Rather than doing away with the loot boxes system, Valve are going with whatever loophole they can it seems. They've updated Counter-Strike: Global Offensive just for French players to include an X-ray Scanner.
It's no secret that many countries are looking into the issues surrounding loot box gambling, something I am happy about because it's a terrible system. Valve also have issues with France, especially considering the recent legal ruling about reselling your digital games.
So what have Valve done? If you play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in France you now have to buy the P250 | X-Ray non-tradable item. After that, you gain access to the crate scanning ability. However, once you scan a crate you're then stuck with that until you buy the item shown, even if you don't want it. On top of that, French players also cannot buy these crates from the Steam Market any more.
Here's a good video that shows it off:
Direct Link
Honestly, I hope Valve take some lessons being learned with Dota Underlords to apply to their older games like CS:GO. A Battle Pass system is a far nicer way to monetize a free game in my opinion. The most important thing being you know what you're going to get and when, which would make me personally more likely to give over my own monies. However, that would completely mess up their Steam Marketplace which they probably earn a fair bit from which is why they're not doing it. I'm sure there would be ways around it to still make it a thing though, there's a lot of smart people at Valve.
See the release notes here and find CS:GO free on Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
The situation is only going to grow stupid...
Quoting: fagnerlnI really don't care about the loot boxes on cs go, it's only skins, nothing game changer. Now, a battle pass can be a problem if they limit access to maps and game modesA Battle Pass would not be for maps and game modes, it would be to unlock skins and stuff like that. Have you not seen how they're done in other games? It's a pretty simple system and works well.
Quoting: PatolaGame developers/publishers might not be the most honest people, but giving power to politicians to rule over the gaming market is the worst possible thing to do.
We're giving politicians their power, that's why I prefer to have more power in the hand of politicians than companies.
I used to farm crates that I was selling to afford to buy cards and craft the badges I don't have yet...
Probably a whole 3€ market economy since I started...
Kimyrielle Oct 1, 2019
Quoting: PatolaGame developers/publishers might not be the most honest people, but giving power to politicians to rule over the gaming market is the worst possible thing to do. Just give time for the market to go where users want. More regulation causes less competition, which slows or even prevents that process.
I have NO idea why people in this time and age still believe in the "free markets will solve it all" paradigm, when it clearly doesn't and all it has ever done was creating a small group of people having obscene power and even more obscene wealth, while the large rest works double-income and double-jobs and STILL struggle to pay their bills.
Honestly, people need to start reading a few beginner's economics textbooks. Even the god of free-market believers, Adam Smith, stated back then that free markets only work if no market participant has any power to influence EITHER the supply or demand side of the market. Which is CLEARLY not the case in pretty much any real-life market, which is why our only hope to get halfway fair results is regulating them. Humans are by nature greedy, egoistic and selfish, which is why every sufficiently large (read: powerful) business is evil. That's the entire reason why our society needs laws to begin with. If we'd all be nice and altruistic, we wouldn't need a criminal code, no? I fail super hard to understand why people think we wouldn't need regulations for the economy, when we CLEARLY need them for anything else.
Valve is the sheer embodiment of a company having waaaaaay too much power and influence. And while I otherwise will credit them for supporting our platform, this lootbox thing is an absolute jerk move to circumvent the spiirt of an attempt to curb disgusting, nasty and evil business practices that are designed to screw over customers for fun and profit.
Seriously, do people like you cry foul that we came up with regulation for real-life gambling, too?
/rant
Quoting: PatolaGame developers/publishers might not be the most honest people, but giving power to politicians to rule over the gaming market is the worst possible thing to do. Just give time for the market to go where users want. More regulation causes less competition, which slows or even prevents that process.
I sure love having led in my water supply.
The market care only for one thing is profit, "micro"transaction are profitable therefore any sensible company will implement it.
The only thing that competition bring is monopoly.
Business will always struggle until the eat the competition or merge.
The market is church, it's blasphemy to intervene into it divine matter.
Last edited by elisto on 1 October 2019 at 3:18 pm UTC
It might be that I'm European but imho gaming industry is mature enough to deserve some good regulation. Whaling is abusive practice. It's immoral and exploitative. It leverages natural weaknesses in people minds and as such it should be, if not forbidden outright, at least confined in protected spaces away from the reach of the weak. Valve, Epic, Microsoft, Nintendo, 2K, Activision and whatever else cursed gaming giant in mobile will perfectly survive and thrive in profits without that dirty money ripped off the hands of clueless childrens and gambit addicts. And if some small f2p indie has to disappear in the process, good riddance. Their space will be filled by non f2p indies.
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