… If I have a company, an llc, that is based in one state… and I do business in another state…
… the laws of that other state are applicable to me.
This is the concept of a State - Federal government legal structure.
This is a fairly common kind of thing that happens, a State AG suing bringing a suit against (EDIT: ‘suing’ is I think not the correct term?) some legal entity that legally resides in a different state, but does business in their state.
No prob!
Well, if you read the lawsuit, NY is seeking:
Well of course, the court to determine Valves lootbox + key paradigm is illegal
Pay a fine to the state
Resitution to all NY residents
So, even if it did only apply to NY… you would at least be due to have all your key purchases refunded, as welp as the amount that Valve shaves off of every item transaction in the marketplace.
I am also not so sure that Valve actually makes like, the bulk of their money off of keys and marketplace fees. We don’t know, because those numbers are not public, though more will likely come out as a result of this case doing discovery…
But based off of the estimates and info that is out there, my guess would be that key+marketplace txn fees is roughly between 5% and 10% of their yearly revenue.
My guess would be that the vast majority of their money comes from the generally 30% cut they take from 3rd party game sales.
So… I would think the primary problem with getting a Steam Frame is still the… RAM price crisis caused by AI, and more generally, the fact that we’re doing the Second Great Depression.
The actual lawsuit mentions only ten of millions of dollars in sales that Valve has made from lootbox keys and steam market transaction fees… for all the citizens of New York… for over a decade of running the lootbox system.
Not hundreds of millions, not billions.
https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/court-filings/new-york-v-valve-corporation-complaint-2026.pdf
Page 3, point 13.
Valve is estimated to have yearly revenues of around $20 billion dollars a year, est net worth of about $10 billion.
This is a rough guess napkin math that may be wrong, but untill this lawsuit proceedes, we don’t have numbers about how much money Valve makes specifically from lootboxes, because they’re a private company and don’t have to disclose that.
If its only tens of millions of dollars, for a decade, from everyone in New York…
Even if Valve had to shit-can all lootboxes going forward, pay fines and restitution, I think they’d survive fairly ok.
They unironically were.
Epstein is on record talking with Bobby Kotick about pushing microtransactions on kids, like, over a decade ago.
To my knowledge, no former or current Valve employee was involved in any such discussions with Epstein…
… but yeah.
Lootboxes absolutely are in the Epstein files, he was all for ‘indoctrinating kids into a digital economy.’
You may be too young to have experienced the before times, but MTX used to not exist, not be a thing.
You’d go to a store and buy an expansion pack to a game, whole bunch of new content and often new game mechanics, for maybe 1/2 to 1/3 the pricd of the original game.
Or, later, you’d just buy that online.
No digital fake currencies, no paying for a single game item, no battle passes.
If you get the key for free, which you can, but is by far not the most common way most keys are acquired, then probably it would not constitute gambling, as the player isn’t putting any money in.
This… is how it originally worked, I think, for a time, when TF2 first came out.
You could get keys from either randomly playing the game and finishing or spending time in a round, or via achievements, iirc.
But yeah, then the keys could also be bought for money, and the whole trading market and steam wallet were introduced, and since then, probably 99% of keys for any game with em are bought, not acquired via in game activity.
I am often in the comments of threads like this trying to explain how things people don’t fully understand are in fact complicated.
Nope.
Not here.
Sue Valve over this, I hope they lose.
Yeah I dunno if currently existing law is or isn’t sufficient to actually render a guilty verdict here…
… but I hope it is.
Lootboxes are bullshit, Valve does a lot of good, but this ain’t that.
Stole mom’s credit card to buy CS2 gun skins?
Yeah, if you wanna make the argument that a credit card is sufficient to screen if somebody is an adult or not, might be a good idea to, you know, not allow kids to gamble with mom’s credit card.
Full NY AG press release:
The actual lawsuit filing:
https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/court-filings/new-york-v-valve-corporation-complaint-2026.pdf
Is the Wendy’s account still around for people to like, offer her a cigarette, tell her she looks like she needs one?
Exactly.
They literally, fundamentally, don’t get it.
They think its a person.
Its not.
Its a simulation of a person, made of code and hardware, not meat and chemical receptors.
…There’s a reucrring theme (or maybe its more like a chatacter achetype) in a lot of analog horror series, things that are … almost, sort of human, sometimes, but they’re actually not.
They’re capable of great violence and terror, and they only mimic (often very poorly) human qualities and attributes, some of the time.
Uncanny valley itself, given form and capability.
… Do I need to explicitly lay out the parallels here, for any AI Safety Engineers in the audience?
At this point I’m going to say that watching The Second Renaissance from the AniMatrix needs to mandatory, required, monthly training for anyone developing ‘AI.’
But… but… it generates text that seems like a human wrote it!
Therefore it must be a human!
… A whole lot of humans are failing a reverse turing test, just, fundamentally.
I get what you are saying and generally agree, but!
It actually was not always the way it is now.
Play RDR2.
Look at the advertisements for things, actually read them.
They’re actually pretty accurate to the advertisements of the time.
They are extremely based on ‘facts’, convicing the prospective buyer that the product is the best product, is very useful, can do this, is unique in this way.
Of course, sometimes the ‘facts’ are lies… but the general idea is not to sell a … emotion, or personality, or element of identity, or sense of belonging.
Its almost always to convince the buyer that this product is useful to them, and is priced reasonably for what it can do.
The turning point away from this was mostly or largely due to Edward Bernaise, the nephew of Sigmund Freud.
More or less, he applied Freud’s ideas and some of his own, some of others, to marketing.
His first big hit was angling Cigarettes as ‘Torches of Freedom’ to suffragettes.
At that point in time, smoking tobacco was generally seen as disgusting and low class for women, but not for men.
So, he was basically the first guy that went around and paid people to smoke cigarettes, while being trendy, with pre-designed slogans.
… It worked.
Because he was selling identity, not products, and this is much more effective.
Prior to that… brands basically were just built on the reputation of their products.
Now… now its so insane that for many say, video games and movies… far more time of the entire experience of the product is the hype train, the controversy, the twitter wars… prior to the product even coming out.
And then, its often just a flash in the pan.
But… you will still have dedicated fans, ongoing internet arguments, for literal years, even decades, since the last time anyone involved actually viewed or played the product.
Thats all designed for, to maximize the chances of that happening.
Marketing literally is applied psychology.
Probably because you didn’t go to Wharton.
Hey that’s Trump’s alma mater, ay-oooh!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yutingyue
Anyway, if somebody actually has a LinkedIn account for some reason, please do share any more details.
Problem:
This is the exact same kind of shit being used to automate prioritize and execute military kill-chains.
Basically: Finda target, tell others about the target, assess nearby firepower capable of neutralizing the target, determine best course of action.
… all we have to do is cross that last step over into ‘and then execute that course of action’.
All the drone warfare in Ukraine?
EM jamming and literally hacking the things or their CnC systems is an effective counter, in certain situations.
So, how do you counter that?
One solution is keep an actual thin wire, like a TOW missile, connecting the operator and the drone. Gotta be a real long wire though.
Other solution?
Make the drone fully autonomous once its been locked in to a specific plan.
Don’t worry though, I’m sure Pete Hegseth will navigate this tightrope about as well as traffic stop line walk test.
No, you’re not missing anything.
They’re morons.
Thats our ruling elite; a bunch of fucking morons with egos and low self awareness at best, literally child raping and murdering pedophiles at worst.
Branding and marketing is just building a cult these days.
This is basically happening already with AI assisted surgeries.
I’ve got a suggestion for her:
Burn all your money and ids and property, become homeless.
That will humble you.
Yep.
These people are all fucking complete clowns.
It would be one thing if they were just evil, but they have such an inflated view of themselves that they have no self awareness.
Fucking corpos man.
There are two kinds of apologies.
Customary, and Genuine.
They’re describing a genuine apology.
You’re describing a customary apology.
Fuck Bethesda.
Literally everything they’ve done in the last decade has been a downgrade or cashgrab or outright joke.
… and they still, fucking still can’t fix their garbage engine, they’re still, still relying on modders to fix all their problems, and then they just fairly regularly do some kind of re release or major overhaul that breaks all of the mods.
MSFT’s gaming division is dying: They’re gonna get eviscerated.