The second class action against the V Society ‘ s trophy box was instituted recently, two weeks after the Supreme Court of New York sued V Society. The two charges are essentially the same, namely, the trophy box for V games such as ” Anti-Terrorism Elite 2 ” , “Fortress 2 ” , “DOTA 2 ” , which is carefully designed to extract money from players, including children, through deceptive gambling.
In a press release, the founder of Hagens Berman’s law firm said: “We believe V Society deliberately designed its gambling platform and made huge profits from it. Consumers play games for entertainment without knowing that V Society is alleged to be manipulating the rate of loss. We intend to hold V Society accountable and return the money to consumers.” The trophies are fairly common in real-time service games. Players get locked trophies in the game and get openings through the purchase of keys. Similar to open-blind boxes, results are unpredictable, and probabilities drive player consumption. Being seen by multinational regulators as “simulating gambling” as involving random payments could lead to under-age addiction or excessive consumption.
The full pleadings state that the trophy box is not a “side function” of the V society game, but a “deliberate and well-designed mode of realization”, as is the case with the Steam market and the Steam platform itself. The complaint stated that the service clause of V Society prohibited off-site trading, but that it was still “intentionally designed” to allow players to sell digital items on third-party markets through “trading links”. At present, the debate over whether a trophy box constitutes gambling is still raging, but the complaint states that the V Society system does conform to the Washington State law definition of gambling: “to bet or take risks with something of value in exchange for an opportunity or the result of a future accident free from personal control or influence.” The statement stated: “The trophy box of V meets every element of this definition. Users bet money on the outcome of the opportunity competition, and the items obtained are `valueable’ because they can be sold in exchange for real money and silver through V’s own or an enabling third-party market.”
According to counsel: “It is particularly bad in this case that V Society clearly knows that the other end of the deal is the child. We believe that instead of protecting young players through age certification or parental consent mechanisms, they manipulate the game to extract more money from the player’s wallet.” Daniel J. McGinn, a lawyer who was not involved in the case, stated in an analysis of the case against V Society in New York State, that prior to that, “the plaintiff who challenged the trophy box in the Federal Court had been facing the wall”. However, he considers the case to be different from the one faced by V Society in the past: “The New York case is different from the previous proceedings in that the Attorney-General believes that the virtual objects that were won from V Society’s war booty are truly valuable — not only subjective to the player, but also capable of being converted into real money in an open and easily identifiable manner.” For players, the motive for this wave of legal action appears to be somewhat behind schedule. Since 2013 and 2012, respectively, the Treasure Boxes have been launched by the Anti-Terrorism Elite 2 and DOTA 2, and the controversy surrounding these systems has continued for a decade. Despite some regulatory pressure in the Netherlands and Belgium after it became clear that the booty boxes were gambling, V had not yet lost the case in court.Steam ‘ s prevalence has largely protected Valve from the kind of strong resistance that other studios face.It is worth mentioning that there are at least indications that V Society is taking action to comply with the relevant area. Late last week, Valve announced the introduction of an “X-ray scan” for German players to enable them to view the contents before opening boxes, a move apparently taken by Steam in response to local reviews.
