Elijin said:
Areloch said:
Sure, but since everything has a value, that would mean that literally anything with a chance associated to an entry fee is gambling and - going off this thread - should face all the regulations and taxes gambling entails.
I would disagree with that. I don't feel that stuff like LootCrate, collectible card games or random drops or the like should be subject to gambling laws unless the exact same system offers a direct stuff-back-to-cash payout system like gambling establishments do.
TCG and other lucky dip style merchandising and toys are gambling for children, essentially. But because its toys or niche products, no one seems to care about the behaviour it encourages.
Also LootCrate isn't gambling, its a blind buy. The contents of your crate aren't going to be different than mine, and there will be a static value of goods within that crate.
Strazdas said:
Areloch said:
Sure, but since everything has a value, that would mean that literally anything with a chance associated to an entry fee is gambling and - going off this thread - should face all the regulations and taxes gambling entails.
I would disagree with that. I don't feel that stuff like LootCrate, collectible card games or random drops or the like should be subject to gambling laws unless the exact same system offers a direct stuff-back-to-cash payout system like gambling establishments do.
Not all value is easily expressed. It is in CS:GO case though. Though yes, there is a lot of gambling nowdays. Im not familiar with Loot Crate as i never use it but from what i understand it is not a lottery, it is buying a cat in a bad type of deal, where you pay before you know the contents of the "crate". There are no chance, everyone gets the same items though. And thats just a sale. A very poorly designed anticonsumer style of sale but still just a sale. Random drops are not gambling because you dont pay anything for it. Having a game monster having a chance to drop something is not applicable here. A big argument can be made is that you can roll the "Chance" in here as many times as you want as you own the game and therefore can replay that monster fight as much as you want at no additional cost (or just cheat the item in if its an offline game). I never thought about Collectible Card games but i suppose yes, the sales of cards are a type of gambling.
You may agree or disagree, but that is the current law in the western world. Its just not being applied to niche products because of "lol who cares about videogames" attitude. The legislators are busy trying to get online poker sites to adhere to gambling laws while the sites are doing everything in their power to pretend they arent gambling. There are bigger fish to fry i guess.
Firstly, I haven't gotten LootCrate before, just that by all descriptions, it's a random pile of merch you get each month for a fee.
So if the stuff inside is static, I guess it's probably not random enough to count, because everyone gets the same mech each month?
If so, then fair enough, I suppose.
Just struck me as similar due to you paying for a random assortment of stuff that WILl have some monetary value associated with it, which apparently was all that was needed to be considered gambling.
@Elijin You keep saying it's gambling for children, and while the broad scope of it may be similar (you pay for a random assortment of goods), I don't feel that it should be hit with gambling laws by virtue of the fact that at no point in the core loop of the system that the producers of the cards set up, can you turn it back into cash through them again.
You can turn around and sell those cards to another person, but you can't cash them in as PART of the fee->random acquire system that the card packs are set up with. I feel this is a pretty important distinction when it comes to slamming down new laws and regulations on something.
@Strazdas The ease in which the value is expressed doesn't seem like it should be the tipping point though, if the value itself doesn't come from, real actual cash back in your pocket. I mean, I remember back in grade school, where the second you pulled out a foil pokemon card, a dozen other kids wanted to trade various stuff with you to get it.
There was a very real value there, it just wasn't ever expressed in cash.
Also, when I said 'random drops', I was meaning the crates like in CS. I should've been clearer, sorry about that.
And again, I feel a VERY important distinction is that, inside the core system itself, without third parties, you need to be able to convert those random winnings back into cash to qualify as gambling. CCGs, CSGO/TF2's crates, those do not satisfy that because you need to go to some third party, separate from the actual game, to 'cash out'.
Online poker games, for example as far as I can tell, DO actually let you cash out real money back from playing the game, which is why they may be a target of gambling laws. They satisfy the 'pay fee-> random chance to win -> cash out back real money'.
Having said all that, I'm unfamiliar with gambling laws myself - especially ones in other countries, so it may well be true that CCGs, and random crates should qualify but don't.