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Large Youtubers Hide Ownership of CSGO Lottery Site

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T

TheYanger

Member
TheRedSnifit said:
I'm sure most people here are concerned about artificially creating rare items, which are then used in gambling, which then encourage people to spend more money to recover their lost collateral.

Pretty sure you're the only one who cares about the distinction, actually.
Click to expand...

You're very wrong then.

There is a big distinction between creating a randomized product, which obviously can always have a secondary market (by its very nature you can buy a product and resell it), and creating a randomized product, controlling the only market place it can be traded in, designing tools that allow people to gamble easily using chips that you provide to them (steam wallet bucks/keys/skins/whatever you spent money on in their store for to gamble with), getting a cut for every one of those transactions that use 'fake money' that is very much 1:1 with real money that you have taken from them, knowing that this is happening, and not giving a shit and continuing to support it happening.

Valve has their hand in every single step except for the part where you use a third party website to cash out of their system (Which, again, they don't care about youdoing because they're keeping the money, you cashing out is actually just someone else buying into the ecosystem). Wizards of the coast has their hand in: You buy a pack of cards.

That's a big difference.

EDIT: To further elaborate: Predatory practices actively harm the company in the long run when they're only vaguely earning more money by making stuff sort of rare. Wizards starts making it so you have basically no possibility of pulling a good item from a pack like CS:Go boxes and people stop buying the game. There's obviously an inflection point there, the market will bear some amount of bullshit, but the gains on wizards end are relatively minor and it's not worth it for them to send 5% of their playerbase away to sell 5% more packs. This would ALSO be true for valve, except for the fact that they also gain their percentage when people are selling a skin for 4000 dollars (Ye,s they don't sell it for 4000 directly, they sell it for 4000 dollars worth of keys, which valve sells to the economy and also gets a % cut of from marketplace sales involving those). Suddenly making 5% of the playerbase quit rather than buy more keys is a lot more attractive when you're earning 25% more because you made a skin more rare. In fact, due to the gambling culture and support systems that surround the boxes, the actual usefulness of the item ceases to have any meaning, they're very literally poker chips at this point, their value can be entirely tied to their rarity and it's not even likely to push the people invested in that ecosystem away, becuase they accept it as gambling and WANT the item to be so rare that they can sell it for that much. The rarity actually becomes the draw.

With a magic card, wizards only benefits in the term immediately after the cards are printed (by increasing orders for that set and the immediately following sets), and the value at that time is almost entirely dependent purely on player created sensibilities of usefulness for a card, not arbitrary rarity functions of them. There are many mythic rares in magic that are worth dogshit because nobody cares about the rarity, they care about the play value.

sappyday said:
Is that the same thing? Those are just micro transactions.
Click to expand...

Not remotely the same thing, those aren't going away.
 
O

oti

Banned
boredandlazy said:
Why is that guy TMartin walking through his house whilst doing a video? It's hilarious.
Click to expand...

There are only two ways for "creators" to make YouTube videos:

1. Hold a camera in your hand and just walk, somewhere, anywhere, doesn't matter, never stand still
2. Talk over Call of Duty gameplay
 
SolidSnakeUS

SolidSnakeUS

Member
K.Jack said:
The IRS and DoJ are going to fucking wash these guys. They are fucked.

They were dumb enough too register the site in their names, through domestic based legal channels. Lol GG boys.
Click to expand...

StaticJam said:
Yep he knows he's fucked
Click to expand...

This fucker is done. I really, really do hope they come down hard and fast on these ass buckets. IRS one is interesting, because I kind of wonder if they have some discrepancies in their taxes because of this. Isn't this basically like what Pete Rose did (in a way)?
 
B

BowieZ

Banned
element said:
This isn't the first time that Tom Cassell (ProSyndicate) has been accused of promoting a product that he has a vested interest in.

Last year he and SeaNanners had a company called 3BlackDot that published a game called Dead Realm. Both promoted the game extensively on their channels without mentioning that they are employees of the company.
Click to expand...
Wow! That should have been included in the video in the OP!
 
D

DICKS AHOY

Banned
... Is ProSyndicate the same guy who on a stream with fucking Keemstar of all people teased and threatened an online animator ProSyndicate welped out of paying?

[h3] continues to delight, but man do a ton of big gaming youtubers seem to be completely horrible human beings.
 
A

Acorn

Member
DICKS AHOY said:
... Is ProSyndicate the same guy who on a stream with fucking Keemstar of all people teased and threatened an online animator ProSyndicate welped out of paying?

[h3] continues to delight, but man do a ton of big gaming youtubers seem to be completely horrible human beings.
Click to expand...
Yep.
 
E

Einchy

semen stains the mountaintops
iQiwcaf.png
 
T

Triggerhappytel

Member
In the first instance their YouTube accounts should be permanently deleted, but obviously YouTube won't do that because it will affect their bottom line as well.

Just finished watching the video. Great coverage by h3h3, and holy fuck at the bastards for doing this and being so underhand.
 
D

DICKS AHOY

Banned
Acorn said:
Yep.
Click to expand...
Christ, what a cunt.

Mozendo said:
What? He says so in the video he didn't do the investigating why are people giving him all the credit? I like the guy but come on.
Click to expand...
Yeah, but I feel like Ethan spotlighting that article helps a lot of people more directly impacted by this realize, instead of just the original Bloomberg article which I imagine wouldn't have the same sort of people reading it.
 
B

bman94

Member
Random insight: How the fuck are these kids getting the money for this gambling? Are their parents really just giving them their credit cards? My parents didn't let me use their credit cards till I was 17, and even then that was just to order pizza.
 
A

Alienous

Member
bman94 said:
Random insight: How the fuck are these kids getting the money for this gambling? Are their parents really just giving them their credit cards? My parents didn't let me use their credit cards till I was 17, and even then that was just to order pizza.
Click to expand...

It's a new age.
 
SolidSnakeUS

SolidSnakeUS

Member
bman94 said:
Random insight: How the fuck are these kids getting the money for this gambling? Are their parents really just giving them their credit cards? My parents didn't let me use their credit cards till I was 17, and even then that was just to order pizza.
Click to expand...

These are the same kids and same generation that somehow spend thousands of dollars of their parents money on F2P cash shop items.
 
V

Vuze

Member
bman94 said:
Random insight: How the fuck are these kids getting the money for this gambling? Are their parents really just giving them their credit cards? My parents didn't let me use their credit cards till I was 17, and even then that was just to order pizza.
Click to expand...
Steam prepaid cards or other stuff like PaySafe are easily accessible to children I think. That's enough to get Steam credit which can be used to buy games on Steam including CSGO shit

h3h3 fighting the good fight as always, these guys are some sleazy fuckers. Didn't even know about them up to this point.
 
D

dimb

Bjergsen is the greatest midlane in the world
Still hoping Valve gets slammed on this eventually. Do they really just turn a blind eye to these websites using their API that account for extremely large transactions? How can they do no research or completely lack insight into who is controlling major portions of their market and engaging in illicit activity?
 
C

Cromwell

Banned
I have no idea how people here can defend Valve on this or be so intellectually dishonest as to claim it's not gambling. They're blatantly exploiting loopholes to get young people who don't know any better to blow insane amounts of money. It's disgusting and they deserve to get slammed for it.

And HUGE respect to H3H3 for helping expose it. Calling out that shitstain Leafy for making fun of disabled people, and now this. He really does fight the good fight.
 
E

EdmondD

Member
I always found the CS GO gambling scene and skin selling/trading fascinating. It's crazy how much some of that stuff is worth. Like people are saying this seems like a bubble waiting to burst.
 
O

oti

Banned
EdmondD said:
I always found the CS GO gambling scene and skin selling/trading fascinating. It's crazy how much some of that stuff is worth. Like people are saying this seems like a bubble waiting to burst.
Click to expand...

Actually IT'S WORTH NOTHING
 
V

VibratingDonkey

Member
So ProSyndicate is the same person as TheSyndicateProject, Tom Cassell. He has a history with doing this kind of shit.

No one cares. Almost 10 million subscribers, which I'm positive is significantly more than last time I checked.
And if what these two scumbags are doing is illegal, then no one seems to be bothering enforcing those laws. Yet, I hope.
 
B

Bluth54

Member
Brashnir said:
hopefully card packs and loot boxes get fucked right along with them.
Click to expand...

Baseball cards have existed and been legal for anyone to buy for over 100 years. Loot boxes aren't suddenly going to become illegal.

TheYanger said:
You're very wrong then.

There is a big distinction between creating a randomized product, which obviously can always have a secondary market (by its very nature you can buy a product and resell it), and creating a randomized product, controlling the only market place it can be traded in, designing tools that allow people to gamble easily using chips that you provide to them (steam wallet bucks/keys/skins/whatever you spent money on in their store for to gamble with), getting a cut for every one of those transactions that use 'fake money' that is very much 1:1 with real money that you have taken from them, knowing that this is happening, and not giving a shit and continuing to support it happening.

Valve has their hand in every single step except for the part where you use a third party website to cash out of their system (Which, again, they don't care about youdoing because they're keeping the money, you cashing out is actually just someone else buying into the ecosystem). Wizards of the coast has their hand in: You buy a pack of cards.

That's a big difference.
Click to expand...

You do realize the reason Valve has a bigger hand in how items are handled is because a virtual item doesn't exist in the same way a physical item does right? A digital product like a CSGO skin is always going to need to be linked to an account in some way while Wizards has no way to control what happens to a Magic card after you buy a pack. It's really not that hard to understand but you seem to keep thinking it's okay to directly compare the way Valve handles items to Wizards of the Coast, which isn't possible.
 
S

SirPinkyNose

Member
Bluth54 said:
Baseball cards have existed and been legal for anyone to buy for over 100 years. Loot boxes aren't suddenly going to become illegal.



You do realize the reason Valve has a bigger hand in how items are handled is because a virtual item doesn't exist in the same way a physical item does right? A digital product like a CSGO skin is always going to need to be linked to an account in some way while Wizards has no way to control what happens to a Magic card after you buy a pack. It's really not that hard to understand but you seem to keep thinking it's okay to directly compare the way Valve handles items to Wizards of the Coast, which isn't possible.
Click to expand...

Irrelevant.
Saying there are differences between digital and physical goods is like saying pirating is different from stealing.
The only thing is digital goods can be generated freely, but they are still bound to a real currency value.
 
S

SirPinkyNose

Member
TheYanger said:
You're very wrong then.

There is a big distinction between creating a randomized product, which obviously can always have a secondary market (by its very nature you can buy a product and resell it), and creating a randomized product, controlling the only market place it can be traded in, designing tools that allow people to gamble easily using chips that you provide to them (steam wallet bucks/keys/skins/whatever you spent money on in their store for to gamble with), getting a cut for every one of those transactions that use 'fake money' that is very much 1:1 with real money that you have taken from them, knowing that this is happening, and not giving a shit and continuing to support it happening.

Valve has their hand in every single step except for the part where you use a third party website to cash out of their system (Which, again, they don't care about youdoing because they're keeping the money, you cashing out is actually just someone else buying into the ecosystem). Wizards of the coast has their hand in: You buy a pack of cards.

That's a big difference.

EDIT: To further elaborate: Predatory practices actively harm the company in the long run when they're only vaguely earning more money by making stuff sort of rare. Wizards starts making it so you have basically no possibility of pulling a good item from a pack like CS:Go boxes and people stop buying the game. There's obviously an inflection point there, the market will bear some amount of bullshit, but the gains on wizards end are relatively minor and it's not worth it for them to send 5% of their playerbase away to sell 5% more packs. This would ALSO be true for valve, except for the fact that they also gain their percentage when people are selling a skin for 4000 dollars (Ye,s they don't sell it for 4000 directly, they sell it for 4000 dollars worth of keys, which valve sells to the economy and also gets a % cut of from marketplace sales involving those). Suddenly making 5% of the playerbase quit rather than buy more keys is a lot more attractive when you're earning 25% more because you made a skin more rare. In fact, due to the gambling culture and support systems that surround the boxes, the actual usefulness of the item ceases to have any meaning, they're very literally poker chips at this point, their value can be entirely tied to their rarity and it's not even likely to push the people invested in that ecosystem away, becuase they accept it as gambling and WANT the item to be so rare that they can sell it for that much. The rarity actually becomes the draw.

With a magic card, wizards only benefits in the term immediately after the cards are printed (by increasing orders for that set and the immediately following sets), and the value at that time is almost entirely dependent purely on player created sensibilities of usefulness for a card, not arbitrary rarity functions of them. There are many mythic rares in magic that are worth dogshit because nobody cares about the rarity, they care about the play value.



Not remotely the same thing, those aren't going away.
Click to expand...
The only different is Valve allows trading between their stuff while Blizzard doesn't. You can argue that items being tradable give them value, but saying Valve creating their system around making money from gambling is ridiculous.
A randomized item's value being based on their usefulness or not is irrelevant.
 
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