CSGO Skins: Minor Betting, Major Problem

Please watch out scammers beware of links and fake admin scams coming from friends. Scammers know you're more likely to sign into a suspicious link or trust a fake admin if told by someone you know and trust.
𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲. If you were linked here, please confirm who you are dealing with before trading. If you trade with a scammer copying a profile listed below, there is nothing anyone can do to recover your items.
𝗠𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁:

1. MAXX STEAM LINK: https://steamcommunity.com/id/sab11321/ ACTIVE
2. TYMOFY STEAM LINK: https://steamcommunity.com/id/OfficialMaksym/ ACTIVE

𝗣𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗲: Middlemanning takes time and most of the time, tip(s) will be highly appreciated. Any inconsiderate or rude actions towards us will not bode well.
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗠𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻?
Middlemen are used to facilitate a trade in which both parties have to do some sort of exchange outside of Cs:Go, Dota2, Tf2. For instance, if someone wants to sell their items for real money, they could get a middleman to make sure the trade goes through smoothly. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗮 𝗠𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗱𝗼 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆?
A middleman will usually hold on to the items from person A of the trade. While the middleman is holding the items, person B sends their part of the trade over to person A. Once that is complete, the middleman sends person A's items over to person B.
Gaming Community Fraud Prevention!!!
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Enforcement We have a variety of ways of enforcing our rules, including, but not limited to
Asking you nicely to knock it off Asking you less nicely Temporary or permanent suspension of accounts Removal of privileges from, or adding restrictions to, accounts Adding restrictions to Reddit communities, such as adding NSFW tags or Quarantining Removal of content Banning of Reddit communities Moderation within communities Individual communities on Reddit may have their own rules in addition to ours and their own moderators to enforce them. Reddit provides tools to aid moderators, but does not prescribe their usage.
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After the EA made that "suprise mechanics" comment the discussion around lootboxes started again and people who are supposed to be consumer advocates are still bringing up the usual irrelevant points surrounding the issue. I am not saying it is always out of malice but we should be careful. Some simple basic points should be made and should never be walked back on, gambling is :
EDIT: Following text has nothing to do with legalities. I am not here for the legality of the issue. The way the laws are made and the way the world works should be proof enough that laws are not perfect. I couldn't care less about how some bald fucks in their 70s defined gambling a hundred years ago. We wouldn't be having any lootbox discussion in the first place if the law and lawmakers were doing their job correctly. Proceed with a grain of salt.

1. The REWARD: There is a chance at winning anything worth something.
   
2. The PRICE: Sacrificing another something with direct or indirect monetary value (you can spend money, crystals, you can give your lunch)
   

Before going in further: THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DIGITAL PRODUCTS AND PHYSICAL ONES.

THE REWARD:

If something is worth something then it qualifies as a reward. This can be a digital item, can be a tour around the world with a yacht, can be a meeting with Justin Bieber, can be the right to exchange your 3rd day ticket to Endgame's after-credit version with a 1st day ticket. That last one is important because this is really relevant to the usual stupid "BUT KINDER SURPRISE" argument.
The value here is not the movie ticket it is the privilege of being able to see it Day 1 despite buying a ticket for 2 days later. If the day1 ticket is more valuable then day2 ticket then a lootbox containing tickets with different dates will be gambling. So how do we know the items inside these lootboxes in the games are of different value. GAMES ADMIT IT THEMSELVES. An EPIC skin and a LEGENDARY skin is not the same value. A battle-scarred gun skin is different then a Factory New gun skin. Ok when you open a lootbox in CSGO you will always get a weapon skin. Therefore you are not gambling for a weapon skin you are gambling for a GOOD(valuable) weapon skin. If the cheapest skin in that lootbox is worth $0.1 and another one is worth $400 then you are gambling for the $399.99 difference between them. If that Overwatch box has a retarded 50 Credit worth kill quipp and a 3000 credit worth Genji skin then you are gambling for the difference between these items. There are also points to be made about the perceived value of these items but we don't even have to go there yet. For some reason game devs got cocky and they themselves made the quality tiers stick out.
This point also ties in well with the "YOU ALWAYS GET SOMETHING" argument too. No need to go into detail about how fucking stupid that one also is.

THE PRICE:

No one is stupid enough to bring up the crystals, platinium, Cod coins, BP etc. Fortunately that argument has been resolved long ago. This part is helpful to dismantle the stupid "BUT BORDERLANDS/DIABLO HAS RNG LOOT" argument. You cannot spend money to try your luck again in loot based games. If Overwatch did NOT allow lootboxes to be bought with real money then it would not be gambling it would just be a surprise mechanic.

Stupid Arguments

• Kinder Surprise:

The reward part is where the Kinder argument falls apart. The toys inside the Kinder chocolates are all worth the same. I see some people claiming that Kinder eggs are not gambling because you always get the chocolate and that money is chocolate money etc etc. You are ALL WRONG and you are not helping. Blizzard is doing something like that in China to outsmart the gambling regulations by selling the lootboxes bundled with 50 Credits. If they claim that the price is for the small amount of credits then lootboxes are no longer gambling like that? How fucking stupid is that?

• You can sell the items, you don't own the items etc. :

Depending on how you look at it, this argument can be made to support the idea that it is INDEED GAMBLING as well as IT ISN'T GAMBLING. That's how bad of an argument it is. What the fuck you can do with the outcome is irrelevant to the process of gambling. Do not bring this topic up and dismantle it as swiftly as you can whenever you see it.

• Cosmetic-only, game is free2play, developers need money

Financials of a business or the nature of the rewards are irrelevant to the gambling process. It is not gambling because "drinks are free in this casino"... Stupid.

• Magic and Pokemon

Also gambling. No need to argue. If you want the game to have variety then make it balanced instead of forcing people to use shitty cards because they spent their life savings on stupid magic packs and these shitty ones are all the cards they have. That's not gameplay variety. Same point stands for Heartstone etc. too. IRRELEVANT.

• You can buy them outright too, Steam community market exists

Another irrelevant point. The process of gambling is still there.

I WANT TO GAMBLE

This is the only relevant argument. Here is the answer. Gambling is strictly regulated and for good reason. It is not outright illegal (not universally at least) and you can go gamble legally right now. I am not calling for loot-box ban, neither should anyone. However LOOTBOXES ARE GAMBLING AND SHOULD BE TREATED AS SUCH. They need to be regulated. When you open a Rocket League crate it says 15% for the rare items. How can I be sure that IT REALLY IS 15%. Shitty crane machines in arcades are being investigated routinely why not video game lootboxes? Plus, you have to pay your taxes. By operating online casinos but not paying gambling taxes these companies EA, Activision, Valve, Blizzard, Psyonix, Ubisoft etc. are all committing crime by tax evasion. That poor legally operating casino owner at Vegas is not an idiot he is paying his taxes.

Final words, this issue can only be solved after we start focusing on the relevant parts and stay true to the nature of the topic. It is important to weed out irrelevant and malicious talking points.

I came across a Singapore youtuber, whose primary audience are kids and teenagers, advertising a gambling website and i would like to bring forth a discussion about the moral obligations of youtubers.
As i am unfamiliar with the rules of this subreddit, i will not be linking the video unless i am allowed to.
In this youtuber particular video, he accepted the sponsorship of a notorious gambling website called drakemall and does an entire video gambling on this website. It is notable to point out that this person is a part of JianHao's team and as JianHao's viewer demographic are largely kids and teenagers, such action brings this person's moral and ethics into question. Drakemall offers mystery box that you can buy, with real cash, in exchange for random items that you can either sell back to the website or to be delivered to you. The cost of these mystery box ranges from a few cents to a few hundred dollars; and it is very unlikely that you will profit as per any gambling games (bacarrat, slots, etc.) the odds are always in the favour of the house. Additionally, such odds in these kind of mystery box shady websites are not transparent. Many famous international youtuber such as RiceGum was condemned for accepting such sponsorship, so why is our local youtuber doing the very same act?
For starters, this is highly immoral as all casinos around the world require you to be of 21 as you would have the mental capacity to be responsible for your actions, losses and finances. Drakemall disguised itself as a "for-fun" website with it's colourful background and childish product you could obtain. There is NO regulation from signing up and play; and that is highly dangerous for the impressionable teenagers or kids. I tried signing up and it was easy with a simple few clicks of the button. While it does states on the website that you need to be of 18 years old, this is way hidden on the bottom of the page and is likely done for legal protection of the website. The manifestation of impressionable teenagers are evident in the comment section, where majority of the comments are in favour of his actions.
The worse part of all is that he lured his audience into watching his video by promising free giveaways and he incessantly recommends his audience to sign up for a VIP account on this website. As mentioned, this is highly unethical and unacceptable to be preying on his uninformed audiences, whom i like to remind again, are kids and teenagers. Reading through most of the comment, i came across a comment that says he had lost $60 on the website. From his nickname, he is likely an uninformed kid.
**ʂყɬɧɛ Gaming _**2 weeks ago
I tried wasted 60Sgd Bought vip but still get nothing good
Such mystery box opening websites are, no doubt, gambling and there have been a significant amount of documentaries (search t-martn) and youtuber video exposing them. Such website runs rampage and as soon as they are reported and removed, dozens more website appears. This is the modus operandi of Drakemall who originally started their mystery box opening with CSGO skins under the name of drakemoon, iirc, and it eventually shut down due to lawsuit from Valve. The reason why these mystery box advertising are unethical and misleading is because when these website owners approach youtuber for advertising, they offers a huge sum of money and heavily skews the odds for unboxing expensive stuff for the youtuber (this is explained and exposed from the documentaries). This then gives the audience the impression that it is very easy to unbox expensive stuff and 'win big' for themselves too. But as mentioned, the odds of all the loots available in the mystery box are not transparent. This modus operandi is very evident in the aforementioned youtuber's video, whereby he easily unbox an iphone x easily, and coupled with impressionable kids, such advertisement is highly dangerous.
So, i would like to question the moral obligation of this youtuber in the product they advertise. They accepted such immoral advertisement knowingly that their audience are kids. What's more, i believed that this particular youtuber lacks no offers from sponsorship given his popularity for being JianHao's member. Unfortunately, greed got better of this person.
As we transition into a cashless society, teenagers and kid often see little inherent value in tangible cash and more through branded products, this allures them to start gambling at these websites. Being a youtuber and an aspiring role model to many, he should be using his position to educate his audience for the better.
​
Edit: Some of the comments have pointed out that just dated two years ago, mystery box vending machine was ruled as a form of public lottery and all operation were quickly forced to desist. This is the very same illegal gambling product this youtuber is promoting.

Hello reddit.
A few months ago,i was bored and decided to go on youtube and check out 'new scams on steam 2020' because i naturally wanted to find a discord of scammers to mess around with. I found someone who had a discord server. I told this to one of my new friend i made with and he was very very interested so instead of just messing with them,we thought of bringing em down. My friend has done it before by going to court and taking down a scammer's fake website/scam and those kind of things.
To understand the scam they are doing,they are using 'fake paypal payment template' which means they claim they will pay money to you first and then you send your CSGO cosmetic/weapon skin to them but when they send the 'payment',the victim will know they didnt get the funds so the scammer would say 'maybe paypal is down?i alr sent money,give me the items' and sadly it has worked. Another scam they do is owning a fake CSGO trading website where they will have the victim to log in their credentials in the website and then take over the account and will try to steal their items.
​
Recently,they have started to do unemployment check fraud and as far as i know,this is definitely illegal as heck. My friend is real hyper is get the authorities soon and will try and do something.
​
my question is that is there someone or a proper authority we should consult with or check out the law sections and stuff first? i know discord support is a thing but i do not think discord may do anything apart from deleting their server and banning their accounts.
​
extra notes: CSGO= Counter Strike Global Offensive. on steam,there is a system where you can do item trading for other items or sell it for money on steam to buy in-game items/games or sell it on trusted website to get real money

Please watch out scammers beware of links and fake admin scams coming from friends. Scammers know you're more likely to sign into a suspicious link or trust a fake admin if told by someone you know and trust.
𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲. If you were linked here, please confirm who you are dealing with before trading. If you trade with a scammer copying a profile listed below, there is nothing anyone can do to recover your items.
​

𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗡𝗮𝗺𝗲	𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹	𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸
𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧	44	Profile
𝗦𝗵𝘂𝗯𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗿	150	Profile
𝗦𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁¥	158	Profile
𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗲!	125	Profile

𝗣𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗲: Middlemanning takes time and most of the time, tip(s) will be highly appreciated. Any inconsiderate or rude actions towards us will not bode well.
𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗠𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻?
Middlemen are used to facilitate a trade in which both parties have to do some sort of exchange outside of Cs:Go, Dota2, Tf2. For instance, if someone wants to sell their items for real money, they could get a middleman to make sure the trade goes through smoothly. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗮 𝗠𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗱𝗼 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆?
A middleman will usually hold on to the items from person A of the trade. While the middleman is holding the items, person B sends their part of the trade over to person A. Once that is complete, the middleman sends person A's items over to person B.
Gaming Community Fraud Prevention!!!
Reddit Content Policy Reddit is a platform for communities to discuss, connect, and share in an open environment, home to some of the most authentic content anywhere online. The nature of this content might be funny, serious, offensive, or anywhere in between. While participating, it’s important to keep in mind this value above all others: show enough respect to others so that we all may continue to enjoy Reddit for what it is.
Unwelcome content While Reddit generally provides a lot of leeway in what content is acceptable, here are some guidelines for content that is not. Please keep in mind the spirit in which these were written, and know that looking for loopholes is a waste of time.
Content is prohibited if it
Is illegal Is involuntary pornography Is sexual or suggestive content involving minors Encourages or incites violence Threatens, harasses, or bullies or encourages others to do so Is personal and confidential information Impersonates an individual or entity in a misleading or deceptive manner Uses Reddit to solicit or facilitate any transaction or gift involving certain goods and services Is spam Prohibited behavior In addition to not submitting unwelcome content, the following behaviors are prohibited on Reddit
Asking for votes or engaging in vote manipulation Breaking Reddit or doing anything that interferes with normal use of Reddit Creating multiple accounts to evade punishment or avoid restrictions NSFW (Not Safe For Work) content Content that contains nudity, pornography, or profanity, which a reasonable viewer may not want to be seen accessing in a public or formal setting such as in a workplace should be tagged as NSFW. This tag can be applied to individual pieces of content or to entire communities.
Enforcement We have a variety of ways of enforcing our rules, including, but not limited to
Asking you nicely to knock it off Asking you less nicely Temporary or permanent suspension of accounts Removal of privileges from, or adding restrictions to, accounts Adding restrictions to Reddit communities, such as adding NSFW tags or Quarantining Removal of content Banning of Reddit communities Moderation within communities Individual communities on Reddit may have their own rules in addition to ours and their own moderators to enforce them. Reddit provides tools to aid moderators, but does not prescribe their usage.
Registration & Complete Rules To be able to post on /GlobalOffensiveTrade, all users need a GOTrade Pass. You can get your GOTrade Pass by reading the subreddit rules. DO NOT CLICK THE "REQUEST TO POST" BUTTON. THIS IS NOT HOW YOU REGISTER TO GET A GOTRADE PASS. Please note that the rules widget below is an incomplete version of our rules as reddit's built-in system has a cap of 10. It is imperative that you read the complete version of the subreddit rules at the link above to avoid your post getting removed or you being banned.
Rules 1. Post Limit 2. Misuse of Post Tags 3. Whitelist and Promotional Content 4. Fraud 5. Naming and Shaming 6. Offer on Non-Trade Thread 7. Steam Trade Interface and Cash Only 8. Item in Flaired Inventory 9. Clickbait 10. Trade Link 11. Buyout 12. Honor Buyout 13. Current Offer 14. Price Guides 15. Pattern Rank and World Rank
Current White List: CSGO Exchange: CSGO REP!: CSGO Stash: RUGC Trade: Shubbler.com: SteamRep: StoneFire: CSGOStickerSearch: SkinBaron: Gameflip: CS Deals: CS Money: KeyVendor.net: Loot Farm: CSGO Float: Mrinka.org : Swap GG: Skinbay: How to become White Listed: Eligibility: Requirements: Application Process: The PSA thread on the implementation of the white list program can be found here.
Current White List: CSGO Exchange: Contact Information:
Support Forum: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgoexchange/discussions Website: http://csgo.exchange Steam Group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgoexchange Staff Steam Group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/csgoexchangestaff CSGO REP!: Contact Information:
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Hi, my name is jacket, also known as Melon on steam. and as you probably may or may not know, Kurtzspel is not avaible for download in the Netherlands, or Belgium, when you visit the store page, it says " This item is currently unavailable in your region ".
why is this, you may ask? why is kurtzspel unavaiable in the Netherlands? it has to do with the Dutch laws, more specifically, the Dutch gambling laws.
when I visited the store page of kurtzspel, I saw that the product is unavaiable in my region, but when I activated a VPN, and set it to Germany, I was able to view the store page,
well, why not use a VPN you ask?
because you are not allowed to use a VPN, according to the SSA, you are not allowed to use VPN services on steam for whatever reason, doing so may get your account locked permanently*
​
by browsing trough some steam discussions, and the internet, I found out some information regarding the laws, but basically, there was one piece of information that I find the most valueable:
Netherlands Gaming Authority has come out with a standard to differentiate loot boxes between gaming and gambling.

• Netherlands Gaming Authority studied the loot boxes and the ability to trade the items outside the game to other players.
• Loot boxes where the content is not transferable are not illegal (therefore, are seen as gaming).
• Loot boxes where the content is transferable are illegal (and a seen as gambling).

​
what this basically means is that if the game has lootboxes with items that can be sold or traded between players, it can be seen as gambling, and thus illegal, and if the game has lootboxes with lootboxes that drop items that can not be sold, or traded between gaming, it can be seen as not gambling, and thus legal.
kurtzspel offers players the ability to open supplyboxes**, which can be bought with euro's or USD dollars.
I assume that the items dropped from the supplybox can be sold, or traded between players, and thus it can be seen as gambling, and thus it is illegal.
I am going to talk a bit about other games that offer lootboxes, but can be played.
overwatch*** and league of legends are games that offer lootboxes, these lootboxes will drop skin items for champions/heroes, they do not alter gameplay, and are not neccesary to be bought to get a gameplay advantage.
these skins can not be transfered or sold, and are thus legal.
moving on to games made by valve,the owners of steam, we have dota2, counterstrike global offensive, and team fortress 2.
a while ago, valve had to disable trading and uncrating capsules for counterstrike****, this is because the contents dropped from the capsules can be transfered between players, and sold on the steam community market, there are also online sites that offer the ability to sell counter strike skins for straight cash, with a 5-10% commision.
counter strike skins have a market value, sometimes reaching values of over 1400 euros, like the AWP dragon lore*****, this could encourage players to test their luck, and start uncrating capsules, in the hope to get a expensive item.
team fortress features cases and crates, which may drop cosmetics, most of the time these cosmetics will be common drops, costing only 10-20 cents, however, there are also more expensive hats called unusuals, these cosmetics are rare, as they only have a 1% drop rate, while they carry a particle effect.
some unusuals cost around 10-20$, because they are either ugly hats, or have a bad effect, or both, but some more nice looking hats with a nice effect can quickly go up to 200$, up to 1 200.00$******
because counter strike skins, dota2 skins and team fortress skins/cosmetics were able to be transfered between accounts, and also sold for straight cash, the dutch gaming authority saw this as illegal, valve had to restrict trading and unboxing, in order to comply with the demands of the Dutch gaming authority.
right now, valve has re-enabeled trading, but still restricts the action of uncrating capsules in counter strike.
during that time, counter strike, dota, and team fortress have all been playable, the only thing being restricted being the ability to uncrate lootboxes.
people in the Netherlands are unable to uncrate lootboxes in team fortress 2, counter strike, and dota2, but people in other countries can.
back to kurtzspel, the main reason why kurtzspel seems to be banned in the Netherlands seem to be the issues with lootboxes, but I had a solution in mind.
what if kurtzspel restricts loot boxes, just in the Netherlands.
by doing so, all four parties will benefit from it.
the Dutch gaming authority would allow it, because there are no lootboxes involved, so, no gambling.
valve (aka steam) would benefit from this, because they take cuts from sales, and a 5% cut on steam community market sales, this would mean more money for valve.
the devs would benefit from this, because they would get more players, and since kurtzspel is free, this would also mean that those Dutch players are free advertisement, by having more players, the game will get noticed, Dutch players may reccomend the game, which leads to more players from other countries, more people playing the game, more people buying stuff from the game, or the steam community market, which means more money.
and the player, the player would be able to just play the game, maybe buy some in game items, or items from the steam community market, because those don't count as gambling.
​
but what about the future? what about adults that want to open lootboxes in kurtzspel? not every Dutch player is a minor, right?.
right now, with the Dutch gaming authority, it would be hard to say, but for a future solution, I could see identity verification being a solution, Dutch residents that are over the age of 18 could submit verification, and the devs could allow said Dutch resident to open lootboxes.
​
you may be thinking, screw the Netherlands, they are a small country, will it really impact the game?
yes, the Netherlands, believe it or not, also has a lot of gamers, gamers that spend their money on games, but are unable to, because they can't acces the game.
​
​
-Thanks for reading, it has been a pleasure making this post.
​
sources:
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/350544272218413826/ *
https://steamcommunity.com/market/listings/844870/Advanced%20Supply%20Box%20%28Costume%29 **
https://us.shop.battle.net/en-us/product/overwatch-loot-box ***
https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/12/17565720/csgo-loot-boxes-netherlands-belgium-steam-trading-marketplace ****
https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2018/07/20618/ ****
https://steamcommunity.com/market/listings/730/AWP%20%7C%20Dragon%20Lore%20%28Field-Tested%29 *****
https://marketplace.tf/browse/tf2?squality=5 ******
https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/20/17484060/valve-csgo-dota-2-trading-blocked-netherlands
https://www.reddit.com/KurtzPel/comments/cbsv0s/cant_play_in_the_netherlands/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/844870/discussions/0/1648791520854601078/?l
https://steamcommunity.com/app/844870/discussions/0/1649918058735814180/?l
https://steamcommunity.com/app/440/discussions/0/1743346190282006361/
https://dutchgamesassociation.nl/news/loot-boxes-netherlands-gaming-authoritys-findings/
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/267994-the-netherlands-declares-some-loot-boxes-illegal-warns-developers-to-modify-them
https://www.pcgamer.com/csgo-and-dota-2-trading-disabled-in-the-netherlands-after-loot-box-crackdown/

Because the Brisbane reddit diddnt appreciate my loyalty to the nanny state and needing to get this shit in line with the rest of our draconian laws:
Get your input in to the inquiry into gaming microtransactions! (Specifically "loot boxes" and how they are blatant gambling aimed at children)
I get microtransactions. They are fine - if they are selling a specific item for a set amount of $.
Loot boxes however are straight out gambling as your paying money for a CHANCE at an item you want where the total list of items within the box and the chance of winning X item is not disclosed.
Not to mention the fact that companies are using advanced algorithms to get you to buy the boxes then positively re-enforcing the purchase: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/10/activision-patents-matchmaking-that-encourages-players-to-buy-microtransactions/
Since it's a "Grey Area" and not yet legally defined as gambling you also have the issue of adults that own "skin gambling" sites streaming themselves gambling - and winning big 95% of the time because the own the site and can rig it however they please: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/07/youtubers-exposed-for-promoting-their-own-csgo-gambling-website/
Please take the time to send in an e-mail to give you feedback about gambling-lootboxes and hopefully we can follow in Europe's footsteps and make them illegal.
You can email your submission to the committee secretariat or to [email protected]

hello 

jo dude get a life nobody falls for that do you really want to waste your time doing this u will not get happy this way in your life 

what do you mean? 

Stop trying to scam people 

i don't have money please understand :( 

where do you live 

philipphines 

I know live can be hard don´t waste your time doing that take that time and trying to earn money an make yourself happy :) :steamhappy: 

i really don't have money that's why 

I know I know but U won´t earn any money from doing this it´s just a waste of time and if did make money from this other people who work hard for their money would be very sad 

i earn sometimes 

how often 

doing scamming some csgo items 

yes but what items do you usually get when scamming and how often does it work 

sometimes knife or skins sorry for that 

do you go to work 

nope 

is it hard to get work were you live 

yes need to scam so i eat 2 to 3 times a day 

can you afford a living by scamming or do you live by your parents 

i don't have parents anymore i live at my grandmother 

when you find work will you stop scamming and did you ever try to find work? 

i try but i fired 

how did that happen 

because of absent 

do you earn more money going to work or more money trough scamming 

i help my grandmother to sell Vegetable in market 

how does the scam work? 

can i partner to you my friend? i just want to earn 

what do you mean 

you have a expensive knife, you can get more knife like that and use it for bait and you have high level of steam account 

no sry I have a simple and happy live I will not harm anyone you should too 

please, if you can help me i will share you even i send you 3 knives per week 

You will get much happier earning money the legit way I know the evil is most of the time more profitable but It won´t make you happy does money really matter so much that you can just take away other peoples money it´s like stealing somones money on the street just in the internet I know you can change invest the time you invest in scamming into finding a job and earning more money nobody ever lifed a long and happy life doing illegal things 

but i don't work on this way i can't leave 

Do you really don´t have a choice 

i need money now because my grandmother have sick 

are you lying to me 

no it's true 

what sickness does she have 

always have a head ache and fever it's because he sell vegetable everyday 

how old are you 

19 

you don´t seem that dump why can´t you just find a job is it really that you have no money or do you earn more from scamming 

i need 1 knife only so i will quiton this quit. 

ok I´ll take back what I just said that´s not how it works quit now or be trapped in this circle 

i will sell it to buy medicine 

did you ever sell drugs 

no, it's strictly in our country 

I know you will be dead when you do that where do you live more in the ghetto or in a more normal area will you ever be honest in your live do you think you will break the cycle some time or keep scamming are you still there 

i need to find a guy have knife 

no you don´t you need to find a job and that very quick to support your grandmother hello 

so i will get it to sell 

don´t do that 

why? 

they might be poor as well give the people you have scammed the items back Will tell me something about you I want to help you? 

T.T i really appreciate your message i don't know what i need to do my friend but you try to listen even im a scammer :( 

you can be a good person if you want 

i just make this for my grandmother if i will buy the medicine i quit on this fucking life 

why don´t you just get a job All life is precious 

i don't have a job now that's why i scamming 

how does the scam work? 

i just asking him to send his knife first before i send my knife, but i don't have a knife i just impersonating steam trader have a knife 

how often a week does this succed? 

3 times or more if i work harder 

how do you feel about that 

conscience 

do you think this will ever come back 

what do you mean? 

do you think karma will ever hit you back 

please don't remind it 

or do you think that it´s legit because you have low money 

i really need a money now because of my grandmother 

I hope you will find to the good 

thank you i appreciate you listen to me 

After watching this video youtube.com/watch?v=Ce5CDrq4dGg I was thinking that we need a microTX check website. Jim Sterling rightfully stated that publishers use gameplay and cosmetic microTX, pre-orders, lootboxes and 8 or 9 deluxe versions of the same games to create a fear of missing out among customers. In a world where IGN saying ‘believe the hype’ is a tagline for a game, in which PR controls the message, in which reviews are strictly monitored and not always trustworthy and in which pre-orders are pushed to the moon is it surprising that many people fail to make an informed choice?
​
Soon consumers have to purchase a game, then have to subscribe to yearly payment scheme and then livestream the game on Twitch to have access to a lootbox, which in return reveal a consumable item which cannot be used without buying a day 1 DLC, after purchasing the DLC and using the consumable item in singleplayer the consumer will realize that the item will not be available for second playthrough. There is no guarantee in future ‘whales’ will not be called ‘victims’.
​
PC gaming needs a content checker so people don’t have to suffer fear of missing out. There is microtransaction.zone, which has not been updated for a long time so it doesn't have any newer AAA or indie game. It has a search capability but limited. MicroTX check Steam curator is good but some game gets red card for having cosmetics others get yellow for cosmetic DLC, which is confusing. It has the limitation as it's just a curator page so word count and many other features are limited. A proper wiki should not only list microTX/lootboxes in a video game but also should list all the exclusive items in the game.
​
Who should read this? People who want to know what are they missing out by not pre-ordering/purchasing microTX; journalists who want to investigate the situation but lost their minds reading about all these types of microTX; developers/publishers who are out of ideas to implement microTX in their games; in general, people who just want to buy any triple ayyy game these days as there is no way to avoid microTX/lootboxes.
​
Even though this is a very thorough list of microTX mechanics I might have missed something as corporations are finding new ways to exploit customers. What did I miss?
​
Somebody make this wiki already, heck I think there should be a kickstarter for this.
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(don’t PM me about this, unless you work for google fiber)
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Part A Tags/Factors the website have to monitor regarding microTX/DLC
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1a- How does the game monetize itself? Does the game has microTX/advertisement/lootbox/donation system/subscription? Or is it purely paid/purely free game?
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B Whether microTX/paid DLC/lootbox are cosmetic only or gameplay changer? Singleplayemultiplayer which section has which type of microTX? If the game has crafting system how does it work? Does the crafting system encourage microTX?
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C Wiki should also mention paid DLC for singleplayers etc.
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d Which tag should the games with paid standalone extensions have? Many games have standalone extensions, they are to be considered seperate game, right? However some standalone extensions can give you more advantage in multiplayer, Age of Empires 2 had extensions which will give you more civilizations in multiplayer.
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E How many types of virtual currency is in the game and what are the ways to gain virtual currencies? How long will it take on average to gain virtual currency using each methods?
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F For games with paid DLC it has to mention how much is the total amount of DLC? There are games like train simulator which has 9000$ worth of DLC/microTX.
​
G Some games obfuscate usage of real world money in multiple layers. The wiki should explain how a game obfuscating monetization.
For example R6S has multiple virtual currencies and cosmetic lootboxes. Customer can never pay real world money to purchase lootbox. However if the customer purchase booster pack (which can only be bought with real money, even lootboxes don’t have any booster packs) to get more virtual currency, he can buy more lootboxes.
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2a- How many versions are available to purchase and what types of pre-order exclusives does the game have? Most games have virtual currency/rare items as pre-order exclusives.
For example- recent Assassin’s Creed titles have 8 or 9 different versions available for pre-order, some have more virtual currency some versions have collectibles. EA Access subscribers had the ability to play Anthem early and this made Anthem’s pre-order versions extremely confusing.
​
B Whether the game has Bestbuy/Gamestop/Amazon/Burger King/Totino’s pizza or Steam/GOG/Epic Store purchase or pre-order exclusives. Many games have retailestore exclusives or pre-order-retailer exclusives so customers are always missing out something depending on which store they are buying/pre-ordering from.
​
c What does the game/DLC/season pass/battle pass/year pass/premium/gold edition exactly cover? Many games have misleading advertisement to persuade people to purchase season passes which doesn’t cover all items in the season. The wiki should display prices of all the things each season pass does not cover.
Many people thought Destiny expansion pass covered all the first year DLC, but actually it only covered first two DLC so the Taken King had to be purchases seperately.
Evolve season pass was released with over hundreds of dollar worth of cosmetic/gameplay items which the season pass did not cover.
​
D To make matters worse many games unexpectedly have multiple season passes.
Steep has very confusing season passes and gold editions, they also changed many of the content policy in their editions long after they were released. Unless you are a Steep player, it’s not recommended that you try to understand how each versions of Steep works because it is literally as much difficult as rocket science.
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E Does the microTX/DLC/Premium edition divide playerbase? If DLCs divide playerbase it indicates that the multiplayer will probably die faster than expected.
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F Is it difficult to understand microTX policy.
Many games have 1 paragraph long game mechanics guide and 10 pages long document to describe how different versions of the game work.
For example- Mortal Kombat 11 has quite complicated grinding mechanics to encourage microTX, it even has a microTX to skip grinding matches.
​
G Non-digital items are not the main concern here, so stuff like collector’s edition/steelbook/action figures are mostly not a part of the discussion here. However some things can be considered cosmetic items, like in-game music pack/background noise/ digital artbook which gives you information about map/weapons etc.
Some games have ‘name in game’ DLC, some variant of this type of DLC can seem like a cosmetic items, because letting user change name is cosmetic.
​
H Is the game available under a subscription system? If it is, what are the exclusive items available under subscription? Many games now have exclusive items when being played under Origin Access or Xbox Live subscription.
What are the method of subscription? Do you need to bind your credit card to the account or subscription can deduct wallet balance? Does the subscription system support prepaid credit cards etc
​
I How many microTX in the game needs reward points like Ubisoft club reward points, Origin points, Steam levels etc.? Many game has items which require reward points, but in order to gain reward points you have to buy more games inside the client, which creates a circle of spending. Some store’s customer care will prioritze people with high reward points.
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J How many Steam reward points/Ubisoft club points a game can generate? Store reward points like Steam badges or Steam account levels are not in-game cosmetic items themselves but many consumers actually use them as cosmetic items. People play lot of money to buy games with Steam achievements to rank up.
​
K What are the kickstarter exclusives (if the game is crowdfunded)?
Star citizen has a handful of crownfunding exclusive as it was the biggest crowdfunding event. This may give crowdfunders an advantage over new customers.
​
L How many people pre-ordered the game? If a game has too many pre-orders they may rush the game out to either make DLCs or to create another game.
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3a- The wiki should display how many months it took the developers to release/announce DLCs after they released the game? Late DLC may indicate the developers used most of their resources to develop the main game and not the DLC.
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B The wiki should have a tag for games which did not announce any free/paid DLC on release day. Witcher 3 did not announce any paid DLC on release day. Some games have option to pre-order DLC before release day i.e. Evolve.
Some games even have DLC available to play on day 1.
Battlefield 4 had launch day DLC on Xbox One. Evolve had the option to buy DLC on day 1 . Some games even have locked content on disk on day 1 which can be unlocked with DLC purchase.
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C Whether a paid game has paid DLC/microTX/lootbox in while in early access. This may indicate that the developers are taking resources from the main game to build the DLCs. Ark Survival have sold paid DLC while it was still in early access. Many battle royale games have microTX or even lootbox while they are still in beta.
Can you pre-order micro transaction? This can give consumers a red flag about the game.
​
​
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4a- The website should mention how many hours are needed to unlock all things behind paywall? And in order to unlock/progress how many hours do you have to play same boring mission over and over again (like Anthem)?
Some games don’t even need to be played to do anything or to gain virtual currency, they just require you to keep the game on screen for a long time to complete mission.
​
B The website should have a tag for games which doesn’t allow consumer to unlock everything just by playing the game. Many 60$ games won’t allow consumer to unlock every cosmetic microTX by playing, some paywall needs to be paid by real world money.
In CSGO some items must be unlocked through lootbox purchases.
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​
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5a- The wiki should note whether you can see preview of the cosmetic items before you are buying/receiving. Some games have good preview option, they show how each items/animations in store goes with your existing character etc.
Warframe had somewhat confusing preview system for an animal breeding system and people unknowingly changed the slider too many times and lost their money, so developers later fixed it.
​
B Many cosmetic microTX can give you an advantage/disadvantage over other players in multiplayer. For example- dark clothing in first person shooters.
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c Some cosmetic items have hidden stat boost which can only be realised when tested.
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d How regularly will the game allow users to skip mission? Do the customers have to purchase microTX to skip mission? This may indicate that the game is too grindy and painful to be - ironically - played.
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E Pretty soon publishers will sell graphics settings like blood decal/motion blucell shaderain effects or other settings like footstep sound, subtitles, localization as microTX. Oh wait, Warhammer Total War sells blood decal for 2$
​
f Some games (like Garry’s Mod) allow community servers to introduce community microTX. This way you can spend money to community servers to help them and receive cosmetic/gameplay changing items. However it is technically possible for all multiplayer games that supports community servers to allow community microTX and this cannot be monitored.
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6a- On which platforms/online stores is the game available? In future what other stores will sell the game?
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B What is the store’s refund policy regarding microTX/ unused lootbox?
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C What is the region locking policy on DLC/microTX/lootbox etc?
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D Whether the store requires credit cards/paypal and acquire your personal info that way, whether it supports third party cdkeys or wallet codes (Although some cdkey resellers are themselves shady).
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E What are the payment methods? Does the store allow prepaid credit cards?
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F Whether or not by default the store will forget your credit card and personal info. If the store forgets your credit card info it can’t charge you for accidental microTX purchases. This is particularly useful for mobile purchases as children sometimes accidentally purchase microTX using parents mobile, however a few PC stores this can be a problem too. This may also protect against credit card theft or database breach.
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G Whether the store has family sharing option/gifting feature.
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H From where the microTX have to be purchases? Some games are sold in online stores but their microTX/lootboxes are sold from game server.
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I Some stores deduct account balance if customer doesn’t login regularly
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j GDPR compliance.
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K What types of data is the store saving? How easy is for the consumer to look at his data which is saved in the database?
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L Does the store save consumer telemetry data? Many stores save consumer’s telemetry data secretly.
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M Ability to delete user data from the database and AI
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n Which company owns the store? Who can have access to user data? In which server a particular user’s data located(because different countries have different data policy/privacy policy)? Will the store let users know if their data leave servers of one country to another country?
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O Data sharing policy with third parties/data brokers. Many stores/games sell data to data brokers so data brokers can track all the users and sell information to other game developers/advertisement agencies etc.
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p What type of artificial intelligence are using customer data? Is the recommendation system AI opt-in or opt-out?
Can you browse games in ‘private mode’ without the store tracking your browsing activity?
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Q How many data breaches have the company suffered from? Do they protect from stolen credit cards?
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R How many types of 2-factor authentication does the store support?
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S How exactly the advertisement system work within the store? Do they advertise games by pushing them into your game library screen instead of keeping them in store page?
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T Do they sell misleading content without proper warning? Some stores don’t warn users that DLC/Expansion won’t work without original game. Some stores don’t warn if online features of a game is shut down.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 had always online DRM. Couple of months after release online features were turned off then it was on sale on playstation store misleading millions of PS4 users.
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7a Same questions for game website, some games are not sold in stores instead they are directly sold through their own website. What are the refund policy regarding microTX/currency? Whether the game website forgets your credit card info by default data etc.
How does the family sharing work with microTX items?
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B Does the game have multiple save slot? Some games deny replayability by charging for additional savegame slots.
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Metal Gear Survive requires 10$ to unlock additional save slots. Not only multiple persons can’t enjoy the game from a single machine, one consumer can’t create multiple savegame to replay the game without paying money.
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C Some games have virtual currency which will expire if left unused for a long time. For example- Metal Gear Solid 5
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D What is their Data policy?
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8a- Some microTX are consumable microTX like Destiny 2 shaders and camos. This means microTX will be like buying gems in mobile games, they will expire after certain number of usage.
Deus Ex Mankind Divided has lots of consumable items.
Skins in CSGO are not consumables but pastes are.
Many free to play games have premium ammos which are obviously consumables.
Some things in PUBG Royale Pass are consumables/temporarily available.
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B Some games have animal breeding system, users can breed cats/pandas to create biggemore beautiful cats/pandas. If one cat is to be bred limited number of times it should be considered consumables.
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C The wiki should mention how actually the consumables work and savegames work, whether it supports second playthrough or a second family member playing the same game.
Many consumables in singleplayer games are strictly one playthrough only. This means in many games users have to be extremely careful, have to save their games manually and have to use their savegame files in a complex way to use consumables in multiple playthroughs.
Examples are Deus EX Mankind Divided and Borderlands franchise.
(Well there is a reason why 60$ games don’t have cheatcodes anymore)
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9-Some advertisement based games require you/give you option to watch ads in order to save progress/gain additional save slots etc.
Street Fighter V has in-game advertisements as a way to earn in game money which can be used to purchase gameplay enchancing microTX.
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B Whether advertisements in a game occupies part of the screen and hinder gameplay.
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10- Dynamic pricing in most countries is not illegal itself if it is based on spending habit/credit card balance etc. However if a game has dynamic pricing the consumers need to know that to compare prices with other consumers.
Example of dynamic pricing- Star Citizen will show you an option to purchase almost all ships in the game with 27000$, only if you have already spent 1000$ in microTX in the game.
Instead of dynamic pricing some games have dynamic discount.
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11 - What are the types of lootboxes in the game?
Any mechanic/cosmetic item which depends on virtual currency can be considered lootbox if acquiring the item depends on a random number generator. By this definition lootboxes and random card decks are the same. Even looting of corpses and similar mechanics can be considered lootbox if looting depends on RNG in the game.
Assassin’s Creed Unity had random collector edition pre-order reward depending on result of a spinning wheel, this can be considered lootbox.
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However not all types of lootboxes can be considered gambling. Firstly, gambling laws differ from country to country. Secondly, random sticker decks like Panini football stickers are not considered gambling at any country as number of stickers for each players are equal and it does not have a normal,rare,premium tiers like Fifa Ultimate Pack has.
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B Do the lootboxes in the game only have cosmetic items or gameplay mechanics?
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C paid or free lootbox? CSGO lootboxes have to be considered paid because you must use keys for lootboxes and those keys muse be bought. Battlefield battlepacks can be earned or bought.
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D The wiki has to show what are the exact probability of finding each item inside lootbox?
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E If lootbox has a drop probability what is that, exactly? Exact is the keyword here, many companies publish rough estimate of lootbox probability but never reveal the definite probability.
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F Whether the lootboxes in the game has dynamic probability for items. Many games have dynamic probability, in first week of a lootbox system the game will drop many lootboxes but after the game hooked people on Twitch, the droprate/item rate will be decreased.
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G Can a consumer easily see all lootboxes he used in the past in chronological (and other sort) order? By default EA doesn’t show how many Fifa Ultimate Packs a customer has bought unless they deliberately request that information through GDPR or other regulations. Even with GDPR they don’t usually show what lootbox revealed which player cards in game and other relevent information.
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H Do the lootboxes in the game guarantee that there will be no duplicate item reveal?
If no, then in case there is a duplicate what type of rewards the consumer will receive? Will the game return portion of the money the consumer paid to acquire the lootbox?
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12- Some games have marketplace/auction house to trade microTX or lootbox items. There have to be specific tags for marketplace enabled videogames. Even though marketplace can be good for a video game, many parents don’t want their children to be exposed to marketplace because they believe it can encourage gambling.
For example- CSGO/Rust/TF2/Payday 2 and many other games have Steam market.
Diablo 3 had auction house which was later disabled.
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B Does the game/store have third party API for login? Steam used to allow third party sites to use Steam API and that lead to young people gambling items on the internet.
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13a - Does the lootbox system in the game guarantee that no lootbox item will need a DLC purchase if the consumer who revealed the lootbox did not have that DLC beforehand?
Many lootbox items in many games are attachments of weapons/characters which are not available by default and must be/can be unlocked with real world money.
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B Whether the game has microTX for microTX. Yes, it is a thing now.
The Sims 4 has microTX which only works if you have already purchased a DLC.
Black ops 4 season pass requires Black ops 4 Special editions, standard black ops 4 can’t work with season pass. To make matters worse, some DLCs can’t be played without season pass.
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C How often game UI promotes virtual currency or item purchase. Most games will hit players face with microTX options and annoy them.
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D How often an in-game mission promotes paid DLC content? Some games mentions DLC endings to pursue consumer to buy the DLCs to see all the endings.
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E What are the marketing policy of the game? Some games deliberately market themselves to children/teenagers, then try to push microTX or lootboxes to them.
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14- The wiki should also show which countries have banned the game/part of the game. Many European countries are banning lootboxes, like Belgium banned lootbox from Fifa and Destiny 2.
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15- Some games have anti-consumer-consumer mechanics for pre-order or microTX. For example- Deus ex mankind divided wanted people to influence their friends to pre-order the game(they changed the policy later).
This type of crowd pre-order is not technically pyramid schemes, because kickstarters work in the same way. However it’s still shady.
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B Some coop focused games/battle royale games can influence people to purchase microTX to save teammates.
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C What type of AI and matchmaking are the developers using? Some developers i.e. Call of Duty franchise have matchmaking system that can make a consumer think that the microTX they purchased are more effective than they actually are. They do it by placing a player in a multplayer match where the microTX is useful just after they bought it/got it from a lootbox. Some companies also using dynamic difficulty in singleplayer to force a player to lose a game or win a game whenever the company desires.
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D Some games have fundamental social features that will promote lootbox/pre-orders.
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Example- Lootboxes used in Call of Duty WWII matchmaking area will be visible to other players in the team (even those who are not inside customer's friendlist). It even gives players rewards to watch other players’ lootbox openings.
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Activision and EA are creating mechanics to integrate microTX promotions in replay system/livestream.
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E Some ‘Twitch plays video game’ games also have mechanics that will promote microTX/lootbox purchase among livestream viewers.
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F Many e-sports games and fighting games have heroes/mechanics behind DLC/lootbox/pre-order, that way if people are to be good with the game they have to pay more.
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G Some games have e-sports ticket pass/invitational pass as microTX or lootbox. This way they create pressure on fans to increase prize money for the tournament champions. To make matters worse many e-sportsman have to request fans to purchase more microTX to increase the prizes etc.
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H Some games create direct stress in consumer’s mind to instigate a panic.
Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery will choke a kid to death if a user don’t pay money to save him.
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16A- The wiki should note how many times developers changed DLC/microTX/lootbox policy in the game. Many games nowadays changing XP gain/currency gain post release as that will help them get good reviews on metacritic while still earning revenues from microTX.
Example- Mortal Kombat 11, Fallout 76 etc.
Destiny 2 also blocked many levels behind DLC purchase which was previously allowed to be accessed by standard edition buyers. They did it through a DLC rank lock.
Steep editions were already very confusing, to make matters worse Ubisoft changed lots of content of Steep standard and gold editions. There are many editions of Steep and some of them have swapped content, sometimes even secretly. It’s rocket science.
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B In some cases developers actually change policy which was previously promised. For example- Payday 2 introduced gameplay changing lootbox even though developers previously promised no lootboxes. Fallout 76 added non-cosmetic microTX.
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17A- This is getting quite common lately. Developers secretly change XP gain/lootbox mechanics to encourage purchase of microTX/lootbox. Most of time people have to listen to what publishers are not telling them rather than what they are saying.
Example- Destiny 2 and Fallout 76. Bungie later apologized for secretly decreasing XP gains and changed it back.
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B It is possible when developers/publishers get sued for lying to customer about dynamic pricing/dynamic reward system etc. they will just blame their AI and neural network instead of their corporate practices.
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18 What type of DRM the game uses?
Online only DRM can leave game unplayable if DRM server is down. Many games use 3rd party DRM so if the DRM service goes out of business it will make the game unplayable so consumer investments on microTX will be wasted.
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B Does the DRM breach privacy?
Many 3rd party DRM also compromise privacy by monitoring and storing information about applications running in the computer. The wiki should mention whether consumer can delete personal info from DRM servers.
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C Whether the multiplayer has LAN feature. If developers of a multiplayer only game shut down server the consumer will lose all microTX/lootbox spent on the game, but LAN feature can keep the game alive.
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D The website has to show how many open source mods are available for SP/MP. Modding can allow consumers to be non-dependent on microTX and guarantee more content.
Modding friendly means game either has a modtoolkit or even for a amateur programmar it’s possible to alter simple stuff such as swords or weapon props. Some game developers are calling microTX as mods, which are not actually true.
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E Does the game have cheatcodes? Many singleplayer games have killed cheatcodes to sell microTX or even lootbox in singleplayer games.
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F Whether the game requires/ has the option to rate the game within the game.
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G Whether game will ban you from online servers if you rate the game low on store.
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H Whether the game will ban you from online servers if you simply mention that the developers broke promise or mention some game bugs in their forum.
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I What type of anti-cheat service the game uses? Does the anti-cheat service compromise privacy/security by monitoring activities? Will the anti-cheat falsely ban people from a game they have invested money in?
A rogue PUBG employee was secretly selling cheating data and player information to Chinese hackers and were later fired from his job from Bluehole Studio.
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J Some games have rather confusing anti-cheat policy, and they will not engage the banned players with all the details of the alleged crimes they have committed.
For example PUBG bans people for alleged stream sniping even though streamers can always delay their streams by 10 or 20 minutes. GTA 5 will ban user if they ever possesed any hacked currency, even though it’s pretty common to pickup in game money from a deadbody.
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K Some games have Redshell and other spywares to track and sell all user data on the computer. Although most games removed Redshell lately.
According to Jim Sterling, while game is online, Deus Ex Mankind Divided spies on every in-game clicks a user does to optimize microTX even more.
Some game softwares/clients require permission which can possibly breach privacy. War Thunder used to require special permissions.
(Although many hardware manufacturers and operating system developers are themselves using telemetry/keyloggers these days)
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Additional suggestions regarding game reviews etc
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19 Maybe the website should mention how many DMCA takedowns a publisher have claimed over youtube videos? If a publisher is claiming copyright after release of a game it may indicate either they are immature or they don’t want microTX policy to become public. Same thing goes for Nintedo Creator Program.
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20 How many times the developer tried suing journalists over leaked information? Example- Take Two threatened to sue journalists over leaked information claiming they were stolen.
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21 Did the game have review embargo? How long before the game launched did the reviews show up in review sites? Some developers misuse review embargo to censor game’s bugs. Assassin’s Creed Unity pulled their review embargo 6 hours after the game was released, obviously that game was a bug infested den.
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22 Some games allegedly break price gouging laws. Website should be able to monitor that. However not all types of price hikes are unlawful.
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23 Asset flipping- Some indie games buys cheap assets from Unity marketplace then sell it as game/DLC. Asset flipping is relative, not all usage of marketplace assets are asset flipping.
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24 If the website has a review section it should compare E3 screenshots/video demos with actual games. Famously Watch Dogs, Colonial Marines and many other AAA games lied with their screenshots/E3 demos. Watch dogs secretly disabled many textures and Colonial Marines did not actually develop a game.
Even Witcher 3 announcement trailer had misleading graphics which was not possible for them to release in full game.
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24 b- It should also compare features announced and released. No man’s sky.
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25- Whether the Steam forum/subreddit is controlled and curated by developers
Many games’ reddit community is controlled by developer and they delete criticism of their policy.
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26- Some game publishers promise free cdkeys or other incentive to fans if they help them get approved/greenlit in stores by upvoting etc.
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Part B Website suggestions
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1- The website has to have tags/factors to seperate games.
Whether microTX/paid DLC are cosmetic only or gameplay changer? Singleplayemultiplayer which section has which type of microTX?
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2- It has to be a website so it is searchable for a game’s tag/rank and other information.
The wiki can work as an aggregate site like metacritic. Many of the suggested features are difficult to implement without hiring actual journalists. So having a aggregate review/news section will help consumers.
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3- It’s better to have a factual wiki, not subjective one, but it’s difficult to stick to only facts. Some things have to be subjective. For example there is no proper distinction between DLC and microTX. For a gameplay based DLC, you can say microTX will give you gameplay advantage over other players while DLC will give you/other players more content. However for cosmetic DLC, you can’t easily differentiate between DLC and microTX. That’s why many stores like Steam doesn’t differentiate between DLC and microTX.
However for most part it is possible to stick with facts. Facts like whether or not the game had day 1 DLC or how many hours neeeded to unlock each items in game etc. Let the game reviewers give opinion about microTX policy in each game.
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4- It should have a rank system, A+ for older games like doom series/elder scrolls which had no microTX or paid DLC. A for games like witcher 3, B for R6S which solds mostly cosmetic microTX and you can earn most of them by playing (it also has cosmetic lootbox).
Rank system will be highly argumentative, of course. Rank is supposed to be a summary of all information, so it can be misleading. It’s always better to read whole microTX wiki.
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5- It has to be updated regularly otherwise it will die. Game devs often update their game to include microTX as many games are early access games. Each game’s wiki have to show when the wiki was last updated.
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6- It may have a subreddit or forum so people can express their own microTX feedback for games.
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7 The wiki should be properly searchable by tags/factors. It should even be searchable by developer or publisher name. So if a user clicks on a publisher they can see all other games they have made and what type of monetization those games had. User can easily see if the company previously secretly changed XP gain to lure people to the game etc.
For example- Many company sells pre-order exlcusives 1 year after release, this can indicate that in future they will do this again, so better to be patient.
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8 The website may have a section for comparison and recommendation.
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B It should show prices of microTX compared to previous games of the same franchise.
Some game sells microTX items which were free in previous games in franchise.
Solitaire was free for 3 decades then Microsoft released subscription based Solitaire for Windows 10, priced 10$ yearly. Minesweeper is also subscription based now, both games have advertisement based free to play versions.
Call of duty black ops 4 sells red dot on screen for 1$, previously things like this were free in call of duty franchise.
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C Some remastered games have paid DLCs which were free DLCs in original game. Wiki will compare prices of original and remastered DLCs/microTX.
For example Modern warfare remastered was a DLC of infinite warfare. Remastered had it’s own DLC which was priced at 15$, which is 5$ more than the original DLC for call of duty 4.
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D The wiki may have a recommendation system, when you are browsing a first person shooter which promotes lootboxes by showing your lootbox purchases in multiplayer lobby, the wiki will show other fps games coming out this year which doesn’t have lootboxes.
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E How differently does the microTX/currency system work compared to other games/previous games?
For example- Destiny 1 and 2 microTX works completely differently. Destiny 2 cosmetics are almost always one time use. This led to people losing their money in the game.
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F The silliest example of microTX from the game and maybe the best example too.

Firstly, I will like to apologize for the bad headline, I could not think of a better one, and my english skill or lack off.
I am from Denmark, currently not living there but I still live inside of EU, and this post will be mostly a rant about how EU should do something about Video Games in general, and how it can benefit us as gamers, I work in iGaming, so I will be touching Gambling in video games as well.
I love video games, I love early access games, I am a huge fan of funding games through start up sites like Kickstarter. Which makes this post extra complicated.
As long as I can remember, when you went out and bought the newest games you wanted, you went home, installed it and you started playing it, that was it, then the internet game, and you could now get small patches where the game could improve, maybe a new map, maybe some bug fixes, or you could add an expansion, you owned the game, and you could do what you wanted with the game. Now if you go out and buy a video game, install it, install the latest patches, you start playing it, you enjoy it, a year later you are sitting bored in front of your computer, and thinking, "Hey, I liked this game, let me try to boot it up", and suddenly, it's not the game you played back then anymore, all the weapons are different they do less damage, you have to pay real money to make them stronger, you can grind it, but it would take months to be competetive. This is not the game you bought anymore, you have no way to roll back the patches to an older version you enjoyed, you simply have to accept, this is how the game is now. If you buy a game, and the company that made it decides you can't play on their servers, they can just ban you, without a reason, maybe you got Neymar for super cheap or you sold a silver player for a bit more than he was worth, boom banned from all online games, which is 95% of what EA uses their time on developing. Hitman demands to be online at all time, if they decide to shut down the servers, you won't be able to player anymore at all, even though you paid 90 euro on release, one day they can just tell you that the servers are shut down, and it's not possible to play the game anymore.. Is that owning a game? It doesn't sound like it.. Why this is such a difficult topic is that I enjoy early access games, I like to buy a game early and play it as it develops, it makes me feel like I was a part of the game growing and becomming better, but most of these games don't have a "Go back to patch 23.1.4.5", which is by far the superior patch, some games do have this feature and I love that.
This is also why it's so a hard to make laws about it, there's no specific way to measure how much a game has changed or check if the game has changed too much, or inforcing it if a law was made. There are thousands of games being updated each day, how should anyone have the time to check all of them and see if the game has "changed too much"?
In regards of the gambling in games, I am a huge fan of the method League had in the beginning and Fortnite, you buy the skins you like for real money, it has no game play advantage (For the most part, League did or still have that some skins does 1 dmg more or something if they play against a certain champ or something). I do not like loot boxes, it's gambling, it's a slot machine, something I work with every day, sure you do not win money, but you still pay real money and you have a chance to get something of value, this is at least true for CSGO, where you can sell the skins for steam wallet money, but I would still argue that Fifa Packs are gambling according to the definition of Gambling I get if you look it up on Google. "play games of chance for money; bet." I do not think Gambling in games should be illegal, just regulated like real gambling is, and that kids under the age of 18 should not have the chance of gambling.
Lastly, what Activision has done with BO4 is a disgrace, and they shouldn't be able to change a game or add IAPs after this long, this has drastically changed the way the game is played and it is no longer the game I have purchased, and do feel like it should be possible to get a refund of the game. Yes this is a post made solely because I am salty, but I also still think there is some merit to it.

I contemplated posting this on a throwaway account because I'm fairly certain it will just be downvoted a ton and then buried, but then I thought that perhaps if I present my take on this with enough respect than you guys would return the favor by not annihilating my sweet internet points and burying this post in the dirt.
I want to make it clear that Reddit is not a collective mind and that everybody has a different opinion on everything, and that everything has more than one side to it. However, I have still noticed large trends of late, and that is what I will be referring to. Feel free to post your opinion down below after reading and I will try to respond. This post is an opinion piece in itself, if I'[m putting my opinion out here expecting it to be respected then I have no reason to no respect yours.
Whenever I see a thread involving Valve or Steam, I almost immediately see the same comment along the lines of "I know everybody on this site sucks Valve and Gaben's dick, but I really think Valve doesn't care about us at its core. They just want our money like any company." I agree that Valve has changed a lot over the years, and doesn't have the same exact "the customer is our highest priority" appeal they once had to many people. However, despite all the people who claim that Reddit worships Valve, a claim I can certainly understand, I also see more and more people by the day absolutely shitting all over Valve for various reasons. Things have gotten very negative around here. In threads relating to GOG, I seem to find people less people saying "I think Steam is great, and this is a great alternative. Steam is a good platform and has some great features that GOG was inspired by, while GOG offers some other benefits and is getting better all the time", and more people saying "GOG reveals how anti-consumer Steam is with it's DRM policies. I hope GOG will replace Steam in the near future." And now with the recent events concerning CSGO betting, I see so many people pointing their fingers directly at Valve - blaming them for not monitoring every site which happens to use their Steam connect button almost any site is able to incorporate.
Now, if you made it through that last paragraph and onto this one, you may think to yourself: "well this guy is obviously a Valve fanboy. He dislikes the praise GOG gets and thinks Valve is free of blame in all areas. He thinks Valve has never done anything wrong". And if you did think that to yourself, you just might have just discredited me completely and you may have even participated in a different kind of circlejerk than the one you think I'm a part of, a counter-jerk if you may. I have listened to the opinions of many people on this site who argue positions that are more against Valve than for Valve, and I would say many of these opinions are rational and completely understandable. I agree that GOG is a great alternative to Steam, and I think CD Projekt is a wonderful pro-consumer company who should continue to better their already promising services. I agree that Valve has horrible customer service. But those two issues aren't the inspiration behind me writing this. The real issue right now is whether or not Valve is a shady company in regards to CSGO betting websites. And I hope, if you're willing to read on, that you will consider my take as I have considered many other people's arguments on this site against Valve.
At the moment, the majority of Reddit's gaming community following the current matters would say that Valve is shady and a major part of the problem by allowing CSGO betting websites to operate. People are saying that CSGO's crates alone are shady and already promote gambling. And although I completely understand these arguments, I have to say I disagree. Now, I don't think Valve is completely pure and all-innocent, but I think Valve hasn't really done much wrong regarding this issue. Why, you ask? Well, let's put things into perspective. Valve introduced weapon skins and crates as a way for them to make money, yes, but while also providing cosmetic items for players to enjoy and involving the Workshop community in a system that allowed users to create assets to be included in the game. Most people complaining about the skins and crates are complaining about their implications, not about the skins themselves being a part of the game. So one could infer that the skins - and crates by extension - do provide something of value to the playerbase and aren't inherently bad. However, some people argue that the crates themselves promote gambling.
H3H3Productions - whom I am big fan of and who has done a service in bringing light to the gambling situation in the first place - made the point that a crate unboxing is similar to a slot machine in appearance and function . And while this is fairly accurate in a way, the CSGO crates are always guaranteed to contain an item of monetary value. These crates, and even skins, are even occasionally given for free to players by playing the game. You could argue that buying the crates and then unboxing something of less value than the cost of the unboxing is gambling by itself, but this isn't really true since the crates are often dropped for free and don't require you to put something on the line with the chance of gaining nothing. Not to mention, Valve has to make some sort of profit off the the system they included, and this is how they do it. The crates' resemblance to a slot machine is likely just an aesthetic choice to make the experience more exciting by eliciting the thrill of a "chance to win" scenario without actually being real gamble. Many other games, such as Overwatch, incorporate very similar systems where players can buy crates with random items in them but they can't resell those items. Although somebody could buy a ton of crates and lose money overall after the unboxings, they are still left with the items they got and can sell them for whatever they want even if they won't sell (crates and keys are also bought only from other players - not directly from Valve). There is also no pressure from the game itself to buy crates - they are often dropped for free as mentioned and only yield cosmetics. They do not affect the gameplay and any way. The game never implies that the user should expect to make a profit off of the marketplace in any way, and the game itself is not at all marketed towards minors. There are also credit card security measures in place on the marketplace to prevent over spending, and the trading and selling of items are heavily locked-down actions that require mobile authentication to complete without experiencing a multiple-day-long waiting period. So I would argue that no, the crates themselves do not promote gambling. The marketplace is primary intended as a way of selling unwanted items that were dropped or buying new ones directly and there is no real reason to think that there is some sort of ulterior motive behind it all.
Still, people argue that Steam uses the market as a tool to purposefully encourage gambling, or that the market alone lures people into the act. Well, in order to gamble you need a direct method of putting everything on the line to then either increase your payout or lose it all - something Valve does not provide by itself. So the selling of skins isn't inherently bad unless Valve is purposefully sanctioning gambling sites - something I will get to in a bit. However, since Valve does not allow the means of gambling by itself, this system is not inherently flawed. Players can buy skins directly, or sell the skins they receive as they are guaranteed an item in every crate. The market has a useful purpose, and its inclusion into the game comes with pro-consumer benefits. But is a direct method of gambling even required? As mentioned above, some people accuse Valve of purposefully sanctioning gambling sites to fuel their profits. Now, you think Valve wouldn't need to do this with the revenue they already make from the crate system that always guarantees something on the player's end, but people still seem to think Valve uses gambling sites as a tool. People point to the fact that you can sign into these sites with Steam directly and complete transactions with these sites through Steam. However, to say that Valve purposefully keeps these sites "whitelisted" is something I can't totally agree with. Many sites use the Steam account login button. Many. Not just gambling or transaction-related sites. And I'm fairly certain that even when transactions are made through the link, you still need to run the deal through the Steam Authentication process and approve it yourself. My argument here is that Valve does not block these gambling sites because it's simply, excuse the pun, not their business.
The items that people are gambling with belong to the user. Valve has no reason to block people from doing stupid shit on shady sites because those items are the user's. Those users do what they want wherever they want because the items are theirs. Now, people argue that the market still hooks people into gambling, and that Valve needs to block gambling sites because children are accessing them and these sites can harbor scrams. I disagree again. As stated above, CSGO is not aimed at children at all. There is an age limit on the game. If children are lying about their age, buying CSGO items from the marketplace and then gambling them away then yes, that is quite unfortunate. But it is not something Valve facilitated at any step of the way. Valve has never tried to lure kids into performing these activities, the only people who have lured anyone are the shady websites at the other end who promise profits through gambling. But that's not Valve's business either. Why? Because when you go link your account with any website that uses the Steam login button, you agree to link the account yourself. You sign in yourself. I'm fairly certain you even have to use two-step verification to do so if my memory serves correct. Why the fuck should Valve give a shit that you're doing so? It's the same argument with gun manufacturers making guns that end up in the hands of killers. Are the manufacturers at fault, or the malicious buyers? Or, is it perhaps the that people selling them are being extremely stupid and should know better? Valve simply allows you to make the decision to link a site to your Steam account. Valve does not have to give a shit about what happens to you when you make that decision. You should know the risks. And in the case of children, that is why you monitor what activities your kid partakes in online and keep your credit card out of their reach unless supervised.
Yes, kids can find a way to gamble like this and that is bad, but as long as guns exist they will end up in the wrong hands somehow. Political parallels aside, the blame is not all on Valve here. The blame really belongs to the pieces of shit who do bad things outside of Valve's jurisdiction. Even if Valve did away with CSGO skins completely, sites would pop up all over for gambling Steam trading cards for Christ's sake. Valve offering the capabilities for you to link your Steam account to a website does not mean they have to police the internet in search of sites that can take advantage of people who should know better or shouldn't be interested in gambling at all with some decent parenting in place. And even then, Valve does exactly that in some cases. There are warnings when connecting your Steam to several malicious sites. Valve employees even put that warning on CSGO Lotto, but the warning was removed because Valve would rather verify first that CSGO Lotto is actually scamming/partaking in illegal activities (something that we on Reddit can be fairly certain of yet hasn't legally been confirmed yet - these are recent allegations after all).
Now, the one thing I will agree on is that if Valve truly wanted to, they could take more action and block these shady sites, but there are TONS of such sites, and in blocking these sites Valve would be taking freedom away from the user even if it really meant their protection. They are not entitled to do so, but they still do for really bad sites. I really think that all of this finger-pointing at Valve is rooted in rational complaints, but things are quickly brewing into an anti-Valve counter-circlejerk in the Reddit gaming community. And that upsets me. Because, while Valve has made many missteps over the years, I personally think the real reason they appear not to care is because they still don't realize how much influence they have. I personally feel that because one of Valve's core principles has always been to not limit the freedom of the user, it starts to appear that they are instead just not giving a shit about policing some things as heavily as they could, and instead take precautions to prevent happenings that need less preventing and more direct attention. I feel this affects Greenlight's quality control, I feel it affects Steam's DRM policy since they rather prevent shady action from the root by tying games to Steam, and I feel it affects Steam's customer support since they worry more about account security than dealing with what happens when the security isn't enough. These are all areas that Valve needs to improve in, but people can praise what they've done and pressure them to improve in other areas without just blindly shitting on them for being "anti-consumer" or "shady" or "really in it solely for the money". Because, yes, Valve is it it for the money. People love to point out all the time now that because Valve is a business, they need money to grow. But Valve has always prioritized it's users in the past and I have no reason to think that all along they didn't give a shit. People love to say that "Reddit sucks Gaben's dick, he could really care less when it comes down to things", but I think Gabe Newell of all people knows best that the greatest way to make money is to treat the consumer right. he's said this many times in many different contexts. I know Valve has gotten so big that it's hard to keep every aspect of itself flawless, I'm not trying to deny Valve or Steam has flaws. But let's stop being so negative for just a second and consider how much they've done for the community already, and ask ourselves if it makes sense that they suddenly no longer give a shit about the consumer just because the consumer has made them as big as they are now.
I'm not a "Valve fanboy". I know there are plenty of areas Valve needs to improve on. But there is no reason to be so negative and to point fingers at them so hastily whenever something pops up. Trust me, if Valve ever suddenly stops giving a shit about the consumer then the gaming community will already be in a pretty fucked spot. Please don't disregard what I'm saying here. I am perfectly willing to respect your opinion if you respect mine. I've always considered this community to be a friendly one overall. And I'm sorry if you tried to read all of this, fell asleep, and were late to work.
[Edit] Okay, fine. Tl;Dr. Sorry.
-Read the first two paragraphs of the initial post.
-(Optional) Read the next two.
-Valve is not directly responsible for the gambling sites. The user makes the choice to link their Steam account to them, and that alone requires confirmation. Valve puts warnings on some really bad sites, but Valve should not have to police every site. It's like people say on here about antivirus programs: common sense is the best defense. Gambling is never a good thing. You shouldn't go to gambling sites in the first place, and children should be monitored enough to know that gambling is a no-no. I also used a parallel to gun control, for some reason.
-Cases alone do not promote gambling. The slot machine design is aesthetic. Gambling involves putting something on the line and either profiting or losing it all. Cases do no such thing. They always yield an item and Valve does not market the cases as allowing you to make a profit nor do they market anything to children.
-The market is not designed to encourage gambling. It's purpose is to allow users to sells unwanted drops (skins and crates drop for free occasionally just by playing) or to directly buy desired items. Gambling sites are a perversion of the market system, not an extension of it.
-I am a fan of H3H3 and glad he made the video. I also acknowledge much of the complaining about Valve is rooted in rational complaints. I acknowledge that plenty of people still love Valve.
-I acknowledge plenty of times that Valve is not totally innocent, and the whole post explores many complaints people have about Valve and how much Valve is at fault for those complaints and why.
-I make the point that I will respect your takes on this if you respect mine.
-Before sharing your opinion below, consider reading the full post. I make many more points.
-I may have to update this Tl;Dr with important points I missed. I'm including it now because people are making note that the entire post is kind of like the big wave in Interstellar (fucking huge).
-(Optional) Read the last two paragraphs of the initial post, or at least the last one.
[Old] Tl;DR: There isn't one. I'm sorry. If I summarize my argument it makes it way easier for people to discredit it in a mere second. If you're not willing to read my take on things, please don't rate and just move on.

First of all, I really do hope the hosts talk about this, though I doubt they will considering their ties to Tmartn. I guess we'll see.
So last time a CS:GO scandal came about (Frankie b-hop scandal), the hosts absolutely butchered the information because they didn't seem to do any prior research and were just guessing a lot of things. So I'm going to put together a sort of TL:DR for them before they record the show. Even if they don't see this, then at least anyone that reads this will get the correct information.
So basically what is happening is that Syndicate, Tmartn, and a CSGO streamer known as JoshOG were recently revealed to be owners of a big CSGO gambling site called CSGOLotto. Since I know none of the hosts are familiar with CSGO whatsoever, I'll try to describe how these sites work.
So every "skin" in CSGO has a price, ranging from $0.01 to over $1000. These prices are simply determined by how much they sell for on the steam market. The steam market is simply a marketplace where you can sell your steam inventory items (skins) for steam credit that can be used to buy off the steam market or to just buy games from the steam store. So this always brings up the argument of "Well if you can only sell them for steam credit, then its not real money!!", which is just blatantly false. First of all, there are third party sites that you can sell your skins on that use your paypal wallet for the transactions. So yes, you can turn skins into real life money. Second of all, pay real money for an item, it is worth real money. Anyways, there are multiple types of gambling sites, but the site in question (CSGOLotto) is a "coin flip" site. The first thing you need to do in order to play on these sites is trade your skins over to one of the Bot steam accounts that is affiliated with the site. So the skin still "belongs" to you and you can request it back at any time, but it is in the Bots inventory so that you can use it on the site. Basically what happens is one person puts up a skin or group of skins that has X amount of value. Then, someone else can "challenge" them by putting up their own skins that have a similar amount of value. Then, depending on the values, they have a chance to win the "coin flip". Winner of the coin flip gets all the skins that were put up. For example, say I put up my skin that is worth $510 and someone challenged me with a skin worth $490. I would have a 51% chance to win the coin flip and they would have a 49% chance to win. And no, you can't put a 1$ skin up against a $500 skin, they must be relatively close in value.
So whats the issue here then?
Basically Tmartn, Syndicate, and JoshOG all acted as if they were "sponsored" by CSGOLotto and encouraged their viewers to go to this site and gamble. Many of these viewers are underage, which brings the legality of the whole thing into question. The reason this is still a legal grey area is because technically they aren't gambling with real money, but with skins that are worth real money. If it was in fact real money, then you would have to be 18 to even use the site (assuming online gambling is even legal in your area). But in CSGOLottos terms of service, it only requires you to be 13 years old.
On top of all of this, all of the videos uploaded by these 3 are often titled something like "AMAZING $13,000 PROFIT ON CSGOLOTTO". It is clear that they are using these clickbait titles to drive more traffic to the site. Many of their underage viewers will very likely fall into the trap of "Oh, he made thousands of dollars, so can I!"
But wait
This is when their ownership become a big deal. Many have been questioning the legality of them promoting the site without disclosing their ownership. The video game attorney recently announced that it is in fact illegal to do this. So there's that.
Additionally, if they own the site, then they can very likely rig the odds in their favor. Something fishy is definitely going on here. This video has surfaced of Tmartn gambling on the site. When he changes back to his Steam tab in order to redeem the items he recently won, he was logged into one of the bot accounts for the site. You can see the steam name of the account he was logged into was "[CSGOLotto] Bot #05, before he quickly switched back over to his own account. Why would he be logged into the bots account? Was he taking other peoples skins from the bots inventory? Remember, at the time this was recorded, he had still not disclosed his ownership of the site.
So this whole thing is a massive shitstorm. Tmartn, Syndicate, and other owners may be in legal trouble for promoting the site and not disclosing their ownership. Valve may be held liable for facilitating underage gambling. All of these sites have been shady ever since their creation, and many people have been waiting for a scandal to come along to rid the CSGO community of the cancer that is skin gambling. This scandal may very well be the beginning of this.
There is probably some stuff I forgot to include, but that is all the big stuff. I'm sure the fucknards will remind me of anything I missed in the comments.

This is an opinion I've had since the debate first started creeping around, but with the anti battlefront circlejerk at full force its became more obnoxious. Obviously that game is a pure cash grab but the anger I feel has been misguided.
Legally I see the term gambling as the risk of losing money or possessions in return for the chance of making money or possesions. You do not make money off of lootboxes in these cases. The reward of gaining money is not present in lootboxes (outside of csgo and dota which Valve has already been addressing in backlash). You get the thing you wanted, or you get something else. No losses to be had. Not gambling. Some things you may personally value more than others, but none of them contribute to any sort of wealth and are equally worthless post transaction.
As for hurting gaming, a lot of games revolve around a random element which is not necessarily harmful. For examples, Dota 2 is a f2p that does not ask you to buy characters but does release skins in chest based systems in order to make money. In the past, third parties such as esports organizers have been able to make and sell these in order to contribute to the growth and community of the game. Overwatch used them as a fun little way of rewarding leveling up, with a chance to open one every two or so hours of play. If that's not enough, or you don't have time you can go ahead and buy some if you desire. Rainbow six uses alpha packs, which gives you a chance to get things for free and rewards play, or you can buy them or just the items you want and help support the game, which is still being cared for by the devs long into the game's life which prevents the need to sell us a rainbow six siege two too soon. I think all of these games would get worse without these features. This isn't to mention trading card games who have been using this as a vital mechanic for as long as I can remember. Or crane games at arcades that are probably the closest to gambling than anything do to you potentially not getting anything.
And do we really want the old people that make up our government looking into game design? I think more restrictions on games is worse than simply not supporting games with unfair business practices such as Battlefront.
And do we want to use the whole "think of the children argument" after fighting against people who still think of games as kids' toys? The T for teen rating can show kids drugs, alcohol violence, suggestive themes, and guess what? simulated gambling. The people the game is advised for are old enough to be equipped to handle it, that's the argument we have used against people trying to ban the violence and nudity in M rated games.
I'm not saying EA isn't being slimey. The model is very unfair to consumers, so we shouldn't buy it. It does not mean that the lootbox model is always unfair, or always bad. I think it should be that you can buy any item individually, but the prices are probably going to high for the good ones and that price tag would piss off a lot of people so I see why they don't oftentimes. I see why people get pissed when a full priced game is paywalled and unfair to the consumer so I just don't buy those games. That's the consumers decision. If someone wants to buy $100 of lootboxes to get the one specific thing they wanted they personally decided it was worth it. It seems like a lot of people hate these so once they stop doing well as business strategy they will cease to be common practice. I'm kind of rambling now, but the point is that pinning all the shitty business practices on lootboxes and trying to make it illegal is not going to stop the dickheads from being dickheads and is going to harm a lot of games too.
EDIT/ UPDATE: Ok so I now think that we could benefit more from regulations of lootboxes rather than just hoping the market sorts itself out. I still do not like the idea I have been hearing that it is the same as the legally defined and government regugulated idea of gambling. It is nowhere near as dangerous as slots and casinos and things with monetary gain and loss. But is shady enough to warrant more requirements of fairness such as disclosing exact odds, making the item unlockable via upfront purchase or in game rewards. People can be exploited enough that it might not just go away buy consumers not buying then because one person can wind up buying so many or give up with the personal feeling of money wasted if all they wanted was one item. With proper disclosures people can better steer away from the more egregious cases of lootbullshit

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For those who use OPSkins, or other various trading sites, Valve openly allows fraud and scams via the trading service.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3415-WAFH-6433
Scamming to me is the act of promise to pay for goods, switching out stuff in the Trade Window at the last moment for example, in hopes the other person won't see for example and thus ripping a person off.
What an OPBots scammer does, in this case, is beyond scamming, it's fraud
http://steamcommunity.com/id/34563452342423432
Basically, a user will contact you through steam if you are new to trading, or other various means to contact you, or just send a random trade request to another user in hopes they will accept it pretending to be an OPSkins bot, as shown above the user has multiple fake bot numbers, and has copied fake profile pretending to be a Bot from OPskins, they are also a member of the fake OPSkins Admin Bot Group, which has 3 other members doing this.
The person who solicits contact in games will often pretend to be a popular Twitch.TV person but if you look at it their profiles have often been duplicated to look just like another user this is where the fraud takes place.
What is annoying is that Valve / Steam has absolutely no way to submit an actual ticket that I am aware of in-order to deal with a person doing this it's been 72 hours i've reported the bot at least 5 times, faking his identity of another bot, and Trade Scamming, no action has been taken by valve, as they seem to welcome this type of behavior with open arms.
https://www.reddit.com/opskins/comments/4742c4/common_scams_to_watch_out_fo OPSkins also confirmed with me this bot is not one of theirs and is fake although $30 loss isn't a lot imagine this happening to people with Precious DOTA 2 items, a Liver Streamer, for example, is streaming and they go to put an item to OPBots and someone faking an OPbot sends a trade request for an item, that person can potentially lose thousands of dollars worth of items or an item in seconds with no way to combat this or get the item back as Valve does not seem to take this seriously.
If you check the bot's inventory they also have many items from H1Z1, DOTA 2, and CSGO which have also been stolen from other people, And this is a crime as items can be sold for "Steam Currency" and then used to sell games / Keys from sites like G2A, or be used to cash out money through legitimate 3rd party skin selling sites.
I don't care about $38 being lost in a scam I should have been aware of if I paid more attention, I care about the user / group of people who are allowed to keep doing this type of activity that should be illegal, and how Valve doesn't Terminate the accounts openly doing this to prevent the user from being able to make a living off scamming other people which should be illegal.
Edit: Report a user 72 hours later they are still scamming other people...
Edit: As for the links used here, they are simply profiles, and open to the public, and can be made private by the bot / user at any time as far as I am aware this violates no subreddit rules.