Valve ordered to refund $15k to CS:GO player as cases ruled \u2018illegal\u2019 in Austria ValveValve must pay back \u20ac14,096.58 ($15,426.73) to a CS:GO player who spent the money opening cases after a court in Austria ruled that Counter-Strike cases constituted illegal gambling in the country. Valve can choose to appeal the decision. A court in Styria has ordered Valve to refund \u20ac14,096.58 that a CS player had spent on \u201cloot boxes\u201d \u2013 a.k.a weapon cases. Cases in Counter-Strike are one of the main ways players acquire weapon and knife skins, but they are luck-based. A press release, translated from German, states that this is now the first time that Valve\u2019s cases in CS:GO and Counter-Strike 2 have been ruled illegal in Austria: \u201cPadronus and the Salburg law firm argued in the court case that the \u2018Counter-Strike\u2019 loot boxes offered violate the Austrian gambling law and the amounts spent should therefore be refunded. The court followed this view and classified the Counter-Strike loot boxes as illegal gambling.\u201d The player used an Austrian \u201clitigation financier\u201d called Padronus to bring the case against Valve. Padronus offers their service to Austrian players who have purchased \u201cloot boxes\u201d in games such as FIFA, Call of Duty, and Counter-Strike. In Austria, there is a gambling monopoly, with only one company \u2013 Casino Austria AG \u2013 licensed to operate online gambling services. Valve\u2019s CS cases \u201cillegal\u201d in Austria Padronus states on their website: \u201cAccording to the Austrian Gambling Act, every provider of loot boxes must have a license. However, operators of FIFA, Call of Duty, and other games do not have a license.\u201d \u201cThis is the first loot box ruling in the entire German-speaking region regarding Counter-Strike. The Valve Corporation is now the second video game provider, after the game operators FIFA, to be proven to offer illegal gambling in Austria,\u201d said the managing director of Padronus, Richard Eibl. According to Eibl, the judge in the case was actually familiar with Counter-Strike, and so immediately understood the facts of the case. This avoided a major hurdle typically associated with these cases, which is to have the judge understand the games and loot box systems. The court ruled that case opening, \u201cdepends on chance and represents an asset within the meaning of the Austrian Gambling Act because the \u201cskins\u201d would be traded on a secondary market (e.g. \u201cSteam\u201d) and thereby make a profit. Therefore it is gambling. Since Valve does not have a gaming license, the contracts concluded between it and the plaintiff are void and the payments made are reclaimable.\u201d Although Valve now has four weeks to appeal the decision, Padronus told Dexerto: \u201cIf they appeal, their chances to win are almost zero, since we already have a second instance judgment regarding the illegality of loot boxes which we won against Sony and Electronic Arts.\u201d If Valve chooses not to appeal, the decision will be final and legally binding. Austrian courts previously issued similar rulings against EA and Sony regarding FIFA packs, also now considered illegal loot boxes in Austria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Valve ordered to refund $15k to CS:GO player as cases ruled \u2018illegal\u2019 in Austria ValveValve must pay back \u20ac14,096.58 ($15,426.73) to a CS:GO player who spent the money opening cases after a court in Austria ruled that Counter-Strike cases constituted illegal gambling in the country. Valve can choose to appeal the decision. A court in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}