The unfortunate thing is that people who engage in this behaviour wont report it. That is a given. The money is too lucrative. So who will? In our own self interest as gamers who don't want our industry ruined, its probably going to be us. Otherwise, the government will feel that need to step in. The only other people who might report it is "victims" and if the justice system has proven to us anything, they aren't going to listen to something that hasn't got any regulations attached.LegendaryGamer0 said:
Senator calls for gambling legistaion against CS:GO
- Thread starter Trunkage
- Start date
Something that is sorely missing nowadays. Or...since the beginning of time, I suppose.trunkage said:
It makes little sense to me to have a governing body step in to regulate a specific set of products, thereby essentially punishing the makers of that product and those that use it, just because a handful of jerk-asses only tangentially affiliated with the product decided to take advantage of users of the product.
It's like deciding that dice should be taxed and regulated, just because some thugs decide to use them for illegal betting in some back alleys.
Is it different for addictive substances? And do you consider gambling addictive? That will probably determine your desire for government intervention (I.e. I think government should get involved in gambling if minors are involved.)Vigormortis said:
Also, the only reason its in a back alley is because its illegal. We could take the Amsterdam approach to... well a lot of things... and bring it into the legal economy.
Gambling =/= substance abuse. Let's not conflate concepts here.trunkage said:
Depends on ones definition of 'addictive'. So take that as a yes and a no, for now.
All of which is a moot point as I don't see the Case-and-Key system as gambling, because they aren't. Certainly no more than, say, someone going out and buying a pack of Pokemon, MTG, or Yu Gi Oh cards would be considered gambling. And I'm not seeing a lot of you screaming for governments to step in a regulate them as though they're gambling. Nor do I see anyone, here or from the Australian legislator, demanding regulations be placed on the gambling taking place within other gaming communities. (see: EVE, D3, etc)
The issue of gambling that's been raised in regards to CS:GO isn't with the Cases, nor even the items, but with 3rd party sites using the CS:GO Market ecosystem for ancillary gambling. Or, more to the point, the sites making illegal use of the OpenID API within Steam.
People are seriously doing a disservice to the issues by conflating random item drop systems with gambling.
I get it. Some of you hate the very notion of Crates/Cases/Keys. But calling them 'gambling' is like calling a dog a giraffe. It helps nothing and only further muddies already murky waters.
That ignores the point I was making. Entirely.
Unfortunately, what you and I think are gambling has no truth to it. Its just what we think. Firstly, I agree that CS:GO doesn't need the regulation but that doesn't let Valve of the hook for the API thing and them not making sure it wasn't used illegally. But until this whole mess has been defined by law, there is no clear line of what is gambling and isn't. Also, like most things, gambling is a sliding scale. I personally think that CCG packs like Magic is gambling but doesn't need anything to regulate it. As long as each pack has the amount of rares etc, it's following social normal and thus acceptable. Random drop systems are gambling, but lower on the scale than CCG packs because there is no money exchanged. They don't need to be regulated.Vigormortis said:
I agree its the third party sites. I don't think anyone has disagreed with you except for how much is Valve is culpable. Its not the random drop system we want changed
Thats a very simplistic way of looking at it. See bellow for more indepth explanation.CaitSeith said:
Then your post was off-topic.DudeistBelieve said:
Its both. Whether you like it or not does not matter. CS:GO has both FPS element and Gambling element in it. Legislating gambling will impact this game, but that does not make it gambling legislation.CaitSeith said:
how about government body stepping in to regulate a gambling industry that is already under legal regulation in traditional forms and only needs that be applied to the new form of gambling because what Valve currently is doing is, in fact, illegal.Vigormortis said:
Also funny thing with your example, in most of the world there is a tax on blank media because some people pirate and burn dvds from pirated material.
Science has shown that the addiction is quite similar. So i don't see why the gouvernment should be concerned about one, but not the other.Vigormortis said:
The issue was raised with CS:GO. But i take that more as an example instead of meaning that this game is a problem and others doing exactly the same aren't.
Also, i still see the crates and keys as the problem. It is gambling. It is the as a lottery. Lotteries are regulated (also : heavily taxed) in many parts of the world.
If the crates are gambling, you should also be arguing for the regulation of these.Satinavian said:
Because they are the exact same thing in principle. If you don't, please explain what makes one gambling and the other not.
Unless of course, these are regulated in Australia.
You are right.
Maybe it is not that wrong to regulate those too. Well, actually i am not sure they they aren't already regulated.
Maybe it is not that wrong to regulate those too. Well, actually i am not sure they they aren't already regulated.
But why regulate them? Should blind bags be regulated too? Maybe even those sites where you send them money and they send you random crap back?Satinavian said:
Kids Meal toys so that the toy has to be a specific one with no chance of being random? You're basically arguing that anything with uncertainty be branded and regulated as general gambling. Maybe this is actually a cultural thing but that does not sound reasonable at all.
"Regulation" is not the same as "Forbidding it altogether". If i look at the gambling laws in my nation, especcially lotteries, there are e.g. exceptions for lotteries where the sum of the monetary worth of all prizes is below a certain amount. For middle sized things there is a need for registration and accountybility so that the gouvernment can make sure, nothing fishy happens (if they want to). Most cTCG- players would not have a problem with knowing chances beforehand. And i think for the physical games, they tend to be more often disclosed than for crate systems.
And lastly there are taxes. Yes, we have an extra tax on lottery prizes. Which is not bad in itself. Yes, it makes random toys more expensive than regular toys and might result in some companies switching buissness model, but i still can't see a big problem.
And lastly there are taxes. Yes, we have an extra tax on lottery prizes. Which is not bad in itself. Yes, it makes random toys more expensive than regular toys and might result in some companies switching buissness model, but i still can't see a big problem.
No, it's roughly just the same path paved.Satinavian said:
I'm assuming Australia.
They typically do know chances.
I'd say it's about the same really, if not moreso in games.
Then you're just basically arguing about making new taxes/having them apply to more products, which a loooooot of people would have a problem with such. Most people don't want to pay more taxes.
No. Actually Germany. I have no clue about the gambling laws in Australia.LegendaryGamer0 said:
Yes, they do. But Online Games (especially MMOs and not only the asian ones) with crate-and-key-systems keep them secret and try to suggest far higher chances than actually exist. It's usually up to player communities to gather data and try to get the chances that way. And yes, chances are often pretty low. When an item that comes out of a (still in use) box is worth several hundred of dollars in player markets and the other prizes in the box are not exatly worthless either, you can guess, how the chances compare to those of card games (where only OoP cards are that expensive) That would be one thing regulation could change.
I have no problem with the (high) extra tax for tabacco. I have no problem with the extra tax for alcohol. I don't have a problem with the extra tax for gambling.
So, truth in advertising? That's not exclusive to gambling.Satinavian said:
You aren't the large amount of people that do have an issue with sin taxes doing little more than making people partaking in these activities even poorer. Sin taxes are a terrible way to regulate because you're not regulating anything, you're merely profiting off of those you supposedly want to help. Even with the allocation of the taxes to programs to fight... presumably addictions, or provide dollars to medical, you're still sending people to the poorhouse.
Unless you just want to tax them solely for revenue, which is a totally different discussion.
Is it? In what way? As I've said before, do you feel the same about booster packs for MTG, Pokemon, etc? How is opening a CS:GO case different than opening a pack of MTG cards?Strazdas said:
I'm still not seeing how the cases in CS:GO are a form of gambling. At least, in any way that would require regulation.
If you can prove that they are, I'm all ears.
That...isn't even in the same hemisphere as my example.
And dissimilar. It's very much dependent on the person.Satinavian said:
My point was that conflating substance abuse (which tends to be the thing people think of when they hear 'addiction') with gambling muddles the discussion.
Can people be 'addicted' to gambling? Sure, in the same way someone can be addicted to anything. But is gambling inherently addictive? No, I don't believe so.
I never said they shouldn't. I've only said that I do not view the Case system in CS:GO as gambling.
But it still misses the real issue. The issue isn't the Case system in CS:GO. It was the the 3rd party gambling sites breaking the terms of use for the OpenID API.
Now whether there should be intervention with the 3rd party gambling sites, in the form of regulation, is a different matter. As far as I'm concerned, the only issue with CS:GO is that Valve needs to aggressively pursue those abusing the system, not that the system needs government regulation.
But that makes no sense. As a fellow poster put it:
A governing body considering the Case system as gambling either sets up a really dangerous precedent involving any sort of random-content product, or it represents a catastrophically stupid double standard that borders on special pleading.LegendaryGamer0 said:
Weve been over this. Paying money for a game of chance is legally considered as gambling. And i already said that yes i feel the same way about raondom card sales. Though from what i understand Pokemon does not have a crate system does it?Vigormortis said:
I dont know how can i prove it to you if you ask me to repeat what i have already told you.
And yes that example is quite similar. you are taxing a legitimate product that may or may not be used for illegal stuff and you are taxing it solely because of that illegal stuff (and in the case of blank media those taxes are supposed to go back to the authors, though the ones i know personally claim to have never gotten a cent)
Again, is it? You keep saying this is the case but I've yet to see any proof. One would think, if it's 'in the books', we should be able to see it clearly defined in legal terms.Strazdas said:
You didn't say it to me. And Pokemon cards follow similar rules to other TCGs and their related card packs.
Not asking you to repeat yourself. You just saying a thing doesn't make it true. I've asked you to provide proof that things like the Case-and-Key system in CS:GO and TCG packs (and Happy Meals, and Loot Crate) fall under the same legal definition of gambling as the games played in casinos, etc, and therefore fall under the same purview of regulatory law as the latter.
If you can show me proof that they do, I'll change my tune. Otherwise I'm not seeing any validity to the argument that CS:GO contains gambling.
And, to be blunt about it, the definition of gambling you seem to want to use in this instance is so nebulous that it could be applied to anything wherein money and chance were involved. At which point almost everything would require governmental regulation and taxation.
It's a definition that's both useless and dangerous.
That still misses the point but it's irrelevant. Taxing blank media is as catastrophically stupid as the idea of regulating and taxing CS:GO.
It's been brought up in this thread that, "Just because people like a thing doesn't mean that thing isn't bad." This is true. As is, "Just because a law is on the books doesn't mean that law is good, wise, or logical."
There's a few major differences I can think of:LegendaryGamer0 said:
Konami doesn't run the program that allows you to resell the cards you don't want. They sell you a product and that's the end of it - if anything they'd probably discourage third party sales as they don't see a dime from them. Valve allows you to resell your common/duplicate skins for a currency they control, and by and large even skim off the top with each sale. At that point, the comparison to poker chips starts to look surprisingly justified.
Dunno' how Konami and Yu-Gi-Oh work, but I know back when I was a Pokemon TCG fan in the late 90s I knew exactly what my odds are for getting a common, uncommon, rare and foil card in each pack was. The foil cards were substantially less common in the US release than they were in Japan, and man, that made me salty. Valve isn't really selling a blind box, because at least in a blind box you almost instantly know what the odds are that you'll get the one you actually want. You probably won't get it, no, but if it's a 1/128, at least there's no question about it.
While Pachinko isn't "Technically" gambling either, they're still a game of chance with odds that have to fall within a certain 'legally fair' threshold not unlike slot machines. In both cases, despite the internal currency being internalized by the provider (Pachinko Parlors / Valve), there are less-than-reputable ways to "cash out" regardless for those who are familiar with the process.
While I agree that government regulations love to screw things up that should be pretty straight forward and only encourage those to find new loopholes, standardizing games of chance to be fair to consumers are one of things that prevent those businesses from taking advantage of gullible players who don't actually know what their odds are, or ensure the odds aren't simply capped at artificial levels meaning nobody really wins. Particularly when a big chunk - if not the majority - of your audience are minors who's parents probably gave them their credit card number assuming CS:GO is a flat, one-time $15 purchase, that's basically begging for the sort of horror stories we mostly associate with people who can't stop playing F2P mobile games and rack up hundreds of dollars over the course of a month. (That said... it's a phone game. Even I don't have sympathy for those people.)
Should CS:GO be classified and regulated the same way a slot machine is? Probably not. Should Valve get their shit together and not GIVE government bodies a reason to consider it by tweaking things for a little additional transparency? You bet! The "Third Party" gambling sites are a separate, unrelated issue, and the behavior of all those involved is pretty goddamn horrible between not disclosing their CoI's, marketing directly to children, and abusing Steam's own third-party offerings to bypass their own flimsy checks and balances to avoid this sort of thing from being done to begin with, and yet the fact that they could exist in the first place is basically proof that Valve acknowledging their own Hat Based Economy has grown to a point of critical mass, and that they're no longer fully in control of it. And that's exactly when you start to lose the argument that you don't need government level intervention in the first place.
I'd honestly be less disgusted by the whole "Crate and Key" thing if they just straight up had different levels of keys for the same crate: Off the top of my head, Broze Keys are a buck/given away via basic grinding in gameplay, Silver Keys are two/awarded once per level, and Gold Keys are five/only offered every 10 levels, and each key changes how rare the item you get from the crate will ultimately be. That way they aren't lording mystery boxes over your head full of jack squat and not letting you play the game of chance for "free", but those who legitimately want rarer items can still pay more and manipulate the odds in their favor. I'm sure there's a billion minor tweaks that would make the system a lot more fair to the end user - and, not playing CS:GO myself, I'm hardly an expert. I just know how the general system works, and I know it's absolute bullspit.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see microtransactions for a randomized loot drop done away with entirely - especially in a game like Overwatch that already costs $60 on consoles, goddamn Blizzard! - but I'm not even going to suggest the obvious because why would anyone do the proper thing and treat unlockable content like unlockable 'effing content? But Valve won't do any of that, unless they realize they're about to fall afoul of laws that already exist (see: Steam Refunds only happening because Steam was already in violation of European Law). They won't because every time a $2,000 CS:GO skin gets sold, they make $300 - $200 as the publisher, and $100 as the base Steam cut. Yes, it's stupid that anyone would pay that for an in-game texture swap, but let's not pretend Valve didn't cultivate a market and then encourage players to use it because it benefits their bottom line.
Teal Deer:
- Blind Box collectibles without a marketplace run by the manufacturer themselves aren't quite comparable to what Valve is doing, and that's exactly why the Aussie government is looking them over to try and figure out what on Earth they can do to stomp this thing flat. And knowing Australia, they're just as likely to ban a game they can't control as they are not to.
- Valve would be wise to shake the whole "Crate" system up just enough to have a leg to stand on while they argue that it's NOT gambling, even though by any sane measure it's currently just a slot machine jammed into an FPS without any of the legal limitations and protections a slot machine typically has to abide by.
- The fact that you have to work with third parties to convert your in-game currency to "real" cash is largely irrelevant to the rest of the problem. It's possible, it's not hard, and Valve can't feign ignorance on it much as I'm sure they'll try if it comes up.
- Crates are awful and whoever suggests their inclusion should be publicly humiliated as the evil monster they are.
Love the smug Sakura, by the way.
Sorry for taking like, two days to get back to you.
The chip analogy comes closer but it still pretty far off.
As for the credit card horror stories, I have to entirely lay fault with the parents. Not only is there a specific option during Steam checkout to not save payment info, it also has a periodic clearing so you have to put in the information again. Any kid managing to rack up thousands did so with easy access to the card, which has the blame lie solely with the parents and the child.
I think the definition of "control" doesn't quite apply the same way here. Though you're right in that I don't think Konami has any such service involving the sale of cards.UberGott said:
The chip analogy comes closer but it still pretty far off.
I wish I could say I knew your exact pain but I was too broke to invest heavily in anything trading card related. Closest I got were spanish knockoff cards.
Not all blind boxes/bags are like that. I wish they were though.
Of course.
Something I'm far less at odds with but that stems from being at least honest on how impossible your game really is.
I contest that anywhere near the majority are minors considering the rating of the game(at least in the states, I don't know the ratings in the rest of the world for it).
As for the credit card horror stories, I have to entirely lay fault with the parents. Not only is there a specific option during Steam checkout to not save payment info, it also has a periodic clearing so you have to put in the information again. Any kid managing to rack up thousands did so with easy access to the card, which has the blame lie solely with the parents and the child.
Dat burn.
It just sounds like Valve needs to actively police the usage of the API and be cocked, ready to deal with people misusing it.
I just want the system to go away. Why the fuck can't I just have a shooter with skin drops? What the FUCK ever happened to this shit being UNLOCKABLE?
Which is basically why I've lost a lot of respect for Valve and why Blizzard has never had mine and never will.
I honestly still can't shake the comparison that it's TCG packs. The main difference is that they've managed to surpass Konami's(and the like's) greed.
Then what does this mean for a game like EVE Online? Where the big gambling sites have constant Real Money Transfer accusations thrown at them and through the sites it's very easy to cash out through a different third party with the in game currency. This on top of the fact that, through CCP, you can basically buy in game money via buying a PLEX(Pilot's License Extension) and selling it for in game currency to someone willing to pay for it?
You forgot shot.
Why, thank you! Also apologies if this is an incredibly weak reply. It's late night and I have no idea where my argument even is anymore.