Areloch said:
Lunncal said:
As far as I know, you can't ever turn any of that into actual cash. You could potentially sell or trade it for steam wallet cash or other items of value in the steam ecosystem, but you'll never(outside of going to a third party) get real cash out of the deal.
At which point, it's pretty much the same as demanding full gambling regulation on trading card games, because you pay money to get random cards and you could potentially sell those cards to someone or trade them to someone for other cards.
What you're saying makes sense, I guess that's the legal difference, but it's also just obviously stupid. All of those items are regularly transferable into real money, and steam itself even accepts "steam wallet money" as an alternative for real money. All you've really done is convinced me that Magic: The Gathering absolutely is gambling and needs regulation too.
Actually, hell, if that's the important point then why is what goes on in casinos considered gambling? After all, you can only win or lose plastic chips, so no harm done? Or if there's just some law against that specifically, maybe I should open a casino in which the prizes are given in precious metals. Children of all ages welcome.
What gets regulated and what doesn't seems totally arbitrary. You joke about regulating trading card games, but maybe the world
would be better if children couldn't be manipulated into spending all their money on packs searching for rare cards they have no chance to get. Would it really be a bad thing if those games had to abandon the randomized part and just sell the damn cards[footnote]A bad thing for the world I mean. Obviously it would be bad for their profits.[/footnote]?