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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.
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...
Isn't this basically the same as suing winter because people gamble on hockey
Not really. Valve has been on a lot of people's radar already for how some of its F2P marketplaces are operating. (Team Fortress, DOTA, and CS:GO in particular.)
http://wccftech.com/problem-un...
A 2nd part of the issue is that the major Casino's are unregulated, allow minors to play, (and accusations that its rigged by its owners etc.) So these sites are operating illegally; and quite probably corrupt.
There's a reasonable argument to bad that Valve has an obligation to prevent such sites from tying into its APIs etc.
There is also a reasonable argument to be made that Valve is endorsing it by allowing such things as this:
For example:
CS:GO Lounge
"A community based around the trading of CS:GO items "
"trading" lulz... right, "trading"... the discussion has a nice forum post pinned for everyone:
Bets: the all-in-one guide
http://steamcommunity.com/grou...
or this, a "hey kids, if you got scammed its on you" and then signs off with safe betting.
http://steamcommunity.com/grou...
This isn't on some 3rd party site. This is right on the steam forums, in a Steam Group. You can arguably suggest that its not steams problem to stop 3rd parties from betting... but this stuff is right on Steam. They probably do need to take some ownership of the issue if they are letting it make itself that comfortable right on steam itself.
And just like trading derivatives on a financial exchange. Whether it's deemed illegal totally depends on the size of their respective lobby.
This is wrong. Valve's VAC system isn't perfect, but it's disingenuous to say that they rely on the Overwatch system to police cheaters. Yesterday over 2000 people were banned by VAC, whereas Overwatch contributed less than 300 bans. source.
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.
It's not just accusations of rigging, it's outright proof. In late 2014/early 2015, there was a site called Sweetstakes (which is still up) that was meant for TF2 gambling. The way it worked is that people put their items into a "pool", with higher valued items giving people a higher chance to win. The problem was that there was one guy with tens of thousands of dollars in items and a bunch of stooges who would hand this guy their items so that he had a higher chance of winning (on the promise that he'd pay them back later, which he never did).
The scammer would find people gambling high-value items and then use his massive stockpile to essentially guarantee himself a win - giving himself and the site owners a huge amount of profit. The site owners KNEW what this guy was doing and did absolutely nothing to stop it because they get a 5% cut of each pool regardless of who wins. There were also allegations that they had rigged the system to ensure the scammer kept winning (and thus kept getting them more money).
It was only after a couple of trading sites found out about (and subsequently banned) the scammer after his stooges complained about not getting their cut that the Sweetstakes site admins did anything about it.
I'm sure Valve knew about Sweetstakes and about the scandal - but they were content to let it go and keep taking their cut from people making in-game purchases to fund their gambling habits.
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***)
In the early days: because the Bible says it's bad. These days: it's not outright illegal, but it's highly regulated, as it should be given the long history of scamming by gambling houses. Plus, many states want their state lottery to be the only legal betting: no one else gets to milk the gambling addicts.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.