Where will you take those goalposts next?

^ That was rhetorical.

Rats instinctually know to hop off a sinking ship.

It’ll sound like a low rumbling of bubble wrap shifting across the lands.

Oh, so now we’re at the “pachinko isn’t gambling because you have to go across the street to get cash for your prizes” argument. Knew we’d eventually get there.

You see, in Japan, pachinko parlors are “technically” not gambling because you exchange your winnings for cheap toys, similar to exchanging tickets at the Chuck E Cheese counter. Except there’s a store directly across the street from the pachinko parlor that buys those toys for, well wouldn’t you know it, the exact amount of your winnings!

And since it’s “not gambling” in the eyes of the law, it’s not damaging, right?

https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article-abstract/49/suppl_1/i17/105541

Conclusion. This study revealed that the prevalence of pathological gambling, especially among men, was much higher in Japan than in other countries. Pachinko was very popular and was strongly suggested to have contributed to this heightened prevalence.

Oof.

Yes, it’s still gambling even if you have to access a grey market to obtain fiat currency. Why? Because obtaining fiat currency isn’t a defining factor of gambling.

Where will you take those goalposts next?

If it’s gambling, loot boxes should be items of value, redeemable for cash, correct? And Valve should be the one providing that cash, as they are the child casino, correct?

Yes, that’s literally how the Steam marketplace works. Where am I losing you?

Holy shit, Gabe’s really got you by the balls, eh. We’ve reached the “actually lootboxes aren’t gambling” arc.

Insane, the lengths some will go to defend shitty behavior from shitty billionaires.

We’re really far from the point now.

I’m a millennial parent and I know how the internet works. I also know that every app nowadays has parental controls built in. Moreso, I can specifically block things on the router.

Remember how you found ways to circumvent those things in your youth without your parents knowing? Guess what? Kids still do that. Parental controls only work on children who lack creativity.

You aren’t going to be there 100% of the time for your kids. No parent would be. It would be abusive to be present 100% of the time. You’re going to trust your kids with a certain level of autonomy, and they’re occasionally going to do things with that autonomy that you disapprove of; that’s an important part of growing up. Maybe it’s swearing, maybe it’s getting into fights, maybe it’s cheating on homework, or maybe it’s buying lootboxes. You can’t block everything.

Nobody’s saying that you shouldn’t try to prevent your kids from falling into these traps. By all means, you should. But you shouldn’t expect to be successful 100% of the time. You’re going to slip. They’re going to slip. That’s life.

However, the fucking CHILD CASINO still exists. Maybe you can keep your kids out of it, but there are still kids getting addicted to gambling because nobody is shutting down the child casino. The fact that it exists, at all, should be appalling to any parent; but instead, some of them are defending it because “ohh but they did some good things for Linux gaming”. Get real, my guy.

I think a lot of that comes down to our ability to make personal comparisons. When you’re 10 years old, a year is 10% of your entire lived experience. When you’re 50 years old, a year is just 2% of your life. Life feels like it goes faster as we age, because we have so much more to compare it to as we grow older.

I could not give a shit.

I can tell, since nothing else about your comment was at all related to what I was saying.

That’s a whole lot of distraction from the point, mate. If you found out that a casino was allowing children to gamble on their property, would you not want to shut down that casino?

Yes, the parents shouldn’t be allowing the kids to gamble. But parents don’t always “allow” their kids to do the things they do in the first place. You know damn well you did things as a child that you weren’t “allowed” to do, things that you were told specifically not to do. You know that you successfully hid things from your parents, but expect other parents to find everything? Most of this happens completely under the parents’ radar.

Addicts steal, and that’s no different for children, either. Often they’ll take their parent’s credit card in hopes that the charge goes unnoticed, or they’ll obfuscate the charge by spending money on another currency that gets converted after the fact to one used for lootboxes.

There are even worse things that an addict will do for money. Some may resort to scams; sometimes they’ll set up catfish social media profiles to bait gooners into paying them gobs of money for fake pictures. Some may resort to worse behavior; I’ve seen instructional TikTok videos for children to lure adults onto Roblox for sexual acts, to be paid in Robux, which can then easily be converted into just about any other game’s currency. Literal child prostitution.

But sure. Let’s blame the parents, instead of the billionaire’s child casino.

“Elites” don’t get laid off. Who are you even talking about right now?

You’re right, there’s absolutely nothing to be concerned about when entire communities lose their income while a small handful of elites grow in power. It definitely doesn’t affect me if I’m not one of those workers, right? Surely the entire thing just stops right there and doesn’t cause any damage to the economy, right? That’s what our great, infallible unemployment benefits in this country are for, right?

Right?

pc is a niche. a shrinking one at that.

Absolutely not. PC is growing, and continues to grow year after year. Consoles are on a slight decline, but PC has never really stopped growing.

You’re really gonna need to start citing some sources at this point.

Now, I’m willing to change my view if there’s ever a situation in which Gabe Newall is intentionally trying to avoid paying taxes, but that hasn’t happened yet.

What about exploiting child gambling? Valve’s value, and thusly Gabe’s value, skyrocketed after introducing lootboxes to TF2, CSGO, DOTA2, etc. He can be as charitable as he fucking wants, but he still defends lootboxes while taking little to no efforts to ensure that children aren’t gambling on his platform. He’s had… how many years to fix this problem now? Too many. He’s not fixed the problem, and continues to reap the rewards in the meantime.

As far as I’m concerned, he’s just as much of a piece of shit as any other billionaire. The only difference is that he makes toys that a lot of us really, really like; toys that we apparently like so much so that we’re willing to handwave child gambling as long as it doesn’t get in the way of making it moderately convenient to download DRM-infested games.

they’ve never personally fucked me over. Until they do, I will continue to buy their shit

This mindset, while popularly-held, is precisely the reason Valve has such a monopolistic status in the first place.

First of all, I trust Ubi and WB way less than valve.

You shouldn’t trust any of them. No billionaire has your best interests at heart. Even Gabe.

GOG isn’t really competing in the same market as Steam.

Better start building the Blackwall.

Maybe because they keep happening?

Why do I feel like we could trace the IP of the comment back to Gabe’s yacht?