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Comment by MonitorBird | Hacker News Reader

Underage gambling in the sense of spending real money to redeem things that may be impossible to redeem without spending it? In that case isn't the entire game industry guilty of trying to rip money from the credit cards of unsuspecting parents? Isn't the entire modern web just a tool to suck cash out of cards, or try and get your card sucked? What are we talking about here. I cut my teeth on CS:S, but haven't played much after that. I know the newer games have lootbox mechanics, but I assumed it was for items you could potentially grind? Just like.. every other modern online multiplayer money sucking game that exists. Warframe, Fortnite, Roblox, I dunno. Everything these days seems to be a bloodsucker. Steam gets a full pass from me, I'm not a prude.

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> Underage gambling in the sense of spending real money to redeem things that may be impossible to redeem without spending it?

Critically, Valve allows you to trade items. This results in a couple of downstream effects:

1. Items have real-world value because they can be traded for money outside of Steam. Multiple sites exist for people to convert items into real-world money (certain rare items have been sold for >$1m [0]).

2. As these items have value, they can serve as a surrogate for money in casinos, or for sports betting.

3. This can even lead to money laundering [1].

As such, skins should be considered money, but the sites running these services don't. Therefore, it is trivial for a child to walk into a game store, buy Steam credit, use that credit to buy skins, and then spend that money on literal gambling (as very few sites have KYC). I know because I've actively partaken in it as a child. Even cryptocurrency is harder: most legitimate exchanges attempt to do identity validation.

Some video resources that might be useful:

- Coffeezilla: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13eiDhuvM6Y

- People Make Games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMmNy11Mn7g

[0]: https://www.ign.com/articles/counter-strike-skin-sells-for-o...

[1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50262447

And Valve should get rid of item trading because it could potentially be used this way?

Edit: this is a genuine question. What is the solution here?

The solution is fairly straightforward. The list of gambling and item-selling (for real money) sites is finite and known. Valve could either stop allowing their bots to trade items, or (even more usefully) ban and burn any items that pass through those sites.

The problem is, if you can no longer cash out the items for real money, they’re going to lose a lot (>95% I’d guess) of their value. Nobody wants $25k of steam wallet money, they want $25k, period. This would be terrible for valve, since it would severely diminish the value of all items (thus diminishing their cut of every on-platform sale), as well as cut the demand for unboxings (which they of course also make a cut on). Valve obviously cares more about their money printer than the fact that it facilities children gambling, so they do nothing.

It’s pretty easy to see why they allow this. They made over a billion dollars in 2023 on unboxings alone, ignoring the sale/trade fees. I doubt anything will change without a major US lawsuit, which I doubt will come any time soon if it hasn’t already.

Like, if Valve do want to keep item trading in (and potentially be used this way is an understatement, these are multi-million dollar gambling businesses), they could at least try to stop them.

Valve's enforcement was one round of C&Ds in 2016 (!), and then some technical measures [0] in 2024. For Valve to take heed the problem, they literally had to have a stage invasion at their esport event [1].

[0]: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/730/view/41856069942...

[1]: https://internettalk.xyz/blog/cults-vendettas-gambling-how-a... - article I published, Coffeezilla also has a video on this event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q58dLWjRTBE

It is used this way. Whether you think valve should remove it depends on your disposition on gambling.

You throw a $8-$15 into the case slot machine (by buying a key), it usually gives you a crap prize, sometimes its a decent prize, and once every 100 000 - 1 000 000 times you get something great.

You can wrangle that with words in any way you want, its gambling. Same for Team Fortress 2 and stuff like hats.

I think a few replies have missed a key issue: Valve's CS monetization is the worst in the industry.

Most current monetization for cosmetics allows you to both (1) grind for items without paying anything and (2) if you want to pay, show you exactly what you are paying for.

Even games that still use lootboxes (i.e. don't follow #2) allow you to grind for items.

CS is one of the very few (or only current) game where you can't get a cosmetic without paying (must purchase keys to open lootboxes) and you don't know what you are getting (lootboxes).

It's bad and there is no excuse.

The trading mechanic, which adds a real world value to these cosmetics, and encourages players to pay for lootboxes makes it worse.

People sometimes hate on popular games like Fortnite and COD, but they have way better/more fair monetization practices.

> CS is one of the very few (or only current) game where you can't get a cosmetic without paying (must purchase keys to open lootboxes) and you don't know what you are getting (lootboxes).

You get dropped items through playtime which you can sell on the community market to gain steam wallet funds, which you can then use to purchase most other cosmetics or even games.

I do not believe CS:GO free tier had any cosmetic drops, only lootbox drops. But I certainly could be mistaken. In either case, any truly free cosmetics were much rarer than other games.

I don’t believe you get any drops without Prime, period. But even if you only get lootboxes, they also have value and can be sold on the marketplace (which is what I do with all of mine).

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