What do you mean by this, especially ‘companies making those games rather than a distributor?’ If I understand correctly, this insinuates valve is not creating games that do this?

In that case I’d have to disagree. They were the ‘originator’ of modern loot box design and subsequently pushed them in all their multiplayer games - Team Fortress, Counter Strike and Dota that i know of for sure.

In fact the whole Team Fortress lootbox economy was crazy, with the unboxed hats selling for sometimes thousands of dollars and thus providing very gamble-like incentives. Not to speak of the actual real-life gambling websites that sprang up all around counter strike knifes and skins. Hell, for years Team Fortress received no updates at all besides new loot crates and hats to extract more money.

While I agree with your assessment on fining anyone targeting lootboxes at vulnerable people, I would hold that valve is a fine target to start with for that.