It hasn’t been a month yet, and Valve is facing another class action lawsuit. The previous one was from the state of New York. Even before that, they had another lawsuit from the UK. We’re focusing on this new one, since it pretty much just repeats the accusations on Valve, be it a different entity or city.
This new lawsuit comes from the city of Seattle. The full details of the lawsuit are available HERE if you want to know more about the facts. However, we’re here to tackle why Valve is getting sued over and over again.
Illegal Gambling
This one can be a bit of a stretch because the plaintiffs (past and present) have always used this excuse. They say that games like Counter-Strike Global Offensive (CSGO) have players open loot boxes. These are types of gambling because the players don’t know if they’re going to get what they want.
Loot boxes have been around for over a decade now, but European countries like the UK have been heavily inspecting these. This notion that Valve allows gambling is a bit strange. They have won cases where this was the primary reason.
Illegal Monopoly?
People joke about how Valve is a successful monopoly, which it is not. They come to that term because Valve doesn’t have to do much, and players will still go to them. With the astounding 100 million-plus users that Valve has, it’s no surprise that they are successful.
They have had lawsuits where they say that Valve has been overcharging customers and giving unfair percentages to the developers. When it comes to overcharging, there hasn’t been one big issue with it. As far as charging developers, that has always been the case, and if the developers are fine with that, there’s nothing illegal about it.
A Barrage of Lawsuits
Whether Valve gets out free from its lawsuits, there is a pattern emerging. A lot of entities are suing Valve from the left to right. They just won a lawsuit last January against Rothschild, then suddenly the new lawsuit followed after that, and then this one. It’s undeniable that Valve is swimming in profit, and the guise of “DOING IT FOR THE CHILDREN’S PROTECTION” is just laughable. Hopefully, this pattern stops, but that might not be in the foreseeable future.
