

Valve loot boxes have always worked that way. They didn’t change them to skirt regulations. I don’t really find it very scummy at all. Nothing in the loot boxes can give you an advantage in the game. Most of the games that include this feature are free to play. This is how they make money from their game. The vast majority of people don’t pay very much at all. You can play the games and have tons of fun and never interact with the loot box system. It’s an optional thing for people who like the game so much that they want to pay. It’s basically donate to valve and have a chance to unlock a cosmetic item in game.
I guess from a data security point of view, we should all understand that if we give our data to a company in a different country, we should not assume that there is any legal mechanism for forcing them to delete it.