In a case that's probably about five or even ten years too late to jump on the hatred people had for loot boxes, the attorney general of New York decided to bring a lawsuit to Steam platform owner Valve, citing its use of loot boxes in Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2 as unlawful and harmful to children.
Last night, Valve issued a response. In somewhat of a rare occurrence, the Steam owner decided to create a public statement on the matter, posted via the Steam website. "We rarely talk about litigation, but we felt we should explain the situation to you," Valve explained in its opening paragraph.
"We shared with the NYAG that these types of boxes in our games are widely used, not just in video games but in the tangible world as well, where generations have grown up opening baseball card packs and blind boxes and bags, and then trading and selling the items they receive. On the physical side, popular products used in this way include baseball cards, Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, and Labubu. In the game space, digital packs similar to our boxes date back to 2004 and are in widespread use," Valve continued. "Players don't have to open mystery boxes to play Valve games. In fact, most of you don't open any boxes at all and just play the games—because the items in the boxes are purely cosmetic, there is no disadvantage to a player not spending money."
Valve went onto clarify some of the proposed changes to its systems from the NYAG office. Namely, if New York won the case and was able to modify Valve to its wishes, it seems we could see a shutdown of the Steam Community Market, alongside more user information being given out, such as if a Steam user has a VPN. Valve does note that it's outside of its hands to make a decision on the case now, as it'll soon go to court.