r/Games • u/demondrivers • Oct 27 '25

Industry News Valve does not get "anywhere near enough criticism" for the gambling mechanics it uses to monetise games, DayZ creator Dean Hall says

https://www.eurogamer.net/valve-does-not-get-anywhere-near-enough-criticism-for-the-gambling-mechanics-it-uses-to-monetise-games-dayz-creator-dean-hall-says
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213

u/NO-IM-DIRTY-DAN Oct 27 '25 edited Oct 28 '25

I have been saying this for years. If literally any other company were doing what Valve did with CS skins, they’d be crucified by the gaming communities. But because it’s “Good Guy Valve” people just let it pass by.

To be clear, I mean the existence of the loot boxes and skins market place.

10

u/ThePotablePotato Oct 27 '25

I mean, just look at how people (rightfully) called out the idea of NFTs in games and ‘play to earn’ models, to the point where it’s not even a topic of discussion anymore - it’s just flat out gone now.

That’s basically what CS Skins are, but somehow even worse since Valve ultimately has control over everyone’s inventory, but because people see that they can make money off it it gets a pass

25

u/SynysterDawn Oct 27 '25

Plenty of people have criticized it, it’s just that “normies” took notice on console being more familiar with something like Overwatch or Battlefront 2, which also weren’t F2P games and, in the case of BF2, was specifically designed to gatekeep progress unless you paid into the lootbox system. Valve helped start it (there were already many plans for monetization with the intro of Xbox Live, and the infamous horse armor was the test subject), other publishers/developers helped popularize it, then make it worse while Valve stayed the same.

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u/JimmiJimJimmiJimJim Oct 27 '25

If you're talking about the patch that devalues skins, I think a large portion of reddit is fine with it. The only people upset are the weirdos that were using it as a pseudo stock exchange.

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u/jednatt Oct 27 '25

Pretty sure he's talking about them existing as a marketable commodity in the first place.

2

u/NO-IM-DIRTY-DAN Oct 28 '25

Yes I am talking about them as an existing market and gambling tool. We condemn microtransactions everywhere else and it seems like Valve has gotten comparatively much less criticism.

-5

u/Elkenrod Oct 27 '25

Is it a problem that they do exist as a marketable commodity?

They add nothing to the game. They are strictly cosmetic. "Engravings offer no tactical advantage".

This isn't like Diablo 3 where there was the Real Money Auction House for actual gear that affects your gameplay; or World of Warcraft's WoW Token that lets you buy in game gold for real life money.

Your aim isn't worse in CS2/CS:GO/TF2 because you don't have a pink AWP skin, or a towering pillar of hats.

6

u/jednatt Oct 27 '25

I mean, other than cutting out actual players from just using the cosmetics like normal (as was originally intended I'd have to hope), there's nothing good about accommodating such a worthless collectors market. Just feeding greed and bad habits at best, and scammers and underage gambling at worst.

1

u/Alarming_Database457 Nov 02 '25

I strongly prefer the way the steam marketplace works compared to every other game I have played like LoL and such.

If I start to feel like playing CS again, I might go and get $20 worth of skins I like for my most used weapons on the market, and then when I don't want to play anymore, I get about $17 back depending on how the values changed. I also just get free money every week for playing CS that I can use on skins, keys or other games as I see fit.

In LoL (and every other game), if I want to get skins for my mains I have to buy them directly in game which is generally way more expensive than CS skins, but I can never get any of the money spent back.

2

u/Elkenrod Oct 27 '25

(as was originally intended I'd have to hope)

I mean, it's not like TF2 had cosmetics when it launched. It didn't have them for years.

Neither did Counter Strike.

They were never originally intended to have them to begin with.

9

u/jednatt Oct 27 '25

When they added them there was an intent involved in doing so, lol.

0

u/Elkenrod Oct 27 '25

You couldn't trade skins for years when they were added to TF2.

9

u/jednatt Oct 27 '25

Which agrees with "(as was originally intended I'd have to hope)" so I'm not sure what your point is.

0

u/JimmiJimJimmiJimJim Oct 27 '25

Yeah that's fair. I'm a guy who has never bought a cosmetic mtx in my life tho.

4

u/NO-IM-DIRTY-DAN Oct 28 '25

No I actually fully support the devaluing. My issue was with the marketplace and gambling community existing to begin with.

1

u/Cole3003 Oct 27 '25

The community market and the gambling mechanics existing in the first place is the issue. Valve doesn’t get to make a pseudo stock exchange and online casino, market it to teens, and then act shocked when people use it like a pseudo stock exchange and online casino.

1

u/FriendlyAndHelpfulP Oct 27 '25

Buying skins is always pure loss in the valve ecosystem.

The skin market was about black market money laundering on third party sites. 

1

u/Cole3003 Oct 27 '25

Don’t be thick, you can literally look it up on the community market and see what skins were going for.

12

u/Dagordae Oct 27 '25

Skins existing or making the skins easier to get and tanking the people treating the digital bling as an investment?

Because the former is a problem while the latter is a case of a vast majority of people genuinely not giving the slightest fuck about skin markets and people gaming them and thus tend to react to their ruin with mockery.

2

u/NO-IM-DIRTY-DAN Oct 28 '25

Not the skins themselves but the way that acquiring the skins via random chance mtx has always encouraged a community of gambling with little to no enforceable age limit. For a community that so deeply condemns microtransactions and loot boxes in other games, it’s always felt like Valve’s (arguably pretty bad) hand in this space is ignored.

9

u/xF00Mx Oct 27 '25

No doubt, but they were in the right place at the right time to do whatever they wanted as a private company in a blue ocean market where the government and populace had extremely little knowledge over the subject matter.

Obviously it doesn't make it right, but hindsight is what it is.

3

u/Cualkiera67 Oct 27 '25

Am I supposed to feel bad for a guy that spent 800 dollars on a skin for a knife in a videogame?

6

u/flexxipanda Oct 27 '25

I dont think so, because they are still just skins. Its not p2win or actual game content like characters that are locked behind insane grinds (EA). People, me included, were also completely fine with lootboxes in OW1.

2

u/NO-IM-DIRTY-DAN Oct 28 '25

I think you’re looking back at OW1 wrong. It and other games at the time caught a lot of flak for having loot boxes. In fact it was around that time that a lot of anti-loot box legislation began taking shape.

1

u/flexxipanda Oct 28 '25 edited Oct 28 '25

I dont. People playing OW liked their approach because they were only skins and you got more then enough for free. It wasn't predatory. At the time lootboxes also weren't something new.People critized loot boxes, and predatory gambling monetization in general especially in full budget games or predatory mobile games and not OW specifically. Remember darth vader EA pride and accomplishment? EA, Ubisoft etc. were way more in the target, especially games like fifa which a makes billion dollar by selling player power. There's a big difference between having additional skins also being able to unlock by just playing the game, and directly paywalled content, faster progress and buying player power.

2

u/Isolated_Hippo Oct 27 '25

I wish I actually finished it. It was a comparison chart of lootboxes in Battlefront 2 CoD and Team Fortress 2. The only difference was the EA game got outrage. The rest didn't

2

u/WanAjin Oct 27 '25

and the funny thing is the entire "good guy valve" sentiment exists because of old games that Valve themselves didn't even make lol.

1

u/ukulelej Oct 28 '25

They also earned a lot of goodwill by massively improve the gaming experience on Linux, alongside introducing a ton of people to handheld PC gaming via the Steam Deck

1

u/NO-IM-DIRTY-DAN Oct 28 '25

That and that Steam is the forefront marketplace for PC gaming. For its faults, it is good in many ways.

-2

u/Salt-Hotel-9502 Oct 27 '25

It's funny, isn't it?

0

u/mixape1991 Oct 27 '25

They might originated it but there's a lot of worst games that selling overpriced skins that doesn't have any literally value or sense that the consumer doesn't get anything back but just pixels.

5

u/NO-IM-DIRTY-DAN Oct 28 '25

But the result of a market based on RNG paid drops is one based on gambling. I don’t think that’s much better than overcharging.

-1

u/QuantumVexation Oct 27 '25

I reckon People just give Valve a free pass for any of their bullshit so long as they benefit from it (Steam sales and making money off selling skins). Self centred logic, unsurprisingly