Valve has been facing a wave of litigation recently regarding the company's profiteering from the economy formed around the cases present in the studio's various games, such as Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2.
Cases, as Valve calls them, or loot boxes, the common vernacular for them, are digital boxes that contain items of varying rarity. They are rampant in live-service games and have even been banned in some countries, such as Belgium, which outlaws all random chance loot boxes.
Valve's loot boxes are even more contentious because you can buy and sell these items on Steam's marketplace, which has created an entire sub-economy surrounding rare items. Naturally, Valve takes a cut of every sale. We've also seen this system snowball into sophisticated gambling ecosystems, creating a regulatory nightmare.
Now, the New York Attorney General's (NYAG) office is suing Valve for leveraging the random nature of its cases to encourage users to essentially gamble on pulling a rare item. Today, Valve issued a public response to the allegations.
"You may have seen the New York Attorney General recently filed a lawsuit against Valve claiming mystery boxes (like crates, cases, and chests) in some of our...
