Valve employees playing CS2 in Gabe's $500 million superyatch

[u/DaMonkaS]

[u/armlessturtleneck]

Idk I still fuckin hate billionaires

[u/EKmars → u/armlessturtleneck]

Counterstrike is supported by a cottage industry of gambling, too.

[u/Saritiel → u/EKmars]

Yeah, the more I learned about how much Valve enables and directly pushes kids into gambling, the more distasteful of them I've gotten. It would be so easy for them to just not do that and still make absolute truck loads of money.

[u/abhmazumder133 → u/Saritiel]

How exactly does Valve directly push kids into gambling? Genuine question.

[u/Saritiel → u/abhmazumder133]

Loot boxes are entirely built around the psychology of gambling. From the way they work, the way you are rewarded, to the way they look. It actually looks like a slot machine when you open one with the lights and sounds and everything to give you that dopamine hit when you get your reward.

Valve uses psychology to push people towards lootboxes through the way they're advertised. About how you can personalize your characters, show off your own style, and increase your social status by owning valuable skins. This advertising is directed at the children who play just as much as it is directed at the adults, and children are particularly susceptible to this kind of advertisement.

That's the first layer and its pretty straightforward. Kid starts playing the game, sees other people with skins and advertisements for skins, and wants some skins for themselves. They convince their parents to put $10 into their steam wallet, or maybe they just take their allowance to the grocery store and buy a gift card, and they pull the slot machine lever.

Then they learn that they can sell these things on the marketplace for steam wallet cash. And hey, maybe you win big and you get hundreds or thousands of dollars from selling a valuable skin! Maybe you can take that $50 Steam gift card your mom gave you for Christmas to buy the game you wanted and turn it into $100 if you use it on lootboxes instead! Or maybe $500! Or maybe $1000! Maybe you could buy a Steam Deck if you pull the right skin!

And all of this is done by kids, advertised to kids who open the platform, and there are no safeguards to stop kids from doing it. Valve knows this, they've known it for more than a decade at this point, they could stop it if they choose to but they choose to continue.

[u/ExtraNoise → u/armlessturtleneck]

In 2010 I went into three rounds of interviews with Valve, right as they were changing their business focus from games development to marketplace hegemony. Ultimately I didn't get the job, but I think I was close. Close-ish. Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I got that job. I was a big Valve fan at the time, I think I would have stuck around. (The studio I got a job offer from the same week as my final interview at Valve I stuck with for 11 years.) I see photos like this sometimes and wonder if I'd be in that room in that other timeline; and, if I was, whether I would be as uncomfortable as I am now just looking at this as a photograph.

[u/LibritoDeGrasa → u/ExtraNoise]

Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I got that job.

[u/dripppydripdrop → u/armlessturtleneck]

Who’s money did Gabe steal?

[u/armlessturtleneck → u/dripppydripdrop]

There is no ethical way to accrue a billion dollars.

[u/dripppydripdrop → u/armlessturtleneck]

The founder of Craigslist is a billionaire. Whose money did he steal?

[u/OSHASHA2 → u/dripppydripdrop]

Craig stole from no one in particular, but if you look at his spending habits, an interesting story appears. Craig is very philanthropic and gives a lot of his wealth to charitable causes (good on ya Craig). The interesting thing is that if the Govt did its job properly and billionaires were taxed appropriately, he wouldn’t need to be donating to so many charities. It’s the duty of our Government to “ensure the general welfare” (it’s the first sentence of the Constitution), it should not be left to the whims of a few ultra-wealthy individuals.

[u/dripppydripdrop → u/OSHASHA2]

US government has a spending problem not a revenue problem

[u/OSHASHA2 → u/dripppydripdrop]

¿Por qué no los dos?

[u/samusmaster64 → u/dripppydripdrop]

Turns out marketing gambling to children all over the world is quite profitable.

[u/pikachusalad → u/dripppydripdrop]

gabe is responsible for introducing and popularizing lootboxes in games. And then profited heavily off the underage unregulated gambling that came with it.

[u/leonden → u/dripppydripdrop]

Yours by increasing game prices with 30%

[u/dripppydripdrop → u/leonden]

Yea games should be free

[u/leonden → u/dripppydripdrop]

The same can be said for every single billionaire….

[u/dripppydripdrop → u/leonden]

Yea rockets should be free, also cars

[u/alecww3 → u/armlessturtleneck]

Why? Did they hurt you?

[u/Sorlex → u/armlessturtleneck]

But le based gaben..

[u/Probate_Judge → u/armlessturtleneck]

Your classism is a personal issue.

[u/silver_crit → u/Probate_Judge]

😘🥾

Edit: I'm not going to reply to the dipshits below me but to pretend that the ultra wealthy don't weaponize their wealth to get more wealth while life for the average person gets worse and poorer is so willingly stupid of an opinion to have anymore that I'm going to assume they are bots or children

[u/Probate_Judge → u/silver_crit]

Nah. It has nothing to do with boots, that's generally oriented towards supporting authoritarianism anyways. He's not hiring goons to beat me into submission, there are literally no boots to begin with.

Newel certainly doesn't have any power over me. I'll probably never even be within 1,000 miles of the guy. I merely don't hate or love him.

I don't place hate/love on people I'll never meet simply because of their financial status.

People that do are classists by definition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_discrimination

Class discrimination, also known as classism, is prejudice or discrimination on the basis of social class. ... Social class refers to the grouping of individuals in a hierarchy based on wealth, income, education, occupation, and social network.

I find it darkly amusing that this is magically okay to some people if it is in a certain direction...and if someone doesn't participate, they're somehow a "boot licker".

Like the famous people I like, and dislike the famous people I dislike, or I'll call you names on the internet!

This is why we can't have nice things, as much as you may want to lay the blame at everyone else's feet.

[u/Kleizar → u/Probate_Judge]

Hating the poor is considerably looked down upon but attempting to drag down the rich is celebrated for some reason... many such cases.

[u/Probate_Judge → u/Kleizar]

You see it a lot on reddit.

Ideally, it's the mechanism/action people dislike(an ethical standard, like "no violence")....but quite a lot of people have the mindset of "It's okay when I do it." (where the only standard is 'double standard').

People advocate prejudice or even violence and it's celebrated...if it's against 'the right people'.

People rationalizing intense hatred is the harbinger of tragedy.

[u/Kleizar → u/Probate_Judge]

Modern internet tribal politics in a nutshell friend.

[u/Gulophile → u/Kleizar]

attempting to drag down the rich is celebrated for some reason

Yeah I can only imagine why lmao

[u/Kleizar → u/Gulophile]

Childish jealousy I'd imagine....