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Valve Denounces Third-Party Gambling Sites, But Won't Block Them (arstechnica.com)
Valve is finally addressing the last week's Counter-Strike gambling scandal. The game maker and Steam operator says that it does not directly profit from these gambling sites' actions. In a statement, Valve's Erik Johnson said the following: We have no business relationships with any of these sites. We have never received any revenue from them. And Steam does not have a system for turning in-game items into real world currency. Johnson added that gambling sites work by creating and maintaining their own Steam accounts, which are used to conduct virtual item trading. He adds:Using the OpenID API and making the same web calls as Steam users to run a gambling business is not allowed by our API nor our user agreements.Steam's user agreement includes a passage that forbids "exploiting the Content and Services or any of its parts for any commercial purpose, except as expressly permitted elsewhere in this Agreement." The company won't block these websites, but says it will begin cracking down on them -- by sending them cease and desist notices.
Valve:
We are going to start sending notices to these sites requesting they cease operations through Steam, and further pursue the matter as necessary.
The statement by Erik Johnson ends with the following:
"Using the OpenID API and making the same web calls as Steam users to run a gambling business is not allowed by our API nor our user agreements. We are going to start sending notices to these sites requesting they cease operations through Steam, and further pursue the matter as necessary."
It might just be too hard/risky/boring for them to actually actively block these users so sending them a letter asking them to stop is probably a fair starting point.
It may well have been against the ToS but if they did nothing to revoke access after being told of it, they're still likely in a world of financial hurt. Their position isn't helped once it becomes clear that these items, while only cosmetic, do have a rarity to them that the gambling sites used.
I suspect that age verification is going to become a thing that Valve has to come up with and enforce if they plan on making out of the two current lawsuits without having state law enforcement crawling around looking at things.
What about the coming IRS smack down?
Maybe they can pull an Al Capone like thing hear.
Everyone wants a piece of the action. That's what this is all about.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Lots of people like to place the odd bet. That's not the problem. The problem with gambling are the scams, and this is nothing unique to online activites.
Consider sports - let's take the specific example of tennis. The players at the very top can live off of their winnings and their sponsors. Then comes a long list of hundreds of players who are up-and-coming, or down-and-going, or just wannabes. They need to travel to tournaments, they need to pay a coach, they need good equipment, and train too much to work a normal job. This is where the betting - and the scams - happen. A match comes up between two no-name players. Some goon comes up to the one with the better ranking and says: "I'll pay you $10k to make sure you lose the second set". Then the betting house hypes the game, and start taking bets. After the better player wins the first set, the odds for the second player get long. The betting house pushes betting on the next set - knowing that the lower-ranked player is going to win, this is where they rake in the dough.
This kind of stuff is almost impossible to detect, much less prove. It's no different in the realm of electronic games and e-sports: there are gambling sites that specifically focus on this area..
Should one even try to squash this? There's something wrong with writing unenforceable laws, after all. Maybe we just just let suckers lose their money.
If we do want to try to keep gambling sites honest, we need some way to detect cheating and scams. But how?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Valve couldn't shut off the API accounts immediately because then all of the users would lose their stuff and Valve would be the bad guy.
Instead Valve says they are going to crack down causing a 'bank run' of users withdrawing their stuff from the gambling sites. Some users will get their stuff back, others won't as website owners cut and run. Valve won't take as much of the blame as users will be upset at the gambling sites who never returned their items.
Valve can then actually block the APIs a month from now and get rid of them for good.
If Civilization is any indicator, they will be going to war in about 5 turns.
So does steam view these site as gambling or not?
.
I do not use it and do not gamble but why piss in some users cheerios if they want to pursue that option and it keeps them using Valve. It is authoritarian anti-liberty BS that drives people away from their hobbies such as this.
About as effective as litigating for years to block The Pirate Bay only for them to buy another domain.
In some of the localities they operate gambling is not allowed. Instead of risking having their service blocked in those places which will cost them money, they shut down the gambling which makes them no money.
This has nothing to do with them being authoritarian or anti-liberty. That's just your bias coloring the facts. Stop it.
If it is a 3rd party operating a gambling site where it is illegal then they would get shut down and not valve. Like I said I do not use it or gamble, so no bias here.
Why the Hell should they have a say how people spend their money?