That's because it still counts as you making a transaction, even if its for what is legally a service or nothing. If you sold intangible and legally worthless widgets you'd still need to report to the IRS. Doesn't really matter what you're getting, since Steam$ is counted as a currency of some sort, so the IRS wants to know about it. The IRS is also not the legal system so that's a bit of a stretch regardless.

Legally, gambling for tokens is fine in a lot of places. Exchanging those tokens for money is the legal grey area. If its money->token->gambling->tokens the government is pretty unconcerned. Its when it goes money->token->gambling->tokens->money that it really becomes an issue. If the tokens have an actual defined value, or count as property legally, then valve can't say that their tokens aren't supposed to be sold for money. Right now, the Steam trade market is designed to prevent you from selling things for "real" money to prevent this. All you can do is put money in, and receive either steam currency (valued in real currency but NOT real currency itself) or tokens (skins)

Otherwise, valve would've never gotten this far without a lawsuit.

a secondary reason valve isn't gambling is because they don't actually give you anything. Legally all your tf2 items are just part of TF2 and don't actually count as a commodity you own. Part of the reason they're so against gambling is because it further enforces the idea that steam items have real world value, which makes it more likely that a later court case will rule in such a way as to say they do. If this happens, a lot of shit gets really bad for valve. They're already half-way a bank, they really don't want more regulatory pressure. If items become "real" VAC banning becomes a bit hairy, since now people are being denied access to assets, which could be a huge lawsuit against Valve.

can we get city/state flags too?

y'know cause MM is what everyone said would make TF2 take off. for the next 3-6 months we really need to work with valve to fine tune 6s MM, not worry about 3rd party tournaments or anything else. Getting players playing 6s in any form would be the best thing we can do right now. I see the benefit of a hype tournament, but that seems unlikely to happen. I think a better focus of our energies as a shitposting entity should be complaining to valve about the user unfriendly aspects of MM. Make them put in tutorials, make ranking work, add placement matches, do things that makes horatio.martinez.2003 want to come back for more MM. As far as what individual players can do: play MM. Having streamers and community figures unifying into the MM system would be good for two reasons. 1st: pub players can play with recognized community leaders and streamers. When I was new, playing with harbleu and kev on teek made that server unique and interesting to me because these were good players that I'd heard/seen in casts. 2nd: it allows 6s players to provide feedback and player critique organically. I've basically done nothing but carry randoms in MM for 2 days now, and even if I get a bit abrasive in my comms the response has been positive because I've been showing players how they can be better 6s players. I've had a couple games where a 12 year old went from nervous to comming damage and pushes, and that's a super neat feeling. I hope it also feels good for the 12 year old to see a visible improvement like that in a single match. Hopefully, working in a lot of experienced players with new players in the MM system will make lightbulb moments happen for new players, and cause them to get hooked as they search for the next way to improve.

tl;dr: play MM for now

edit: give me those stupid clan tag things from CSGO too so I can rep ESEA_TF2 please valve tyty

Its really funny that this thread is being made just after we got MM

you revert the changes and reconsider at a later date

but the MM cvar locking isn't the big ticket issue of this update, casual is. Even then, casual isn't getting the vitriol that the sticky nerf did, where quite literally 90%+ of the community simultaneously spoke up and said

"no"

so unless we reach that level of combined shitposting across /r/tf2, ugc, tftv, facepunch, /vg/, and spuf again expect to keep your 5 FPS

will we see proxy gambling after this? Like skins -> tokens -> gambling -> tokens -> skins

vast conspiracy of server owners and ESEA players confirmed

a meme started to make fun of feminism that people started to take seriously

at this point MRA is just a meme that people use to try and derail conversations about feminism

i wish i could shitpost this well

TF2 has weird ragdolls because they don't really have an animation, they just fall over. Sniper ragdolls are fine imo because they have an animation where the head snaps back and its clear you hit the shot

I'm assuming they didn't do placement matches because they didn't expect enough players to be available

Its been a while since I've played CSGO MM but iirc placement matches prefer playing other placement players, and given the small size of the current MM player base, this wouldn't work well. Combined with this, rankings in tf2 seem to be a lot more superficial than in CS. Your rank should basically always be going up in tf2 even if you maintain a .5 W/L because of medals so even bad players should eventually hit DM. Compared to CS it seems like ranks (at least right now) aren't very important in the MM process.

maybe they'll patch it idk

am i the only one who hasn't been impressed with double medic? I only solo-queue so coordination is off, but giving up a pub heavy or soldier for a bit of extra heals just seems like a bad trade. I'm sure at a decent skill level it becomes more beneficial, but in MM it really seems like one medic is more useful than 2

im not creepy or a weeaboo

i think you're just jealous of my talent

i am a certified genius please be kind ty