Valve literally runs a marketplace that allows people to sell their skins for cash.

This is like playing for tokens that the store across the street will conveniently purchase from you.

Trading cards and gambling addiction have been studied for years. TCGs may not function the same as a slot machine, but it does trigger the same thing in your brain.

And that is what’s dangerous.

You’re right. TCGs with blind draw boosters are also bad. I didn’t complain about Pokemon cards back in 2000 because I was a child and didn’t comprehend that that was what I was doing. I definitely stopped partaking in Magic: The Gathering as an adult though when I realized it was a neverending gambling treadmill. Today I frequent fighting game locals that are kept afloat by Yu Gi Oh gambling addicts who fill the trash cans with booster wrappers as they go back to the counter over and over again to buy more packs.

So those cards have been around forever, and no one complained about them.

There have definitely been complaints about gambling in relation to collectible cards. I don’t think anything has come of them in legal terms, but many complaints have been voiced.