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Valve Faces Lawsuit Over Video Game Gambling (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Bloomberg: Valve's Counterstrike: Global Offensive game is being sued for its role in the multibillion-dollar gambling economy that has fueled the game's popularity. Michael John McLeod filed a lawsuit Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Connecticut alleging that Valve violated gambling laws and engaged in racketeering with a handful of off-shore gambling companies. McLeod, who has been gambling on CS:GO since 2014, is asking for class-action status for the suit. The suit was first reported by Polygon and doesn't give a specific request for damages, nor does it say how much money he lost by betting on the site. According to Bloomberg: "Valve provided for money, technical support, and advice to such websites as CSGO Lounge and Diamonds, which take bets, and OPSkins, which runs a market where virtual goods are traded and can be redeemed for cash." Valve has yet to respond to the suit.
Isn't this basically the same as suing winter because people gamble on hockey
News at 11.
News at 11.
No kidding! LOL
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
SELL SELL SELL
Once again someone is petitioning the government to protect them from themselves. Listen, dumbass. You're the one who made the bets, if you won I doubt you would be filing a suit. But since you're a loser, and will always be a loser, I guess it's time for you to ask the nanny state to go after that evil company that hosted a game where your in-game experience mirrored your real life - you being really overconfident but lacking any skills to back up your hubris.
Enigma
Just arrest the man who confessed to illegal gambling. This may have been his worst gamble yet.
The 3 top Twitch streamers have quit streaming the game. Twitch has 3 to 4 Esport companies CSGO tournaments a week. Twitch also has its own weekly CSGO turny which the finalist play on TBS every weekend. CSGO is over exposed and will die soon just like Starcraft before it. If you have skins sell out now at the top of the market. No more skin gambling and it is all over.
http://www.e-league.com/news/2...
And just like trading derivatives on a financial exchange. Whether it's deemed illegal totally depends on the size of their respective lobby.
I've been following CS:GO pretty closely for a few years and as far as I know, Valve has never mentioned or condoned gambling, or ever mentioned any gambling site in any way. This is like suing a car company because they sold you a car that you later lost betting pink slips in a street race.
That being said, Valve obviously benefits hugely from their skin market, and a huge part of that is due to gambling. Valve's stance with CS:GO has been to remain quiet on a lot of issues and let the community essentially run itself, which may or may not be the best move in some instances. There's CS:GO streamers now that get paid big money just to simply bet on a gambling site while they stream, using skins they are given by the site. There's tons of money in it now. Valve obviously doesn't provide any actual platforms for actual gambling, just the currency, but I do think they need to be more vocal about things going on within their scene, especially gambling.
how Valve are bringing in hundreds of millions of Dollars (yes, really) a year on CS:GO, but won't spend jack shit on developers to fix the poor technical quality and rampant cheating in the game.
They are even so cheap they won't spend enough money on finding cheaters that they out-source it, at no expense, to the players themselves in a program called "Overwatch", where the players are responsible for finding and reporting the cheaters. Do you hate cheaters? Then you have to put in the time and effort weeding them out, because Valve won't spend money on doing it themselves.
There is a _huge_ difference between real gambling and financial exchanges. Financial exchanges are heavily regulated with a ton of rules to protect investors. It's assumed that the person selling stock is doing so in good faith and they would go to prison if they didn't. Yes, I'm well aware these rules are not well enforced, but that doesn't make them magically go away. A little political will would solve the problems in the financial exchange system.
As for gambling, it's well known that the "house" has much, much better odds. There is some very basic regulation in place to remove addicts and the mentally ill, but for everyone else it's understood that it's a very, very expensive game. In otherwords, you're comparing an entertainment product to an investment one. Yes, our weak regulatory system sometimes allows the lines to blur. But the solution is to enforce the laws (or make new ones to close loop holes), not throw up your hands and give up.
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Don't forget all of the $400 items on the Steam CS:GO Marketplace. You know, the ones that normally sell for $0.83, but then suddenly spike momentarily to the maximum of $400 for an item?
Either there are some incredibly stupid millionaires out there, or, more likely, this is one step in any number of money-laundering schemes.
Tell me how I am wrong here.
I don't know if this is applicable but valve does take a 10% cut on any item sold through their store to other users. But they don't take a cut from third-party trades.
Yeah, and to be frank I've been pretty surprised to see where DOTA is going lately. They have an active "betting" system where you can bet on games, which is heavily advertised with casino-esque characters. Yes, betting doesn't directly involve money, but the tradeable items and background mechanics with such *do*.
I'm surprised nobody at Valve went "erm, are we sure this is legal"
(or maybe they did and don't give a f***)
Serious question for the Americans here:
Why is gambling illegal?
It seems so very odd to me as to why this is so...