Last month, Valve was sued by the New York attorney general’s office over its continued use of paid loot boxes and item trading in games like Counter-Strike 2 and DOTA 2. Now, the company behind Steam and Half-Life has responded to the lawsuit via a lengthy statement posted on Steam’s support site in which it defends how its loot boxes work and compares them to real-world products like baseball and Pokémon cards.
“These types of [loot] boxes in our games are widely used, not just in video games but in the tangible world as well, where generations have grown up opening baseball card packs and blind boxes and bags, and then trading and selling the items they receive. On the physical side, popular products used in this way include baseball cards, Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, and Labubu,” said Valve in a message directed to New York gamers.
Valve also explained that gamers don’t have to pay to open loot boxes to enjoy their games because all items are cosmetic. Interestingly, Valve claims that its data shows that “most” players don’t open any boxes at all and instead “just play the games.” According to Valve, this means there is no disadvantage to players who don’t pay.
Valve pushes back on claims it enables gambling on Steam
In February’s lawsuit, the NYAG said Valve “enables gambling through” its popular online games and digital storefront, Steam. It accused Valve of violating its laws against gambling and is seeking to permanently stop Valve from promoting gambling features in its video games. It also wants to force the company behind Half-Life to pay various fines for violating New York’s law.
In the statement, Valve says that it worked with the New York attorney general’s office and its investigation and shared with them 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.” Gambling sites have been a big problem for Valve and are referenced directly in New York’s lawsuit.
“Valve does not cooperate with gambling sites. To date, we’ve locked over one million Steam accounts that were being misused by third parties in connection with gambling, fraud, and theft. We’ve also shipped features (like trade reversal and trade cooldown) to discourage gambling sites’ ability to operate and protect Steam users from fraud. And we forbid any gambling-related business to participate in or sponsor tournaments for our games,” said Valve.
Elsewhere in the statement, Valve says it has “serious concerns” with some of the changes the New York attorney general’s office wants to make to how Steam works, including being very opposed to not letting users trade and sell digital cosmetic items they get from loot boxes.
“We think the transferability of a digital game item is good for consumers—it gives a user the ability to sell or trade an old or unwanted item for something else, in the same way an owner can sell or trade a tangible item like a Pokémon or baseball card,” said Valve. “NYAG proposes to take away users’ ability to transfer their digital items from Valve games. Transferability is a right we believe should not be taken away, and we refuse to do that.”
While that is a noble stance, it is undercut a bit by the fact that Valve doesn’t let users sell or trade their digital games on Steam. If transferability is a right, shouldn’t it apply to all digital items on Steam, and not just mostly the things you get out of loot boxes and the keys used to open said boxes?
Valve calls out NYAG’s comments about games and gun violence
Finally, Valve addressed the statements about video games and gun violence made by the NYAG’s office in a press release announcing the lawsuit. In that press release, the office claimed that Valve’s “promotion of games that glorify violence and guns” is one of the causes behind the “dangerous epidemic of gun violence” in the United States.
Valve, rightfully, called this statement out in its letter to New York gamers:
In addition, although this case is about mystery boxes, we feel the need to address comments made by the NYAG about games, real world violence, and children. Those extraneous comments are a distraction and a mischaracterization we’ve all heard before. 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 AG’s inclusion of this statement in its press release led many online to turn on the lawsuit, despite agreeing that Valve has allowed skin trading and gambling to run wild on Steam for years.