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French CS:GO players can preview loot box contents now, but still have to claim them

Valve's introduced changes to how CS:GO players in France interact with containers in the game

Valve has made a change to the way players in France interact with containers (loot boxes) in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The developer has introduced a new item designed to let players reveal items inside in-game containers before buying them in the form of an x-ray scanner. However, it looks like you’ll still need to claim that item, whatever it is, before being able to scan other containers.

As revealed in release notes on the CS:GO website, for players in France the x-ray scanner can be used to “reveal the item inside any container,” and every container needs to be put through the scanner before “purchasing a key.” The scanner will “consume” the container in the process, and “comes preloaded with a one-time exclusive non-tradable item” called the ‘P250 x-ray.’ However, the post also says that “to use the x-ray scanner again, the revealed item must be claimed; it is not possible to scan another container without claiming the revealed item.”

In essence, then, it appears that players still won’t have any real level of control over what they purchase in the game through containers – if all containers must be scanned before opening, and all scanned items claimed before you can scan anything else, then all that seems to really be changing here is you can preview the container’s contents before claiming them just as before. That’s it.

The post adds that in the country “containers can no longer be purchased from Steam Community Market, but can still be sold.”

Users on Reddit have been discussing the changes, with some offering breakdowns of what they mean in practice and questioning whether there’s any real benefit for consumers. It’s widely assumed that the move is more concerned with regulations around loot box mechanics, but it’s not clear if this is the case.

The post itself doesn’t discuss the reasons for the change, but it does follow a recent ruling by the High Court of Paris that Steam must allow customers to re-sell games bought via the platform in territories across the EU, which Valve has said it will appeal. There’s no direct link between this change and that decision, but it’s curious that Valve is making this region-specific change following increased scrutiny over consumer rights in France. We’ve asked Valve why the change has been made, and why it applies specifically to France.