New York state’s attorney general is suing Valve over its use of loot boxes in games like Counter-Strike 2. Attorney General Letitia James said Valve “enables gambling through” its popular multiplayer games.
On February 25, the New York attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit against Valve in Manhattan. The state is accusing Valve, the company behind Steam, the largest digital gaming store on the planet, of violating its laws against gambling while also claiming its loot boxes will lead to children becoming addicted to gambling.
“Illegal gambling can be harmful and lead to serious addiction problems, especially for our young people,” said Attorney General James. “Valve has made billions of dollars by letting children and adults alike illegally gamble for the chance to win valuable virtual prizes. These features are addictive, harmful, and illegal, and my office is suing to stop Valve’s illegal conduct and protect New Yorkers.” In the lawsuit and a press release, the state even directly compared Valve’s loot boxes to slot machines.
Attorney General James criticized Valve’s system of charging people to buy digital keys to open virtual loot boxes and said that “Valve intentionally makes some items far harder to win than others, making the rare items more valuable.” In 2024, a single Counter-Strike skin sold for over $1 million.
In its lawsuit against Valve, New York is seeking to permanently stop Valve from promoting gambling features in its video games and wants to force the company behind Half-Life to pay various fines for violating New York’s law.
In 2023 alone, Valve reportedly made nearly $1 billion off of Counter-Strike keys. The skins and cosmetic items found in these digital boxes, which have been a part of many Valve games for years now, can be extremely valuable and are often sold on Steam’s marketplace. Valve gets a cut of every sale on this marketplace and has full control over it. In 2025, Valve made changes to how the skin economy worked and in the process, reportedly wiped out over a billion dollars, leading to a CS2 crash among skin collectors, sellers, and traders. Buying keys, opening boxes, trading skins, and selling cosmetics continues to be a controversial part of Valve’s gaming empire, with YouTube cracking down on videos in 2025 that promote so-called “skin casinos” and third-party marketplaces.
