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Valve has officially ended CS:GO gambling sites

D

darthsontin

Member
Only took them actually getting sued for them to conveniently remember that it's been against their TOS the whole time, despite years of looking the other way.
 
V

VariantX

Member
What gets me is the letter clearly states that they were in clear violation of the SSA, and they were allowed to operate as long as they did. There's no way in hell Valve wasn't aware of it. This is less punishing people for violation of their terms and services and more about covering their ass.
 
H

HowZatOZ

Banned
Regginator said:
I know. That's the joke. By that I was implying they're enabled this gambling crap, and to effectively destroy it you'll need to destroy the root of the evil, like the CSGO skins implementations on the Market. You can't go around eliminating these gambling sites and then let your own racket roam free.
Click to expand...
But the market isn't a racket...
 
H

Hyun Sai

Member
They still are complete scumbags for allowing this and are just trying to cover their ass from the heat. Valve went as low as a game company can get in my eyes when I heard what was going on with those sites. I still feel nauseous.
 
H

hobozero

Member
Pretty sure Martin Scorsese warned us about this:

"You can spot these assholes by watching the way they bet. Like this guy... If he wasn't so fuckin' greedy, he'd have been tougher to spot. But in the end, they're all greedy."

FPtUDAc.jpg
 
7

7DollarHagane

Banned
Really interested to see what this does to csgo and esports events around it, and especially value of skins. I've sold all mine months back at least.

Shame that some shitty people had to ruin it. Csgo lounge was a cool site and a fun way to bet on matches.

I won't ever defend the lotto sites but csgo lounge had a good thing going. Maybe they will shift to a real money betting site and go legit. I still like the idea of betting on matches as an adult.
 
A

Archie

Second-rate Anihawk
7DollarHagane said:
Really interested to see what this does to csgo and esports events around it, and especially value of skins. I've sold all mine months back at least.

Shame that some shitty people had to ruin it. Csgo lounge was a cool site and a fun way to bet on matches.

I won't ever defend the lotto sites but csgo lounge had a good thing going. Maybe they will shift to a real money betting site and go legit. I still like the idea of betting on matches as an adult.
Click to expand...

Viewership will massively decline and sponsors will pull out. The bubble is bursting.
 
T

The 18th Letter

Banned
Stiler said:
Kinda weird they only do this once the gambling sites start getting in the news and not when they were fully aware what was going on a long time ago.
Click to expand...

What makes it even better was that they whitelisted sites like CSGOLounge previously.

but most people wouldn't know that so they'll act like Valve is doing some great service and it's free publicity for Valve. Everyone can pretend like Valve cares instead of trying to cover their asses

Shit they've known these sites have existed. They even banned players who won skins off of throwing a match on CSGOLounge, and they worked with the CSGOLounge guys to confirm it. Why was commercial use accounts not against the rules back then?
 
Q

Quadraphonic

Member
The 18th Letter said:
What makes it even better was that they whitelisted sites like CSGOLounge previously.

but most people wouldn't know that so they'll act like Valve is doing some great service and it's free publicity for Valve. Everyone can pretend like Valve cares instead of trying to cover their asses

Shit they've known these sites have existed. They even banned players who won skins off of throwing a match on CSGOLounge, and they worked with the CSGOLounge guys to confirm it. Why was commercial use accounts not against the rules back then?
Click to expand...

Because they hadn't been sued yet.
 
N

Nzyme32

Member
Regginator said:
I know. That's the joke. By that I was implying they're enabled this gambling crap, and to effectively destroy it you'll need to destroy the root of the evil, like the CSGO skins implementations on the Market. You can't go around eliminating these gambling sites and then let your own racket roam free.
Click to expand...

The market is in no way a racket. It's great that it exists but it certainly needs policing, and more so at its scale it needs regulation from a party that isn't Valve. Outside of that, it is a great thing to have, and there is a lot of great value for players having tradeable and transferable items.
 
I

inky

Member
Took them fucking long enough.

Too bad Gaming overall (game design and marketing, etc) is still well on its path to implement every terrible practice from the casino industry tho.
 
Y

Yukinari

Member
Im glad they clarified its just betting sites getting the boot and not sites where you simply pay for items you want. Kind of surprised Valve havent gone after those sites cause theyre cutting into game/steam market profit.
 
K

kanuuna

Member
Wow, I can't say I expected this to hit - not this soon at least.
I do wonder if Valve will try to offer something similar with their own resources. Better ways to find trades, at the very least.

Vigilant Walrus said:
I wonder if this is the last we have seen of gambling in video games.
Click to expand...

Seems to me this concerns just items. I don't see how they can regulate people gambling money on 'legit' gambling sites. You can bet on certain tournaments using the national betting agency (Veikkaus) here in Finland, for example - I don't see that changing just yet.
 
T

The 18th Letter

Banned
kanuuna said:
Wow, I can't say I expected this to hit - not this soon at least.
I do wonder if Valve will try to offer something similar with their own resources. Better ways to find trades, at the very least.
Click to expand...

Valve doesn't need to do additional gambling or betting, they already have their own which benefits them greatly.

Spend $2.49 and get a $0.10 item.
 
M

Mechazawa

Member
Regginator said:
I know. That's the joke. By that I was implying they're enabled this gambling crap, and to effectively destroy it you'll need to destroy the root of the evil, like the CSGO skins implementations on the Market. You can't go around eliminating these gambling sites and then let your own racket roam free.
Click to expand...

..except you're still calling the market a "racket" which doesn't invalidate the shit people are giving you.
 
R

rrs

Member
pompidu said:
Ooooo nowwwwww they violate the agreement. What was happening for the past 2 year$$$$$$ ??
Click to expand...
counting all that sweet cash Never found those really underground gambling websites
xir said:
Officially? We have a leaked letter that might not be real. Has Valve officially stated anything?
Click to expand...
more or less "this is a bad thing, we are stopping bad thing, we are totally saints here"
 
X

xir

Likely to be eaten by a grue
Officially? We have a leaked letter that might not be real. Has Valve officially stated anything?
 
D

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
It's odd to see this letter making the rounds, but having larger and bigger names attached to the article's/posts about it each time. This isn't the end of all CS:Go gambling, it's Valve telling a single organization to stop

Now, these guys are basically the lion's Share of Dota 2 gambling though. Dota2Lounge is THE place for betting on Dota 2 matches in the Western World (It's a sports betting site, betting on the final outcome of matches, rather than a lot of the CS:Go site that are just playing roulette). What surprises me is how many damn CS:Go gambling sites the guy owns, since it actually started out as just Dota2Lounge.
 
autoduelist

autoduelist

Member
Vigilant Walrus said:
I wonder if this is the last we have seen of gambling in video games.
Click to expand...

People would gamble on who can grow their hair faster, if that's all there was to gamble on. The idea that this would end gambling in gaming is absurd.... nothing can do that, ever. Heck, in college we used to bet quarters on hockey and/or soul caliber/etc.
 
Woo-Fu

Woo-Fu

Banned
The 18th Letter said:
not unfortunate, they allowed it to happen while reaping the benefits thinking there would never be consequences.
Click to expand...

Which side of your family did you get the long-distance mind-reading ability from?

For people wondering if the letter is real and if Valve said anything in the past, where were you last week? They posted about it and said they'd be sending out cease and desist letters as their first step. That doesn't mean this particular letter is real but it does mean that there most likely are/will be real c&d letters going out.
 
B

Breads

Banned
CountAntonius said:
The lounge sites where you bet on games didn't seem very sleazy and helped smaller tournaments get views they would never get otherwise. It's a shame they had to be dragged down by those crooked gambling sites.
Click to expand...

Yeah I never got the impression that Dota 2 Lounge was a shady million dollar/ fraud site but then again I didn't even know of the CS:GO/ youtube shenanigans until now.
 
autoduelist

autoduelist

Member
CountAntonius said:
Real money sites will still gamble on e-sports. This will just stop people from using in game items to gamble.
Click to expand...

It'll make it harder, but not impossible. They won't be able to automate it and such, but as long as you can buy/sell/trade them on a market then someone could work out a way to use holding accounts to do it -- just like with money gambling sites, you give your money to the site, and then gamble with 'credit'... it could be done exactly the same way -- give your skins to a site, earn market value in credit, cash out when you're done with skins. It certainly slows the process down though, at least, at first.

EDIT -- imo this is part of why Steam never really bothered to crack down on it until they were pressured to. Every economy will have grey and black markets, and it would cost a fortune to constantly monitor and police virtual economies to the degree necessary to stop all issues, and honestly, even if they did spend the resources to do so then they still wouldn't catch everything any more than governments can stop grey/black markets.
 
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