8 ms·

> Doesn’t gaben have enough money for his super yachts and sword collections? Steam is still a business, but of all the gaming industry, Gaben is one of the hi

> Doesn’t gaben have enough money for his super yachts and sword collections? Steam is still a business, but of all the gaming industry, Gaben is one of the highlights, steam try hard to be extremely pro consumer. Refunds with no questions asked if you've played less than 2 hours of the game, requiring publisher and developers to explicitly state the AI generated content thats in the game to name just 2.

justacrow 1y ago
[flagged]
- bilekas 1y ago
  Ideally kids wouldn't be participating in real world transactions at all, and I'd love to see the numbers of how many were actually kids who directly went to gamble I stead of being pushed into it by streamers which is where I see it constantly. > Now, thanks to a recent update from Valve, the latter is in a downward spiral, having lost 25% of its value — or $1.75 billion — overnight The fact that they made this change to make these items far easier to simply earn should say a lot about the ethos of the company though.
  - computerex 1y ago
    The thing is Valve is clearly aware of the fact that it’s getting kids addicted to gambling. They have the data. It’s extremely ubiquitous. This has been an ongoing issue for a while and Valve has rightly been criticized for willfully getting kids addicted. Yes the parents have a responsibility to look after their kids. But that doesn’t give Valve a free pass, particularly when they used dark patterns to appeal to children.
    - rightbyte 1y ago
      > Yes the parents have a responsibility to look after their kids. How? Individual parents can't fight off predatory corporations entrenched in mainstream culture going after their kids. They need to make a go at Valve. edit: Rereading, I guess that was kinda the point you were making?
      - kakacik 1y ago
        I agree we should go after companies clearly engaging in profit-above-all, making societies and future generations worse from the start. Make them hurt, make them bleed bad, take tens % of their global revenue (not profit, thats easy to game). But - parents are responsible too, more than anybody else. Gaming is generally bad for kids, physically and mentally. Come on, everybody who cares knows that for past 2 decades. Screens generally fuck up kids properly, the younger and more interactive the worse the result. Kids need tons of physical fun and tons of continuous social interaction in larger groups, doesnt matter what some echo chambers claim, 'digital skills' are not something your kid can anyhow miss on. Its supremely easier to fuck off kids, leave me alone, my adult life is oh so hard already, here play some more, give me some break. Adults being glued to phones hard themselves. Results are what they are. Its called universally bad parenting, by psychologists and various experts for a reason. No sympathies for parents there, but I feel sorry for all those kids whose potential is squished into various anxieties and abysmal social behavior. Talking all this and much more as parent of 2 small ones, luckily for them environment we are in is firmly agreeing with all above.
  - wobfan 1y ago
    > The fact that they made this change to make these items far easier to simply earn should say a lot about the ethos of the company though. Them letting it happen for literal decades while being highly aware of what they're doing says more about the ethos than this, in the grand scheme, tiny move. Don't get me wrong, me as a person who does not participate in any kind of this gray-area gambling has basically a lot of net positives from Steam and Valve. But this doesn't make them a pro-consumer company. They're still greedy capitalists, and it shows in many different perspectives. They may be "better" to consumers than the average, but still.
  - Spacemolte 1y ago
    When you say easier to simply earn, I understand it as you think they do this to benefit their playerbase / users. Yes, it says that they want a bigger cut of the sales when those items are sold. Not sad this hits the trading sites as that will also likely mean fewer will get scammed as they will stay in valves market, but saying valve is doing this for the users is crap, they do it for the profits, and maybe to stay under the radar of additional lawsuits regarding gambling laws around the world.
- funflame 1y ago
  The game is rated as 'Mature 17+', and Steam has an age confirmation page before accessing the store page of the game. Are you expecting Valve to add ages verification based on ID like the new UK law to block all the kids? I thought we had parents for you know, parenting. It shouldn't fall into a company to manage what a kid is doing when the product is not for kids.
  - bertylicious 1y ago
    It's not that simple. The real problem is that Valve allows items to be sold in markets outside of Valve's control which allows third party gambling websites to operate. And you guessed right, they basically don't care about your age. Valve of course knows this but won't do anything, because they make profits off all transactions happening in third party markets. Plus the whole professional CS tournament scene is sponsored by these predatory casinos. Coffeezilla did an in-depth piece on this: https://youtu.be/q58dLWjRTBE https://youtu.be/q58dLWjRTBE
    - walkabout 1y ago
      > Plus the whole professional CS tournament scene is sponsored by these predatory casinos I once had a glimpse behind the scenes of the online sports gambling industry (only for a few months—turns out that was my limit of how utterly disgusting an industry I could participate in and still, literally, sleep at night!) and it answered a question for me. The question was: “How did professional gaming get so incredibly big so very fast?” Its quick rise seemed to me to have started well before the broad normalization and rise of gaming in mainstream pop culture, so had always seemed to me like the cart coming before the horse, and I’d never been able to figure out how or why it’d happened that way. The answer was gambling. Professional video gaming is all but completely a gambling industry. That’s where the money and promotion came from. Sponsorships, sure, but that’s secondary and would drop off to a large degree without the boost from gambling. And I mean gambling on the matches, not just sponsorship by gambling sites. It’s a betting industry. (Online gambling’s also all wrapped up in right wing political money and funding right wing media[!] in, at least, the US, was another thing I learned that I hadn’t expected)
endgame 1y ago
The first one was because the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took them to court, but yes, they're both very good features.
Aerolfos 1y ago
> Refunds with no questions asked if you've played less than 2 hours of the game, Weaker than standard physical store consumer protections (no playtime restriction on returns, obviously), and (much) weaker than GOGs refund: 1 month after purchase, no playtime restriction. I believe they explicitly called out the equivalent for physical stores and european consumer protection in general when they announced the policy and lack of restrictions. Which is an indirect call out at Steam, which hasn't cared in the slightest and continues to have a worse policy.
- fendy3002 1y ago
  GOGs refund is 1 month? Man I can clear DMC5 twice in one week then do a refund in that case.
  - portaouflop 1y ago
    You can also share games you purchased at GoG with all your friends. They do give you a lot of freedom. It’s maybe the only really “good” actor in that industry left so I try to support them as much as possible
    - fendy3002 1y ago
      sadly they don't do regional pricing at all, so steam price is almost half the GoG and maybe even lower. But yeah if you can buy GoG, it's better due to no DRM
      - portaouflop 1y ago
        Sure steam is cheaper but that’s how they get you. We shouldn’t always go for the cheapest alternative and then whine when things go to shit
  - walkabout 1y ago
    It’s far easier to just pirate (nearly all?) GOG games. Like there are torrents with big chunks of their entire store on them, and I’ve seen allusions to an unofficial “store” that just has all(?) their games on it for free. I doubt many people are abusing the refund system because going through those steps is more work than piracy.
tweetle_beetle 1y ago
While those statements are true, it is much easier to be pro-consumer when you are running a few morally dubious casinos and marketplaces to keep the bottom line healthy. Would Steam have grown into a position where it can comfortably act like this without the cash cows in the background? We'll never know. The general market is so distorted that being seen as anti-large corporate behaviours on some policies is seen as enough to be considered pro-consumer.
mrguyorama 1y ago
The refund policy was only implemented after Australian courts told Valve they had to implement a refund policy to follow default consumer rights law They made it available to everyone because they were going to lose that case everywhere but the USA (where you have no rights) Before that, Valve did not allow any refunds. I like Valve for being slightly not outright evil and providing a service that is not trying to scam me, but that's such a low bar.
averageRoyalty 1y ago
That's sad if that's your bad. They were fined $3m only a few years ago for failing to comply with Australian consumer law and illegally witholding refunds. They didn't even bother getting legal advice. I'm not anti-valve, but "complying with consumer laws in a country you make sales in" should be a minimum standard at least.

justacrow 1y ago

[flagged]

bilekas 1y ago
Ideally kids wouldn't be participating in real world transactions at all, and I'd love to see the numbers of how many were actually kids who directly went to gamble I stead of being pushed into it by streamers which is where I see it constantly. > Now, thanks to a recent update from Valve, the latter is in a downward spiral, having lost 25% of its value — or $1.75 billion — overnight The fact that they made this change to make these items far easier to simply earn should say a lot about the ethos of the company though.
- computerex 1y ago
  The thing is Valve is clearly aware of the fact that it’s getting kids addicted to gambling. They have the data. It’s extremely ubiquitous. This has been an ongoing issue for a while and Valve has rightly been criticized for willfully getting kids addicted. Yes the parents have a responsibility to look after their kids. But that doesn’t give Valve a free pass, particularly when they used dark patterns to appeal to children.
  - rightbyte 1y ago
    > Yes the parents have a responsibility to look after their kids. How? Individual parents can't fight off predatory corporations entrenched in mainstream culture going after their kids. They need to make a go at Valve. edit: Rereading, I guess that was kinda the point you were making?
    - kakacik 1y ago
      I agree we should go after companies clearly engaging in profit-above-all, making societies and future generations worse from the start. Make them hurt, make them bleed bad, take tens % of their global revenue (not profit, thats easy to game). But - parents are responsible too, more than anybody else. Gaming is generally bad for kids, physically and mentally. Come on, everybody who cares knows that for past 2 decades. Screens generally fuck up kids properly, the younger and more interactive the worse the result. Kids need tons of physical fun and tons of continuous social interaction in larger groups, doesnt matter what some echo chambers claim, 'digital skills' are not something your kid can anyhow miss on. Its supremely easier to fuck off kids, leave me alone, my adult life is oh so hard already, here play some more, give me some break. Adults being glued to phones hard themselves. Results are what they are. Its called universally bad parenting, by psychologists and various experts for a reason. No sympathies for parents there, but I feel sorry for all those kids whose potential is squished into various anxieties and abysmal social behavior. Talking all this and much more as parent of 2 small ones, luckily for them environment we are in is firmly agreeing with all above.
- wobfan 1y ago
  > The fact that they made this change to make these items far easier to simply earn should say a lot about the ethos of the company though. Them letting it happen for literal decades while being highly aware of what they're doing says more about the ethos than this, in the grand scheme, tiny move. Don't get me wrong, me as a person who does not participate in any kind of this gray-area gambling has basically a lot of net positives from Steam and Valve. But this doesn't make them a pro-consumer company. They're still greedy capitalists, and it shows in many different perspectives. They may be "better" to consumers than the average, but still.
- Spacemolte 1y ago
  When you say easier to simply earn, I understand it as you think they do this to benefit their playerbase / users. Yes, it says that they want a bigger cut of the sales when those items are sold. Not sad this hits the trading sites as that will also likely mean fewer will get scammed as they will stay in valves market, but saying valve is doing this for the users is crap, they do it for the profits, and maybe to stay under the radar of additional lawsuits regarding gambling laws around the world.
funflame 1y ago
The game is rated as 'Mature 17+', and Steam has an age confirmation page before accessing the store page of the game. Are you expecting Valve to add ages verification based on ID like the new UK law to block all the kids? I thought we had parents for you know, parenting. It shouldn't fall into a company to manage what a kid is doing when the product is not for kids.
- bertylicious 1y ago
  It's not that simple. The real problem is that Valve allows items to be sold in markets outside of Valve's control which allows third party gambling websites to operate. And you guessed right, they basically don't care about your age. Valve of course knows this but won't do anything, because they make profits off all transactions happening in third party markets. Plus the whole professional CS tournament scene is sponsored by these predatory casinos. Coffeezilla did an in-depth piece on this: https://youtu.be/q58dLWjRTBE https://youtu.be/q58dLWjRTBE
  - walkabout 1y ago
    > Plus the whole professional CS tournament scene is sponsored by these predatory casinos I once had a glimpse behind the scenes of the online sports gambling industry (only for a few months—turns out that was my limit of how utterly disgusting an industry I could participate in and still, literally, sleep at night!) and it answered a question for me. The question was: “How did professional gaming get so incredibly big so very fast?” Its quick rise seemed to me to have started well before the broad normalization and rise of gaming in mainstream pop culture, so had always seemed to me like the cart coming before the horse, and I’d never been able to figure out how or why it’d happened that way. The answer was gambling. Professional video gaming is all but completely a gambling industry. That’s where the money and promotion came from. Sponsorships, sure, but that’s secondary and would drop off to a large degree without the boost from gambling. And I mean gambling on the matches, not just sponsorship by gambling sites. It’s a betting industry. (Online gambling’s also all wrapped up in right wing political money and funding right wing media[!] in, at least, the US, was another thing I learned that I hadn’t expected)

endgame 1y ago

The first one was because the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took them to court, but yes, they're both very good features.

Aerolfos 1y ago

> Refunds with no questions asked if you've played less than 2 hours of the game, Weaker than standard physical store consumer protections (no playtime restriction on returns, obviously), and (much) weaker than GOGs refund: 1 month after purchase, no playtime restriction. I believe they explicitly called out the equivalent for physical stores and european consumer protection in general when they announced the policy and lack of restrictions. Which is an indirect call out at Steam, which hasn't cared in the slightest and continues to have a worse policy.

fendy3002 1y ago
GOGs refund is 1 month? Man I can clear DMC5 twice in one week then do a refund in that case.
- portaouflop 1y ago
  You can also share games you purchased at GoG with all your friends. They do give you a lot of freedom. It’s maybe the only really “good” actor in that industry left so I try to support them as much as possible
  - fendy3002 1y ago
    sadly they don't do regional pricing at all, so steam price is almost half the GoG and maybe even lower. But yeah if you can buy GoG, it's better due to no DRM
    - portaouflop 1y ago
      Sure steam is cheaper but that’s how they get you. We shouldn’t always go for the cheapest alternative and then whine when things go to shit
- walkabout 1y ago
  It’s far easier to just pirate (nearly all?) GOG games. Like there are torrents with big chunks of their entire store on them, and I’ve seen allusions to an unofficial “store” that just has all(?) their games on it for free. I doubt many people are abusing the refund system because going through those steps is more work than piracy.

tweetle_beetle 1y ago

While those statements are true, it is much easier to be pro-consumer when you are running a few morally dubious casinos and marketplaces to keep the bottom line healthy. Would Steam have grown into a position where it can comfortably act like this without the cash cows in the background? We'll never know. The general market is so distorted that being seen as anti-large corporate behaviours on some policies is seen as enough to be considered pro-consumer.

mrguyorama 1y ago

The refund policy was only implemented after Australian courts told Valve they had to implement a refund policy to follow default consumer rights law They made it available to everyone because they were going to lose that case everywhere but the USA (where you have no rights) Before that, Valve did not allow any refunds. I like Valve for being slightly not outright evil and providing a service that is not trying to scam me, but that's such a low bar.

averageRoyalty 1y ago

That's sad if that's your bad. They were fined $3m only a few years ago for failing to comply with Australian consumer law and illegally witholding refunds. They didn't even bother getting legal advice. I'm not anti-valve, but "complying with consumer laws in a country you make sales in" should be a minimum standard at least.