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Valve shutting down gambling sites, sending notes to stop using Open API.
- Thread starter SteveO409
- Start date
Valve seems to know what's up so I expect the dumping to be quick and fast, dunno through third party sellers or through flooding the steam market and laundering gabebucks on g2a or the like
SodiumBenzoate
Member
"You can trust Valve to do the right thing right after everyone gets pissed off" rings true again.
How has this dropped to page 4? It's one of the biggest news stories of the day.
How has this dropped to page 4? It's one of the biggest news stories of the day.
LUFTRAUSER
Banned
I'm guessing not many people gamble in CS:GO so there really isn't much for most people to talk about. This is Valve we're talking about after all. They barely ever communicate with us to begin with so it isn't like they are going to be putting out any additional information. There was a problem and (finally, only under the threat of massive lawsuits) they have fixed it.
CountAntonius
Member
First to fall.
You can either have an Open API or not. There is no in between. Valve can and should work on manually (and possibly automatically) detecting the people who abuse this stuff as well, but ultimately the API remaining open is a reasonable choice. The big issue with all of this is the not so secret part of the gambling. Valve had to know this was going on. There is zero excuse for that.
Spyder_Monkey
Banned
7DollarHagane
Banned
I hope that csgo lounge is still able to keep going. They were mostly on the up and up from what I could tell and it made pro games more fun to watch.
Shame that so many shitty people with lottery sites had to ruin it.
I wonder what effect this will have on the viewership of csgo events in the future..
Shame that so many shitty people with lottery sites had to ruin it.
I wonder what effect this will have on the viewership of csgo events in the future..
littleworm
Member
phantomlord is done for ! finally
Dreams-Visions
Member
unknownstranger
Member
Is there anything legally preventing Valve from letting players cash out their Steam money? Blizzard did it with Diablo 3's Real Money Auction House where you could cash out but Blizzard kept around 30% of it. I know they came under fire with it but I thought that had more to do with the loot system than anything else.
Yeah. If you could convert steambux to dollars 1:1, then steambux becomes fiat currency and possibly subject to tax.
Valve doesn't want their players to have to pay income tax on their hats and, frankly, I wouldn't want to either! This is the real reason they're responding to the negative PR, in my opinion. The lawsuit itself was weak, and didn't really threaten them at all. The gambling sites operated against their TOS so their hands were legally, even if not morally, clean.
What they really want to avoid is legal oversight on how they run and experiment with the Steam marketplace, something that might happen if some court, god forbid, finds hats subject to property law.
TheRedSnifit
Member
If Valve provided a way of converting skins to money (skins -> Market -> $$$), crates would legally be considered gambling for cash. Which is illegal in most states.
I never played Diablo 3, but I assume you earn currency viasomething that could be considered skill-based.
Jacethemindtaker
Neo Member
Well, we still have Rob and the Hat Barons right?
unknownstranger
Member
I meant do what Blizzard did with a 30% tax if people wanted to cash out. I know doing a 1:1 transaction is completely stupid.
I have no idea how CS:GO and Dota 2 do things but getting something that people would pay a lot for was pure luck in Diablo 3. Blizzard also kept $1 on every transaction on auctions as well (if they sold).
This is awesome news. Stopping the primary point of spread for those sites is important. I doubt YouTube will do anything though
LordRaptor
Member
You're missing the legal definition of 'skill based' as it relates to prizes / contests / gambling - those "punch the monkey and win!" flash ads that used to exist are 'skill based'. for the purpose of the definition of 'skill based' it basically just means 'interactive'.
Diablo3 is definitely skill based according to the rules, but CS:GO / DOTA2 / TF2 crates are not, they're just dropped at regular intervals if you're online.
TheRedSnifit
Member
Didn't know about that, huh. That is pretty sketchy.
It's a pretty big problem with
It is very obviously store credit. It would be subject to whatever regulations store credit is subject too (which I have some problems with in general but that's not really relevant).
Their statement is carefully worded to include the words "business relationships" and "revenue" from/with the sites. Still leaves the door way, way open for collaboration without the formal exchange of money. Valve still profited off of all of this. If what was said about them having people at their office support these websites via Skype is true, they're still going to have to settle up big time.
Yeah, I should have clarified that I wrote what they want us to hear. If you read between the lines, it does sound like what you said.
zombieshavebrains
I have not used cocaine
GAF is pretty liberal. Unfortunately some people take that too far in thinking if anyone/anything is doing something they don't "feel" is right based on not having all of the facts, they're automatically complete dirtbags and deserve the harshest punishment possible.
They'd rather have a corporation be responsible for user's behavior instead of the user's. But Valve should also still be sued and bankrupted because they're skeezy dirtbags who exploit children.
You just have to learn to deal with it somehow.
TheRedSnifit
Member
GAF is pretty liberal. Unfortunately some people take that too far in thinking if anyone/anything is doing something they don't "feel" is right based on not having all of the facts, they're automatically complete dirtbags and deserve the harshest punishment possible.
They'd rather have a corporation be responsible for user's behavior instead of the user's. But Valve should also still be sued and bankrupted because they're skeezy dirtbags who exploit children.
You just have to learn to deal with it somehow.
There's nothing wrong with saying corporations should take responsibility for what they do.
What starts to get sketchy is when you start to argue that corporations should take responsibility for the actions of other corporations, when it's clearly the government's job to regulate them.
I honestly do not see the problem with card idling.
You essentially paid the price for the game, whatever that is, and the cards come with it. They just set an arbitrary amount of time before they "unlock" for you.
There's no difference between opening the game and sitting on the main menu, or just telling a program to report the program is open to Steam. You've already really "paid" for the cards, so you're not really getting anything you don't deserve. At most it'll just fuck up your "How long you played" stats since you didn't really "play" those games, but if you don't personally care about those metrics.
unknownstranger
Member
Like I said I've never played those games or any games with lootcrates (I don't care much for shooters and I don't really play competitive multiplayer in anything).
The minimum you could put things up for was $1.20. If it sold for that price then you'd get $0.20. I sold one item for $60 and then a bunch of other smaller ones for anywhere between $1.20-$5.00. I ended up paying for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria and Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm (they removed the RMAH soon after) with it. Plus I didn't pay for Diablo 3 since I was subscribed to WoW, so yeah I did well with it.
LUFTRAUSER
Banned
Before the Arms Deal update the game was apparently all but dead so... maybe? Or perhaps it will stay popular on the strength of its amazing community and its compelling, enjoyable gameplay.
It's doomed.
nephilimdj
Member
Reflecting on this, seems weird they just address the API issue, atleast could of put a link to a anti-gambling addicting support website or something. I mean this drama started with how youtubers were exploiting people
poppedcollar69
Member
I was gonna say that valve is just shutting down 3rd party gambling sites so they can start their own, in order to milk that sweet sweet not-making-actual-games cash, but then another post itt reminded me that, yeah, they already do that with crates
Valve doesn't give a shit about people gambling. They give a shit about being potentially associated legally to something that might be breaking the law. It's about liability.
Come on.. people were addicted to CS long before anything to do with this.
I still don't see how Valve making their items easy to access and trade automatically makes them bad guys. They do the same with other games and it's no big deal... some peeps just took advantage of it here because it's a popular game.
What? Counter-Strike has been around for ages, since the 1.6 days. It's not like the game suddenly became popular because of the skins.
LordRaptor
Member
There's honestly some Reefer Madness level hysteria going on in some of these threads about gambling.
Pretty sure there was a huge spike in CS GO since introduction in of skins and its remained A LOT more popular than it was.
I'm talking about the gambling aspect, obviously. I played and watched 1.6 myself to know how popular it was.
Not even remotely. Will continue to pump out the same numbers or higher.