“The NYAG seems to believe boxes and their contents should not be transferable. … NYAG proposes [Valve should] take away users’ ability to transfer their digital items from Valve games,” the post continues. “Transferability is a right we believe should not be taken away, and we refuse to do that.”
Valve also takes issue with James’ proposed changes regarding the collection of player information for the alleged purpose of age and identity verification.
“The NYAG also proposed to gather additional information (beyond what we normally collect in the course of processing payments) about each game user on the off-chance someone in New York was anonymizing their location to appear outside of New York, such as by using a VPN,” Valve explained. “This would have involved implementing invasive technologies for every user worldwide. Similarly, the NYAG demanded that Valve collect more personal data about our users to do additional age verification–even though most payment methods used by New York Steam users already have age verification built-in.”
Valve says it will comply with James’ demands, but only if New York passes loot box laws demanding it do so–something the state has considered several times over the years, but never acted on.
“The type of commitments the NYAG demanded from Valve went far beyond what existing New York law requires and even beyond New York itself,” Valve said. “It may have been easier and cheaper for Valve to make a deal with the NYAG, but we believed the type of deal that would satisfy the NYAG would have been bad for users and other game developers, and impacted our ability to innovate in game design.”
Lastly, the publisher addressed comments in James’s lawsuit regarding the effect of gaming on children, and allusions to games causing real-world violence.
“Those extraneous comments are a distraction and a mischaracterization we’ve all heard before,” Valve said. “Numerous studies throughout the years have concluded there is no link between media (movies, TV, books, comics, music, and games) and real world violence. Indeed, many studies highlight the beneficial impact of games to users.”
The New York Attorney General’s office has not responded to Valve’s public statement.