Steam refutes the claim that the CS2 trophy box is gambling, “so it’s illegal to open a blind box.”

In February this year, the Attorney General of the United States State of New York, Letitia James, filed a lawsuit against the V Society on the grounds that the CS2 DOTA2 and the Fort Corps 2 civil war trophy box would promote gambling.

In an official indictment, the New York State prosecution noted that the V Society ‘ s profit model constituted a serious violation of the New York State Constitution and criminal law ‘ s gambling restrictions. Leticia James accused V of “billions of dollars” in illicit gambling and infiltration of minors through the “weapons box/trophysics box” mechanism in the game and stressed that the trophy box was “addicted and harmful”.

According to Corthouse News, on 20 May, V. formally filed a motion of dismissal with the Supreme Court of New York. According to V, the recognition of the open-box mechanism as illegal gambling would be a dangerous precedent, as it would mean that baseball cards, garden food toys and even blind boxes such as Labububu would be gambling.

According to V, “every transaction, or even more similar, is the purchase of random items that can be resold for cash. There is no court that would allow the executive branch to characterize as unlawful, overnight, such a large number of routine acts that are not expressly prohibited by law. Nor should the Court be the first.”

“People like surprises. The attraction of many popular collections, from baseball cards to cereal boxes, is that once the packaging has been opened, there may be surprises of rare items, which have never been recognized by the legislature or the courts as illegal gambling.”

The word “surprise” by V is similar to the comment made by an EA executive in response to the Ultimate Team carton dispute, “We do not call this a trophy box, we call it a surprise mechanism”. Regulators around the globe have increasingly regulated trophies in recent years, and several attempts have been made to ban trophies, but game distributors have been operating the trophies in the same way.

In March of this year, V Society issued a rare public statement on the New York state lawsuit, stating that generations had grown up playing Poco Dreams and Manji cards. “The players can play V-shows without a card,” V said, “In fact, most players don’t open boxes, they play games. Since the trophies are purely decorative, the player will not have any advantage in buying them.”

V explained in detail its campaign against the use of Valve items by Steam users on the gambling website, claiming that this was a violation of Steam subscriber agreements. V added: “The petition proposes to deprive users of the right to transfer their digital objects from the Valve game. Transferability is a right we believe should not be denied, and we refuse to do so.”

“We respect the right of the state of New York to set norms. If the New York legislature adopts the blind box law, we will of course abide by it. Such laws should be developed in a public procedure and with the advice of industry and players. The Attorney-General’s Office’s request to us goes far beyond the limitations of New York law and even beyond the purview of the State of New York. For Valve, it may be easier and cheaper to reach an agreement with the Attorney General of New York, but we believe that an agreement that meets the requirements of the Attorney General of New York would be detrimental to users and other game developers and would affect our ability to innovate in game design.”

In its motion to dismiss the action, Society V strongly criticized the action. “Does parents buy baseball card bags for their children? Can a family go to Chuck E. Cheese and win a coupon for a prize? Can the kid reach into the cereal box and grab a surprise toy? According to the New York Attorney General’s interpretation of gambling, all these acts, as well as more, may lead to criminal offences.”

If the Attorney-General ‘ s Office in New York wins, V will probably ban the trophy case in the state. The compensation sought by the prosecution is equivalent to three times the value of V Society ‘ s profit from the trophies, which, according to statistics, generate $4 billion in economic benefits from the trophies of the Anti-Terrorism Elite game alone.