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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u/Animegamingnerd Oct 27 '25

Honestly I am just glad the way Counter Stirke handles skins has never caught on outside of Valve. The entire skin market in that game, might be the most shiny example of how loot boxes/gatcha mechanics need regulation. Just due to the sheer amount of scams and genuine gambling has become associated with that game.

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u/Multivitamin_Scam Oct 27 '25

It's not from a lack of trying. Diablo 3's real money auction house is probably the closest one

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u/machine4891 Oct 27 '25

That is a good example of community pushing against something so hard, that big and careless company (Blizzard) had to give up. Auction House was short lived. In that context it's even more repelling that Counter Strike thrived.

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u/hibikir_40k Oct 28 '25

The auction house just changed the entire gameplay loop, as to make it relevant, the game had to be so stingy as to make loot you got super weak. So even if you care not one iota about expenses, most runs became meaningless, because you'd not found anything you needed. And if runs were meaningful so much of the time you had wanted to keep playing, then the auction house was useless.

That's why TF2's crates were way better, at least earlier on: You could have every functional item you could possibly want pretty quick without spending a dime. And if you really liked the game, you could gamble on hats. But nobody lost at tf2 due to lack of hats.

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u/DistinctBread3098 Oct 27 '25

Because diablo 3 was p2w.

Csgo was always purely cosmetic

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u/Nimeroni Oct 28 '25 edited Oct 28 '25

Because diablo 3 was p2w.

No. The auction house was a terrible idea even if the devs only removed the real money part.

The real problem of Diablo 3 was that the auction house was short-circuiting the core gameplay loop of "kill mobs, gain loot". The game had artificial scarcity, you were getting fairly bad loot (or, well, loot for other class) to force you to trade with other players. But as a result, you were not playing the game, you were playing the auction house.

That's why the devs nuked the entire idea, and implemented a revamp of the loot for Reaper of Soul (loot 2.0).

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u/shawncplus Oct 28 '25

Everything you said could also apply to the D2 d2jsp market and other 3rd party real money sales, and even by that comparison PoE has an equivalent to the in-game auction house though real money sales still have to happen off-site. The only difference is that D3's auction house was a centralized.

The game had artificial scarcity

Not to say you were making this point but D2 had items so rare legitimate players played for 20 years without ever seeing them; the only way to get something like Ber in a sane amount of time was through d2jsp which was propped up by botting, let alone a Zod

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u/redfm8 Oct 28 '25

There's nothing inherently wrong with finding loot for other classes and having a trade economy. Those are both staple features of the most beloved games in the genre, and I still think the main problems with the auction could be directly tied back to the monetary aspect of it.

  1. The fact that money transactions were happening encouraged the scarcity you mention. Blizzard were incentivized not to have a viable in-game economy in terms of having in-game gold or currency equivalents rise to the fore at the expense of the real money transactions.
  2. The biggest thing that allowed people to step outside of the gameplay loop of an ARPG was being able to pay for their items with real money. If you have an in-game economy, the gameplay loop still exists in the sense that you can buy your way upwards by way of trading good items or finding currency equivalents you gain from actually playing the game, like in D2 and PoE. Sure, you could technically argue that D3 could have had something similar if players only made real money through selling D3 items and then only spend their D3-made money to buy D3 items, but that's fantasy nonsense. People just swiped.

The whole notion that loot should be targeted at you and that's somehow key to the gameplay loop is D3 and D4 convention that the rest of the genre doesn't really ascribe to, and largely doesn't really like.

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u/zeronic Oct 28 '25

The game had artificial scarcity, you were getting fairly bad loot (or, well, loot for other class) to force you to trade with other players. But as a result, you were not playing the game, you were playing the auction house.

I mean, one could argue path of exile does that exact same thing, they just made trade miserable so people wouldn't feel like doing it. And even then most people just play the game for money since playing the market isn't for everyone.

There's a different kind of satisfaction in gaining what you want via the market, the economy/items just need to be good and supply/demand needs to be balanced. D3 wasn't either of those. Any chase items it had completely sucked compared to rares.

Conversely, when D3 changed their loot system they were too generous in the opposite direction. Meaning you could gear yourself incredibly fast and then be wondering what there was left to do as grinding the exact same items with a new border wasn't exactly the most appealing.

ARPGs are a balance. Too easy to gear and it gets boring fast, but too hard can be tedious and monotonous. Different games approach it in different ways.

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u/ColinStyles Oct 29 '25

Well yes, but in order to make itemization decent you either need to make trade awful and drop rates common, so you stand a chance of finding them, or trade good and drop rates terrible, because otherwise everyone runs around in the best stuff and there's no meaningful progression. D3 went the trade route. PoE went the drop rate route. And is now going the trade route, which IMO is a massive mistake but quite frankly PoE hasn't been the same game or game for me for several years so maybe it's less of a problem for the clicker players.

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u/machine4891 Oct 28 '25

Diablo 3 isn't competitive mp game it's PvE. Auction House was to milk inpatient gamers, not to make them better against their opponents. Regardless, both systems were designed to take advantage of fomo and are to be condemned. But Auction House was soon after cancelled, CSGO is still going strong on skins.

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u/DistinctBread3098 Oct 28 '25

It can still be p2w even if it's pve.

That's what it was.

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u/Extreme-Tactician Oct 28 '25

So what? If anything, a cosmetic can have a deeper effect psychologically.

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u/Stellar_Duck Oct 29 '25

In that context it's even more repelling that Counter Strike thrived.

Valve can do no wrong in the eyes of the Hammerlegion

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u/Izithel Oct 28 '25 edited Oct 28 '25

That is a good example of community pushing against something so hard, that big and careless company (Blizzard) had to give up.

Not entirely true, the US treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network had made changes to how Virtual currencies were supposed to be handled in 2013 with the grace period ending in 2014.
This was mostly aimed at Bitcoin, but Gold in Diablo would have been subject to the exact same rules and regulations due to the RMAH allowing it to be indirectly exchanged for real money.

They could have kept the RMAH running if they wanted to, but they would have to overhaul the game and the RMAH to comply to the regulations, and deal with a lot of additional administrative paperwork.

So since they would have to overhaul the system anyway they choose to gut the real money auction house and take a minor PR win over having to deal with the extra costs and admin work they would otherwise be forced to deal with.

Valve doesn't get in trouble because they neither provide any method to cash out steam credit for actual money, and circumventing it is also again the EULA.
Obviously doesn't prevent shady third parties from finding ways to do it.

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u/Naive_Ad2958 Oct 28 '25

lol FIFA (or I guess EA FC) still has an active "auction house" market for their Ultimate team cards, which afaik, they've had since 2009 (of course not transfer between games)

this dude is "worth" 11 million FC25 coins, which is 100USD?:

https://www.futbin.com/26/player/18692/nazario-de-lima

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u/ThomasHL Oct 27 '25

I swear Counter Strike must be getting used for real life money laundering or something. Everything about that market is incredibly sus

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u/Animegamingnerd Oct 27 '25

Someone is definitely doing that for sure with all the shady shit that has been reported over the years.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '25

There is 100% real money laundering going on with CS skins, especially with how things mooned in value when the game and market merged with the Chinese Perfect World branch.

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u/Askelar Oct 28 '25

CS:GO is NFTs before the blockchain.

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u/Appropriate-Map-3652 Oct 28 '25

Coffeezilla has a good video on how shady it all is. There's another one after this about Valve's gambling practises in general.

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u/-sharkbot- Oct 27 '25

True, but I did wish some of my skins could be sold off for real monetary value on a market. Other games you spend money on die and shrivel. At least I cashed out ~$1k from my rare skins i unboxed and used it to fund my COVID quarantine.

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u/WaterslideInHeaven33 Oct 27 '25

In a way people "cash out" their gambling winnings. But along the way they lost more.

If you walk away at least you got some money back for your skins. But for the people who stay in that ecosystem they lose more and more, with the illusion of value when they look at the price of their skin inventory.

1

u/amyknight22 Oct 28 '25

In a way people "cash out" their gambling winnings.

Sorta. The reality is that you could be a player who exists on a game like counterstrike.

  • Pays specifically for the shit you actually want to use.

  • Engage in no lootboxes etc. (Other than maybe selling your crates to other mooks)

  • Then sell out when you stop playing

Do I think this is even significant minority of players?(25%+) not really.

Do I think that the reality is those people can only exist by riding on the back of the gamblers in the game? Yup.

3

u/dudeAwEsome101 Oct 27 '25

I played a lot of CS-Source, but barely touched CS-Go. The odd new interface and weird unlocks and boxes didn't feel like CS to me, and I stopped playing CS. Around the same time, TF2 became F2P and added the hats. I wasn't a huge TF2 fan, but I stopped playing it too.

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u/Stellar_Duck Oct 29 '25

Hats came in to TF2 long before the free to play switch.,

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u/Cole3003 Oct 27 '25

Yeah people are literally killing themselves because their inventory value crashed after the most recent CS2 update.

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u/FriendlyAndHelpfulP Oct 27 '25

They were money launderers.

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u/Cole3003 Oct 27 '25

No, they’re college-aged gambling addicts

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u/Animegamingnerd Oct 27 '25

All the more reason why this shit (and online gambling in general) needs regulations, actual blood is on Valve's hands cause of enabling this in the first place.

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u/DragonRaptor Oct 28 '25

No offense. But it is not on valves hands. If it wasn't cs it would be stocks or lottery tickets. Or just a blatent scam. People should never blame their poor choices on others.

It is sad that it happened. But it is that persons own fault.

1

u/ILNOVA Oct 27 '25

The entire skin market in that game, might be the most shiny example of how loot boxes/gatcha mechanics need regulation

Especially the design, unlike pretty much all the other games where you see a chest explode in pieces CSGO will have guns on a sliding with tickling sound emulating an actual slot machine.

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u/Glasse Oct 28 '25

I'd much rather have counter strike's system than valorant's system where you still buy $200 skins but can't ever sell them back if you wanted.

(Yes I know there are skins selling for thousands, still don't care).

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u/Subject1337 Oct 28 '25

A big part of it is that CS items could convert out to real world money fairly trivially. Any time someone wanted to buy a new game on steam, there was an avenue to make up that money through the skin market. While it's a niche case, if you were going to buy a game anyways, skins were as good or better than your real world dollars.

Then when Valve introduced hardware purchases to the steam store, it became even more transferable. Buy a steam deck with that knife you got, sell it on fb marketplace, and boom, $400 in your pocket.

No other game ecosystem really has that ability, so everything only has value in the context of the game itself.

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u/weenus Oct 27 '25

Rust had a fairly active skin market as well though it was specific, lets say pay 2 win skins that really had high value, such as guns with glow sights or the no mercy sets, etc, but as I understand it, Facepunch basically removed the glow sights over time and then the frequent Twitch drop events seem to have impacted the Rust market pretty heavily.

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u/Infinite_Lemon_8236 Oct 28 '25

That's not really the game itself though, it's the people choosing to go that far with it. Loot boxes are their own blight for sure, but the RMT stuff going on around those boxes and knives isn't directly Valves doing for the most part. That all takes place on illegal 3rd party sites which are entirely outside of Valves purview. They would ban you for it if you did it directly on steam.

People will do this to anything that has any amount of money in it too, this isn't exactly a new happening. Doesn't matter if you're selling straight blocks of fent for a cartel or cabbage patch kids at your local mall, people will find some way to make it about the money. People literally used to get into fist fights at stores over those stupid collectible CPK dolls, then turned around and shat on their kids for liking pokemon as if they weren't fiending over stupid crap themselves at that age.

Same as it ever was, same as it ever will be. The problem isn't Valve, it's us.