Gamers are in danger..

Valve is getting sued again. It's actually insane the amount of people that are going into Valve. Like uh I think the UK is suing them. New York is suing them that are being sued by a copyright troll before and uh now apparently it's happening again. Oh boy. No surprise. Yeah, exactly. V just went nuclear. For years, we've watched governments around the world, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, take swings at the Steam market and the mystery boxes that power our favorite games. But today, March 11th, 2026, everything changed. Valve has officially responded to the New York Attorney General's lawsuit, and they didn't just release your average legal statement. They released their full-on thoughts breaking down the situation. They are drawing a line in the sand and they are doing it specifically for the players of Counterstrike 2, Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, and all players using Steam Worldwide, which we will get into. In a rare move, Valve addressed the community directly, stating we rarely talk about litigation, but we felt we should explain the situation to you. I think that I think Valve is worried about this lawsuit. I think that there's a chance that they can lose this. isn't just about New York. It's actually about the future of your Steam inventory. If the New York Attorney General gets their way, the Steam community market as you know it, the ability to trade a knife, sell a skin could be deleted. Response is a flatout refusal to comply with what they call invasive and harmful demands. Today, we are going through the entire statement. We're going to look at why Valve is comparing CS2 cases to Pokémon cards. the staggering number of accounts they've banned for gambling and why they are refusing to collect your personal data. Let's get into it. To understand Vel's defense, you have to understand their history with the New York Attorney General. According to the statement, the New York Attorney General claims that mystery boxes, specifically crates, cases, and chess, violate New York gambling laws. Those response, they aren't buying it. They said, "We don't believe they do, and we're disappointed to see the New York Attorney General make that claim after working to educate them about virtual items and mystery boxes since they first." So, they've been complaining about this since early 2023, then out to us in early 2023. So, just think about that. Valve has been trying to educate this government for 3 years on how Steam and their game works. Their core argument is one that we've discussed on this channel before, but Valve is making it their official legal shield. They are tying digital items to the physical world. Valve writes, "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 bed." It's very hard to find an argument against this point, by the way. Why is it that loot boxes should be banned but Pokemon and Magic the Gathering boxes should not be banned? There's no there's no logical difference between these two things and then trading and selling the items they receive. Velv explicitly cited baseball cards, Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, and Laboo. By doing this, Valve is putting the New York attorney general in a corner. If the state says a CS2 case is gambling, they are essentially saying that every 10-year-old opening a Pokemon pack is also gambling. Valve is arguing that the mystery isn't the problem. It's the nature of the product. They even pointed out their longevity noting that it's also that like I mean I think Pokemon cards or Magic the Gathering cards are like a perfect difference like are a perfect comparison because those are also used as prospective assets as well which is different than like gotacha games packs similar to our boxes date back to 2004 and are in widespread use. But here is the most important part for the legal defense of gambling. The disadvantage. Valve states players don't have to open up 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 is betting that the court will see cosmetic only as the safety net that keeps their games legal. But let's talk about the part of the statement that will send shock waves through the skin trading community. The New York Attorney General is accusing Valve of facilitating or allowing gambling. Valve shared a stat I mean statistic we have never seen officially confirmed in this much detail. They said to date we've locked over 1 million Steam accounts that were being misused by third parties in connection with gambling, fraud, and theft. 1 million accounts. So they're saying that because they're self-regulating that they shouldn't be regulated. Just think about the sheer volume of skins, knives, and assets sitting on those million dead accounts. Is using this number as proof they do not cooperate with gambling sites. They explicitly stated, "Vel does not cooperate with gambling sites. We also shared with them our efforts to combat fraud and theft of users items and our extraordinary measures to stop gambling sites from taking advantage of Steam accounts." the specific. This is also a very good argument because there is gambling. Any blind box is gambling. So like if Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are not accountable for people buying Magic the Gathering cards and using those as perspective assets and then gambling on those, then why is Valve accountable for people using the assets acquired in Valve as for the same thing, right? ly mentioned the features that we as players sometimes find annoying but now understand the legal necessity of cited trade reversals and trade cooldowns shipped specifically to discourage gambling sites ability to operate but they even went a step further they address the professional scene stated and we forbid any gambling related business to participate in or sponsor tournaments for our games this is Valve I think this is that is probably the weakest point in my opinion because like if you go and you look at let's do it right now. Uh, is there a way for me to do this at this very moment? Uh, CS2. I'm just going to pick one, two, three, four people. Random random click on people. Okay. So, does this person have an advertisement for a CSGO trading? Uh, this is actually no, not really. That's surprising. Okay. Uh, let's go next one. I don't know if that's a trading website or not. And is there a CSGO skin trading website on here or like Gambo website? Yeah, I'm actually not sure because I'm not familiar with what some of these names are. No. Again. Okay. Okay. This is just literally a guy that's playing Counterstrike. There's nothing there at all. Wow. Okay. Last time I checked, every single one of them had it. Now none of them have it. Never mind. I thought I was going to open and get five. Like I was going to get four for four, but yeah, disproven. There it is. They cleaned up. Yeah, cuz I remember they did a rule for it and it was like, "Oh, okay. This is how it's going to be." Yeah. All right. Melody just a guy. Well, yeah. He doesn't have like a bunch of other stuff, right? That's my point. Way of saying we aren't the problem. The next section is actually the most critical for anyone who treats their Steam inventory as an investment. This is where the New York Attorney General's demands get truly wild. Valve revealed that the New York Attorney General wants to fundamentally change how Steam works. Specifically, they want to kill transferability. Valve explains, "The New York Attorney General seems to believe boxes and their contents should not be transferable and to take issue with the fact that users have the ability to transfer the items they receive through Steam trading or user-to-ouser sales on the community market. The New York Attorney General wants your skins to be accountbound. If you unbox a Doppler, the government thinks you should be forced to keep it forever. No selling it to buy a new game. Well, that that's not how it is with Pokémon cards, so why should you have to do that? No trading it over to your friend. B response to this is frankly legendary. They said, "We think the transferability of a digital game item is good for consumers. It gives a user the ability to It's good and bad for consumers. The fact that items have transferability means that it also creates a market for account sharing and account fishing that wouldn't exist if there wasn't the market for being able to transfer assets off of the account. But overall, it is a net positive. You sell or trade an old or unwanted item for something else in the same way an owner can sell or trade a tangible item like a Pokemon or baseball card. And then they dropped the hammer. Transferability is a right. we believe should not be taken away and we refuse to do that. This is a I think by the way they're doing this because they want to get the public on their side and get ahead of this because I think that they I think there's a good chance they might lose this because one of the big differences between transferability with a digital and also a physical item is that you don't really like you can't own a digital item in the same way that you can own a physical item, right? And I think that they'll probably use that as a distinction point for why Pokemon cards aren't a relative or aren't a relevant comparison. Challenge to the New York Attorney General. VE is telling them, "We will go to court before we take away our users right to trade. This is a massive win for the community's morale." But it's also that and here's another factor. CSGO, a lot of popularity from CS:GO is about skin trading and then skin like box opening. Like that's the truth. So if you lose that element of the community, that's a huge amount of your community that effectively just gets deleted. So yeah, obviously they're going to fight for this. Like this is like millions of dollars they're fighting for. How high the stakes are and what could possibly happen if this doesn't go Valve's way. If Valve loses this case, the very concept of owning a digital item on Steam would be destroyed. But it's not only just about items. It's also about your data. This part of the statement reveals a side of the New York Attorney General investigation that sounds like a surveillance conspiracy. Vel revealed that the New York Attorney General proposed that Valve gather additional information on every single user. Why is to catch people using VPNs to pretend they aren't in New York. This would have involved implementing invasive technologies. Oh my god. for every user worldwide. Just notice that word, worldwide, all because of a lawsuit in New York. The New York Attorney General wanted Valve to change how the Steam client works for everyone in London, Tokyo, Paris. Valve also noted that the New York Attorney General totally totally ridiculous more personal data for age verification despite most payment methods already having that built in. So really all comes down to New York just wanting more data. Valve stands here though is a huge W for privacy advocates. They stated Valve knows our users care about the security of their personal information and we believe it's in our and their interest to only collect the information necessary to operate the business and comply with law. Exactly. There's no reason for you to have any other information unless the user volunteers it. And even in that case, usually it's not a good idea. This as a privacy issue, Valve is making the New York Attorney General look like the overreaching villain. They are telling their users, they are they're overreaching mass. The government wants to spy on you, but we are the ones stopping them. Many companies in this position would have just settled. They would have paid a fine, restricted trading in New York, and then moved on. But that is not what Valve does. Valve admitted that it may have been What about kids? I mean, Counterstrike's a it's a game for adults. It's a 17 plus game. So, like, if you have kids playing Counterstrike, and you're not even supposed to be playing Counter-Strike if you're a kid to begin with, then I Who's really at fault here, right? And cheaper deal with the New York Attorney General, but they didn't because Valve believes the deal the New York Attorney General wanted would have been a poison pill for the entire industry. They said, "We believe the type of deal that would satisfy the NY A would have been bad for users and other game developers and impacted our ability to innovate in game design." This is the classic Valve philosophy. They aren't thinking about the next quarter's earnings. They are thinking I think that this does affect their money and it would negatively affect Valve if like let's say Counterstrike lost the ability to have case and like box openings and like trading. I think it would decrease the amount of users that play Counterstrike and that, you know, engage with Counterstrike, I think it would do it to a pretty big degree. But that being said, that doesn't make it also a good decision in the eyes of the public because the fact is that if you want to gamble on this game and you want to do skin gamba or you want to buy these things and then resell them, that's your that that's your prerogative. It's your money. Like, why not just let people do whatever the hell they want with their money? Like if these are adults spending their own money, then really let them do whatever the hell they want. That's what I think about the next decade of Steam. They also took a moment to address arguments the New York Attorney General made, arguments that had nothing to do with gambling in general. Valve called out the NY's comments on realworld violence and children, labeling them as extraneous comments, a distraction, and a mischaracterization we've all heard before. They've cited numerous studies proving there is no link between games and violence, concluding indeed many studies highlight the beneficial impact of games to users. I think that uh what is this here? I need to address comments about real world violence and oh wait, oh my god, the video games teach kids to be violent. What year is this? Oh bro. This is when I was in high school and middle school. Many studies highlight the beneficial impact of games to users. Phil ended the statement with a dose of reality decide whose position ours or NY a correct. This is the start of a very long legal battle. Valve has made it clear they respect New York's right to make laws, but they will not allow a single attorney general to bypass the legislative process to force invasive and harmful changes onto a global platform. So, you might be wondering, what does this mean for you? Number one, your skins seem to be safer now. V is fighting to keep trading alive. Number two is that Valve is watching. I would watch out if I if I I'm gonna be honest, guys. I think there's a good chance they lose this. Just being honest. I think there is. Uh and if they do, you know, you don't want to be stuck holding the bag, right? That 1 million account ban figure shows they are more aggressive against gambling than we thought. Number three is that the impact of this will be global. This court case will set the precedent for every other state and country. Those final words were a warning. In the meantime, we wanted to make sure you were aware of the potential impact to users in New York and elsewhere. This is a turning point in Valve's history. They finally stepped out of the shadows to defend their business model and our right to trade. But I want to hear from you. Is Valve right to compare CS2 cases to Pokemon cards? Do you think the New York Attorney General it it is mostly accurate but technically wrong because the cards you own and the items you usually have a license to. So like there is a difference but functionally in the eyes of the average consumer they are the same because you have autonomy to do what you want with both different things. Was overstepping by wanting to track VPN globally. Let me know in the comments below, but it's clear this situation only beginning. Yeah. No, I'm glad I I was going to watch this. I I haven't talked about this. The the statement the other day, I wanted to talk about it, too. What about the digital card in the app? I don't know anything about that, so I can't make a comment on it. Make sure to give it a like. Water. He makes a lot of videos about Valve and like some of the different drama they've been in recently. And so, I wanted to show you guys this uh and just make sure people know about it because obviously I totally support Valve. I think people should be able to spend their money on what they choose to. And if people don't like what that is, then really, I mean, them, right? them. Who cares? Did you transferably uh add in artificial scarcity? Well, I don't know about being artificial scarcity. I'm just saying in general, I think that they can have artificial scarcity. Sure. But that's not the only factor uh in involved.