Isnt Syndicate British? What did they UK version of the FTC do to him?
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YouTubers escape fine for promoting CSGO Lotto site they secretly owned
- Thread starter Kenzodielocke
- Start date
Isnt Syndicate British? What did they UK version of the FTC do to him?
Audioboxer
Member
$$$, high-end lawyers and Valve probably being involved behind the scenes as well. Welcome to rich people and rich corporations doing shit and getting away with it.
Morally bankrupt individuals preying on youth, enjoy your legacy guys. May the money be enough to paper over the cracks of being devoid of a conscious.
Morally bankrupt individuals preying on youth, enjoy your legacy guys. May the money be enough to paper over the cracks of being devoid of a conscious.
This is what selling gambling to children gets you, big house expensive cars and slap on the wrist with no consequences.
They got away because they have money and paid good lawyers.
Honestly they deserve jail time.
They actively promoted gambling, which is OK, but they rigged their own (and others) chances effectively scamming those who believed their luck. That is fraud.
Not to mention, the majority of their user base are children who aren't allowed to gamble.
The UK alternative to the FTC is the Financial Ombudsman Service (http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/) We need to send letters and petition the Ombudsman to take action in the UK!
You can also contact the UK Gambling Commission to alert them of this practise.
They deserve a fine and jail time.
Honestly they deserve jail time.
They actively promoted gambling, which is OK, but they rigged their own (and others) chances effectively scamming those who believed their luck. That is fraud.
Not to mention, the majority of their user base are children who aren't allowed to gamble.
The UK alternative to the FTC is the Financial Ombudsman Service (http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/) We need to send letters and petition the Ombudsman to take action in the UK!
You can also contact the UK Gambling Commission to alert them of this practise.
They deserve a fine and jail time.
IcyRhythms
Member
Disgusting.
It's not even just that they deserved a penalty of some kind. They do. It's also that these are not good people, and that became obvious once the news about them being the owners came out. They're shit people that didn't give a damn who they were taking money from, even if those people were children.
It's not even just that they deserved a penalty of some kind. They do. It's also that these are not good people, and that became obvious once the news about them being the owners came out. They're shit people that didn't give a damn who they were taking money from, even if those people were children.
Ivan A Nguyen
Member
In the infamous words of Martian Skarelli, " Don't allegedly do the crime if you can't pay the fine." Some liberties might have been taken with that quote.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
I wonder whether the loophole these crooks used to get away with this is that Steam Wallet funds can't be converted back into real-life currency?
So anything users technically do with skins in terms of trading them or using them to bet on 3rd party sites can't be used to provide them with real-life earnings.
If so, then laws need to be changed ASAP, as this is pretty disgusting.
Tbh, Valve is a facilitator of all this, as far as I'm concerned. It's the first time I'm hearing about the Steam Community Market and it just sounds shady as hell to me.
So anything users technically do with skins in terms of trading them or using them to bet on 3rd party sites can't be used to provide them with real-life earnings.
If so, then laws need to be changed ASAP, as this is pretty disgusting.
Tbh, Valve is a facilitator of all this, as far as I'm concerned. It's the first time I'm hearing about the Steam Community Market and it just sounds shady as hell to me.
Abilidebob
Member
Those betting sites don't use the Steam Market, they use real money and trade the items.
Of course, you could sell the skins you won on the Market for Steambucks, but you also could sell them directly.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
What about the cease and desist letter from the Washington State Gaming Commission to Valve?
This is no new emerging market... this is gambling. This is an existing market, with existing regulatory agencies... like the Washington State Gaming Commission.
People who don't understand (old people) act like it's not real gambling if its with skins and virtual property... but as this world falls to crap further--and a good portion of real world "property" ends up poisoned and underwater--it's the virtual goods that will hold their value... sadly.
I wrote a blog post this year for the actual casino where I work, lamenting all this edge-case crap.
We're going to have to count on state regulators and oversight while we wait to see if the federal viewpoint ever recovers its leadership role.
This is no new emerging market... this is gambling. This is an existing market, with existing regulatory agencies... like the Washington State Gaming Commission.
People who don't understand (old people) act like it's not real gambling if its with skins and virtual property... but as this world falls to crap further--and a good portion of real world "property" ends up poisoned and underwater--it's the virtual goods that will hold their value... sadly.
I wrote a blog post this year for the actual casino where I work, lamenting all this edge-case crap.
We're going to have to count on state regulators and oversight while we wait to see if the federal viewpoint ever recovers its leadership role.
Abilidebob
Member
Didn't they send a C&D to dozens of sites for them to stop doing their shtick or they'd block the Steam API?
Might as well go against the BEP. After all, some money made there gets used for gambling.
Not a single of those sites uses the market in any way.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
Really?!? That's all they had to do? The API is unchanged and all the shady exchanges are still possible, but Valve is going to self-police the API term violators?
Wow. Scuttlebutt is that a casino in our state just got fined $130,000 for having over the course of a year around 30 total underaged gamblers intentionally sneak into their giant, multi-door hotel-resorts, for anywhere over 30 minutes (the time limit) before being found by security and reported to the regulatory agency.
Now the time limit for all of us is 10 minutes. Hardly seems fair. What's Valve's time limit?
¯\_(ツ
_/¯Abilidebob
Member
Really?!? That's all they had to do? The API is unchanged and all the shady exchanges are still possible, but Valve is going to self-police the API term violators?
Wow. Scuttlebutt is that a casino in our state just got fined $130,000 for having over the course of a year around 30 total underaged gamblers intentionally sneak into their giant, multi-door hotel-resorts, for anywhere over 30 minutes (the time limit) before being found by security and reported to the regulatory agency.
Now the time limit for all of us is 10 minutes. Hardly seems fair. What's Valve's time limit?
¯_(ツ
What would you do? Locking the Steam API would be a terrible thing for everyone, not just the gambling sites. Stopping the trade of items? Again, screwing everyone because of those fuckers? Steam trading is one of the best things of the platform, it'd be incredibly sad to see it going away. Is there any solution to it that wouldn't completely screw over legal users? Aside from the individual blocking of the API of the gambling sites and shutting them down, any other solution I think would be worse for the legal customers.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Yeah, same situation this side of the pond... real money gambling is sooo sooo much more heavily regulated than this it is really gambling, but lets not call it gambling *wink wink nudge nudge* kind of situation.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
How can you claim these site "don't use the Steam Community Market in any way" when their entire premise is to facilitate gambling with skins that come from that very marketplace?
You do realize people can get skins without having to buy them from the marketplace, right?
There is literally ZERO in the marketplace that facilitates anything at all. CS GO item gambling was a thing before the fucking market even existed.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
Well if you're familiar with all the geolocation and IP tracking technology that had to be deployed to satisfy state regulators in the US states that legalized online gambling, it's an advance authentication system that involves age confirmation as well. Regulatory agencies measure you by number of infractions, which is way different from some after-the-fact class-action profit-margin-reducer. If you have enough violations, your license is pulled and the operation (in Valve's case, the API) is indeed shut down.
I was amused that some of these dudes (not sure if it was these two) made an announcement that they were going to pursue an actual gambling license in their state to keep their site open. That's very naive. If you want a license to run a gambling organization from a state regulatory agency, the last thing you want on your resume is having run one without a license.
tl;dr I don't have that answer. But if Valve's API and the gambling transactions therein were regulated like "real gambling," they'd have to figure it out, and fast.
MrTroubleMaker
Member
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
The problem as I see it is indeed with the Steam API as it allows virtual goods on the Steam Marketplace to be used outside steam by anyone to do who knows what.
Locking the API =/= stopping trading of virtual goods on Steam. It would mean stopping the movement of those virtual goods from Steam to 3rd party platforms where the kind of scummy shit in the OP can occur. In the name of "openness" and by releasing this marketplace API into the wild, Valve is indirectly allowing what is described in the OP.
Of course, valve isn't responsible for it. But perhaps Valve can do more to prevent it, since they're the ones with control over the API for the platform they created.
False, false, and false again.
The API is used for a lot more than trading. And you don't even fucking need the API to operate a gambling website either.
AbsolutBro
Member
What happened is that there were two commissiones at the time. The FTC is supposed to have 5, appointed by the president. (But no more than 3 from one political party.) During Obama we had a mostly D commission. Now we have an R commission.
The FTC is an understaffed and underfunded organization that does a lot of good work that rarely gets mentioned. This is one painfully bad decision, I agree, but it doesn't undo the rest of the work the FTC does.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
How is that relevant?
I can get an Xbox without buying it directly from MS Store, but that doesn't change the fact that the original source of that item is MS.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
Like, if you could throw out a layman-friendly overview of some of the tech shit on how these pipelines work, I think that would be super-informative for me.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
Do you even know what an API is?
API = Application Programming Interface... It's absolutely required to allow 3rd party websites/platforms to even recognize what these virtual goods even are. These third party sites setup to facilitate gambling of virtual items from the Steam Marketplace MUST use Valves API to do this (they even state this in the article Kotaku wrote on the subject more recently).
Abilidebob
Member
I see, I agree that more regulation could be helpful. But the problem is indeed in how to stop those websites without screwing your other users.
Those sites use the Steam API to do stuff like checking your inventory to see what items you have. They use bot accounts for the trading of items, and as far as I know Valve has been banning quite a number of those gambling bots. Problem is that you can't really blanket ban the API for 3rd party users as there's quite a few legitimate uses for it, from helping trading sites to organizing tournaments with bots to even Steamspy.
And by the way, completely locking the API would NOT stop gambling sites in any way.
The original source of the items used isn't the Steam Marketplace.
False, once again. Pinging inventories and setting automated trade offers is ridiculously easy even without access to the API. You might want to actual research things.
You can all that is required for gambling without ever touching the SteamAPI. You can just create simple scripts to check inventories and send trade offers.
Abilidebob
Member
But that's the thing, they don't really need to. It's the kind of thing that they can do without using the Steam API. It'd be more work yes, but they absolutely can do that. And while you locking the API means just a small headache to those profit-driven scumbags, the legitimate users that actually NEED the API for something are screwed over.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
No-one is saying a blanket ban is the answer, but knowing how these shady outfits are orchestrating these scams (e.g. bot accounts are even against Valve's Steam User T&Cs), Valve can do more to clamp down on this shit.
What's scummy is that the trades which are a direct result of these shady gambling practices, Valve is earning money off with their % cut of all Steam Community transactions. So whether Valve is responsible for it or not, they're directly profiting off these practices.
Diablohead
Member
Upsetting that they got away with this.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
How can you access other user's steam inventories without access to the API? That sounds like at best a serious breach of data protection and at worst a lawsuit waiting to happen.
pretty done
Member
Thanks Valve.
Again, they aren't. No one goes sell their skins that they won from gambling on the Steammarket, they will go to third party sites like OP Skins to sell it for actual money.
All you need is for the person to have their profile public.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
Ah I see. Thanks for the explanation. I was under the impression that they were using the API to facilitate the trades. But it seems you can facilitate this exclusively using bots alone.
In which case, surely all Valve needs to do is search for Steam accounts whose trade history is made up exclusively of one-sided trades, and then use other qualifying information (e.g. # game hours playedi.e. bots won't be playing games) to identify pretty quickly these bot accounts used to facilitate these trades. Once you've identified them, you simply ban them and all is well as good in the world...
...surely they can do that right?
TheRedSnifit
Member
The trade is not done within the API.
The API only allows websites to verify that you have an account. It's intended to be used so a third party doesn't have to worry about storing login credentials themselves. The actual trades have nothing to do with it. Valve does ban bots for these gambling sites when they find them.
Almost every major player uses an API in the form of OpenID or some variation thereof. "Facebook Connect" is an example of a similar system. Google Sign-In is OpenID Connect, aka, OAuth2, which is a similar, but more complex and robust system. CSGO Lotto could have used any of these services and gotten the exact same functionality. Maybe we should shut down Twitter every time someone uses their API for shady reasons? Do you think Facebook polices the thousands of sites and apps that use theirs?
OpenID systems are just big players throwing smaller sites a bone by removing the hassle of registration with every website/service in the entire universe by letting people use one that they already have.