Having played TF2 and such as a kid, the bottleneck was always asking your parents for their credit card or getting steam cards/vanilla credit cards for your birthday.

I think it's hard to form a gambling addiction if you don't really have any money for gambling. You learn pretty fast that you get better value trading than gambling. I don't see how its much worse than baseball cards (we also had "top trumps" and pokemon cards and such).

Looking back on my childhood, I think the effect of internet porn far outweighed the effect of gambling-adjacent stuff like loot boxes.

I think the real victims of gambling in games are usually adults who have a much greater ability to dump their life's savings into a game.

>Looking back on my childhood, I think the effect of internet porn far outweighed the effect of gambling-adjacent stuff like loot boxes.

I think that's more because people don't want to teach children about sex, while people do demonstrate what gambling is early on. Ones much more complex and if you're letting a kid find their own answers unguided, that can potentially be disasterous.

That's not even mentioning theneffect of instilling shame on your own biological body and treating parts of it as taboo. If parents refuse to talk about something, it can be taken as either a bad thing, a scary thing, or a complicated thing.

>I think that's more because people don't want to teach children about sex

Come on now. It's hard to find anything more immediately exciting and alluring than sex, especially for teenagers. The biological imperatives and inclinations are too strong regarding sex for virtually everyone, compared to anything related to gambling. And OP is absolutely right that the barrier to entry is a great deterrent in the case of gambling, as well. Just based on that alone, easy-access, sex-related stuff is always going to have a potentially greater effect on almost anyone, regardless of their previous knowledge about it or warnings received by other people during their childhood.

>people do demonstrate what gambling is early on

Talk about going out on a limb. What are you basing this affirmation on? I don't see any parents lending any word of advice to their children about gambling-like activities, in any case, as most of them indulge in those themselves, let alone their own kids.

>t's hard to find anything more immediately exciting and alluring than sex, especially for teenagers.

And? More reason to educate them early. Similar to why we have a strong desire while young to devour sweets. Now imagine we ignore diet and leave a kid to eat whatever they feel like.

>compared to anything related to gambling.

My theme is education and awareness, not playing a one up contest on what is worse. Could we both agree that these are factors to teach to kids early?

>What are you basing this affirmation on?

My upbringing and education? You think 3rd/4th graders learning about "number cubes" won't equate that to gambling? They also love talking about card games later on. Parent taught me plenty of common games as well, alongside Dominoes. And ofc Z the media. Kids have eyes and can see adults gamble. They don't need a deep dive into a dedicated class to learn the deal (but yes, I was taught that gambling is bad).

Curious how you think education would help with porn. I had sex education prior to puberty. I still think porn was enormously harmful.

Ymmv as always. There will always be great and not great teachers. Really hard to judge on any individual case.

But what would a great teacher teach them? That's what I'm curious about. Is this just an awareness thing? Like say "by the way, porn exists, but wanking off to it is nothing like real sex and it might make the real thing worse". Is this accepted now, or is it still just one dude's theory (the your brain on porn guy)?

The earlier times tried and failed with that fear based approach. Worked about as well as D.A.R.E. I hope Manu schools learned by now that you can't just turn off a teenager's sexual curiosity and that casting it off as taboo only strengthens such curiosity.

You're not trying to sway people away from internet porn, you're telling people how sex actually works in reality. My teachers taught about the basic biology of genetalia (especially wrt sexual function), how to perform safe sex, STD's, Pregnancy, and school resources (we had condoms at the nurses office, for example).

I feel those are the basics needs everyone should he taught. A decent teacher would also have an open Q&A about sex and help in dispelling any potentially bad notions learned from elsewhere. The best lessons come from.those who seek knowledge themselves.

It's not perfect. I wish my education also taught more about genetalia care (there's still so so much misinformation about foreskin) and dove more into what consent actually is (that was more in college). But the point was to counter balance whatever people was seeing on the internet, not necessarily demonize it. Just like how understanding how to calculate probability can change your approach to gambling, learning more about your body and other humans' behavior can change your approach to how you interpret porn online. Even if people continue to consume it after being educated.

I'm a parent to 11/7 year olds, and just yesterday we were talking about how dangerous and addictive gambling is. If you ask them about gambling they will say "it's for stupid people". I doubt it's super common but I'm sure others are doing it if I am.

Also they still take a huge cut of profits from game sales. That's 30% of each sale going to the platform (compared to 12% by Epic). Indie game devs suffer if people don't opt to buy directly or from platforms like itch.io

But they have a near-monopoly on the pc gaming market so selling on Steam is a must

It's okay, if you're a AAA company with something like like 25-50m in sales, y9u get a tax cut to 20%

When you put it that way, the model makes so much more sense to matching how the US operates.

At least they're funding a lot of useful open source development with that money pile.

In a sense it's worse than that - when the mega-publishers started leaving Steam in favor of their own stores with better margins, Valve conceded by introducing a tiered system where their cut drops to 25% after $10M in sales and again to 20% after $50M in sales. It's deliberately structured to give a discount to the mega-corps which least need it (EA, Ubisoft, etc) while ensuring that indies with no leverage over Valve mostly remain on the 30% bracket.

30% may be a lot but you get more than a store page;

- anticheat

- voice chat, friend list, ...

- matchmaking

- marketplace for mods, maps, skins, ...

- clips and videos

- forums/ discussion board

- cloud saves

- rankings

An indie would have to implement and host those by itself or rely on third party services.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/

The problem is the margins are so high these digital storefront cuts almost become arbitrary. So to try and come up with a somewhat objective measure... 30% is too much based on their own historical pricing.

Steam was taking 30% when they did heavy curation and hand picked every game. At that point being on Steam was probably as valuable as a traditional publisher distribution wise because just being on Steam assured some level of quality.

Greenlight was the start of the decline in that value, and then with Steam Direct its just officially insane that they're still pricing their cut at the same rates they did at launch.

The value adds you listed also got much easier to build over time and got commoditized. EGS offers most of that for free for example, sans gambling enabling marketplaces.

Don't forget about their REAL expenses: credit processing fees and chargebacks.

Those are not even remotely close to 30%. If the cut was based on real expenses for services provided you'd see it change over time. That it's been stuck ack 30% for so long shows that there is only one reason for such a high cut: because they can get away with it.

Most games don’t have or need that functionality. Charging 30% because you could use that stuff if only you put in the development time is pretty rich thinking.

For example the Forums feature is seen as a plague, many of the forums on Steam are filled with neo nazi content and spam.

Especially relevant to this conversation is that TF2 is the game that single-handedly popularized the lootbox model outside of Korea.

Ye it was unfortunate. I remember at the time I thought it was silly but innocent. I don't think I even knew you could buy loot boxes for money.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some video resources that might be useful:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's bad and there is no excuse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s true that the gaming industry has leaned heavily into monetization, especially with loot boxes and microtransactions. Many games now create systems where players feel pressured to spend money to keep up, and younger players can easily get caught up in it. Games like Fortnite, Roblox, and even FIFA have built entire economies around this model. While some argue that it’s just part of modern gaming, it does raise ethical concerns, especially when minors are involved. It’s always a good idea to set spending limits or monitor transactions to avoid unintended charges. Platforms like https://melbet.tg/en also highlight how digital spending is everywhere, not just in gaming. Whether it's online games or other digital services, understanding how these systems work is key to making informed decisions. Games should be fun, but they shouldn’t encourage spending beyond what’s reasonable.

Also, their primary reason for existence is to add DRM to software.

Well, no, Steam provides a bunch of services to gamedevs that might be tied to an account, like matchmaking or mod support. But if the games don't use that they're not encumbered. I've got a bunch of hours in KSP that aren't on my account because I launched the exe through the CKAN mod manager rather than Steam

This is a little complicated. There are many companies that sell gambling products. Nothing special about that. The tragedy is when you list your game on Steam and it gets popular, you are paying Valve 30% for the privilege of finding new users for CSGO and DOTA2. That is how they make money.

And with skin sales. Remember that Valve charges a Tax on every item sale. Every time you sell an Item like a skin on the steam market, valve takes a cut. If they crackdown on the gambling it will impact their bottom line.

As you say, Valve does not directly promote gambling products. They are not like EA with their predatory Fifa super team.

Still a lot of people, including journalists, find that they could do more to protect against underage gambling.

I guess it will sounds like I being Valve advocate here, but it's just not only a bottom line. Valve simply dont have headcount to crackdown on many things and neither they have headcount to do lots of predatory stuff too.

Valve is under 400 people and wast majority of them do not work on Steam or specific game like CSGO. Likely each project support team is like 30-50 people at most.

To compare numbers for other companies in 2023-2024:

  * Epic Games - 4000
  * Nintendo - 7,724
  * Sony Interactive Entertainment - 12,700
  * Take-Two Interactive - 12,371
  * Electronic Arts - 13,700
  * Activision Blizzard - 17,000
  * Mircosoft Gaming - 20,100

Might be they do have to go to hire 100 more people to solve this problem and might be it's fully their fault, but expectations many people have of this certainly rich, but small company are not realistic.

Also looking at things like pirate sites, it would be never ending process. Close one and lock the their inventories and 3 will popup somewhere else. It is unlikely to be solvable issue.

Just because you cannot "solve" an issue, does not mean you should do nothing. By that logic valve should not implement VAC, because after all, cheaters will always find a way.

They play the anti-cheat game of cat and mouse, because if they do not, users will stop playing. No one wants to play with cheaters unless they are cheating.

They could definitely invest some resources into this. But they have no monetarily incentive thus they do nothing. I fully expect legal action or fear of it, will eventually make them do something.

They can definitely hire 2-5 people to do something, and at least try to crack down.

> As you say, Valve does not directly promote gambling products.

Counter strike cases are a gambling product. They cost money to buy, they cost money to open, and they reward with an item worth real money. This is indisputable, and arguing otherwise is either in bad faith or due to ignorance of the platform and surrounding ecosystem.

Valve wouldn’t be making over a billion dollars a year on case openings alone if the outcome of opening a case was worthless 100% of the time.

Yeah the 30% cut is insane, and its surprising to me that game publishers tolerate it under steam. But if you look at the PC games market, you can clearly be successful doing the "self publish" route like Minecraft did.

I think just means that valve has turned their DRM into a value-add for the consumer with cloud backups and item trading and such convenience features. And I say this as someone who uses GOG. You look at other competitors like Epic Games Store or EA or whatever and the user interface is bloated and slow, and it is just a pain to use.

Publishers have discovered that pc gamers prefer Steam over all other platforms. Basically all the big publishers are back on Steam or entering it. After trying to manage outside.

Which is true because people already have large Steam game libraries. I barely game anymore but I must have 3000 games in Steam.

Epic is gnawing at the lead, at least with me, as they give out a free game every week. I must have 300 games in Epic - I've even paid for a few.

Traditional publishers before Steam took even more - this is why companies tolerate it.

Minecraft is the exception that proves the rule. You really need to get lucky to make it big without being on Steam.

From what I gather about the game market, you need to get lucky to make it big being on Steam, too.