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Valve Threatens Counter Strike Gambling Sites (hngn.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes a report from HNGN: Game maker Valve is threatening to shut down sites dedicated to gambling with add-ons to its popular Counter Strike game. On Thursday the company sent cease and desist letters to 23 sites, demanding that gambling operations be stopped, and that the sites had 10 days to comply. The row revolves around the software overlays that change the appearance of the characters people play in Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO) and the weapons and other virtual items. Last week the company reiterated that its user agreements ban external sites from asking users to connect their Steam accounts in order to trade items for real money. The company added that it would use "all available remedies" against sites that did not stop players using virtual goods to gamble.
Bloomberg reports that in June a class action lawsuit was filed against Valve "for its role in the multibillion-dollar gambling economy that has fueled the game's popularity" -- by a man who had been gambling on the site since 2014. This was followed in July by a second class action lawsuit by a mother on behalf of her son, reports ESPN. "The case alleges that the Valve knowingly allows and profits from teenagers participating in illegal, unregulated and underage gambling of in-game cosmetic weapon skins through third-party sites."
Bloomberg reports that in June a class action lawsuit was filed against Valve "for its role in the multibillion-dollar gambling economy that has fueled the game's popularity" -- by a man who had been gambling on the site since 2014. This was followed in July by a second class action lawsuit by a mother on behalf of her son, reports ESPN. "The case alleges that the Valve knowingly allows and profits from teenagers participating in illegal, unregulated and underage gambling of in-game cosmetic weapon skins through third-party sites."
Oh it's fine for children to use real money to buy virtual goods, but we must not allow them to gamble with those goods or sell them for real money! Thank you GabeN for thinking of the children!
Cartman spends hours gambling on Counter Strike, then after getting bored with the game, sues Valve for causing him emotional trauma and using his "gambling weakness", recovering all the money he lost and getting a chair at the table to use Valve to threaten and extort money from gambling sites.
Perfect.
Might as well check this box off on the "obvious points to cover" list:
* Without considering whether or not Valve is reasonably at fault, I'm going to go ahead and say that the man who filed the first suit indicated above wasn't winning. Gee whiz, Mom! I didn't know that actions have consequences, and that sometimes, you lose! Again, regardless of whether Valve should be on the hook or not, I doubt he'd have filed suit if he was a better bettor.
* For the second lawsuit, where the supposed victim is/was a minor, same question: Was he winning? I imagine that to be slightly less a factor, as his parent(s) might be aware that winning streaks can end in tears. However, WHERE WAS HE GETTING THE MONEY? How was he spending it online? Not so hard as it once was, but perhaps they figure that their perfect little angel would never have engaged in such mischief if hadn't corrupted hi pure, innocent heart.
Sometimes this stuff gets under my skin. I understand that demonstrating you've been harmed by another party is an important step to convincing the courts to intercede (and/or convince another party to make changes BEFORE it goes to court), but that doesn't mean it can't piss me off.
They wouldn't be able to make fucktons of money off of cosmetics in TF2 and shitty mspaint reskins in CS:GO if everyone could just hop on FPSBanana and download whatever amazing custom model they wanted.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
They made a decision a while ago to whitelist most of the gambling sites on the web -- they could have added a captcha or some confirmation step to all the bots that collected skins and acted as the brokers in the game, but instead they not only let them, they helped them do so. Normal users have to confirm every trade so otherwise the gambling sites would not be able to function.
And to be honest, given their behavior the past few years I have little sympathy for Valve at all... if they get burned for this then I'm going to chuckle, because the reality is that mostly young kids are lured to gamble, and it is from those that Valve makes the most money. They go gamble, lose skins, then buy more keys and try to go again. It's a vicious cycle that Valve loved -- because they were the beneficiary. Now that time has to come to a close and we'll see how the court case ends up.
through rng loot tables (for loot that may trade for cash shop currency or equiv), rng loot boxes (including ones sold in cash shop), equipment enhancement and enchantment rng (with cash shop items to enhance odds of success), 'jackpot' rng events with keys/crates/etc sold in cash shop, etc, etc, etc... and all of this rng is normally without odds of 'winning' published (although sometimes datamined, in violation of eula of course).
Only Americans can sue each other over games.
"illegal, unregulated and underage gambling of in-game cosmetic weapon skins"
If I fell "victim" to something like that, I'd probably cower in shame and not make it known to the world by suing someone.
Notice how Valve's TRADEMARK 'CS:GO' appears in the names of the URLs for these gambling sites? Valve provided the seed money to apparently 'independent' 'owners' to set up the sites, just like the Mob operated casinos in Las Vegas in the bad old days.
Valve 'charged' the sites massive 'commissions' for use of the trademark, and access to the DRM API that verified the legitimacy of the virtual items. Valve's owner set himself the task of becoming the world's biggest 'Fagin' style crime boss targeting children. Now a little bird has whispered in his ear about his potential fate at the hands of US authorities, so he is deperately truing to tear down the whole enterprise.
The CS:GO skins doesn't let you change the look of your character (except for the weapon) and no other items than the weapon. CS:GO skins are weapons (with stickers) only.
Team Fortress 2 mean-while let you change other parts of your character beyond weapons.
The CS:GO skins doesn't let you change the look of your character (except for the weapon) and no other items than the weapon. CS:GO skins are weapons (with stickers) only.
Team Fortress 2 mean-while let you change other parts of your character beyond weapons.
Also Team Fortress 2 alternative weapons / skins / items may actually change how the weapon work. In CS:GO it's all just cosmetic and doesn't influence game-play at all.
You mean like the penis hat?
The money never makes it to the schools. It becomes tax cuts for the wealthy when funding levels are kept more or less the same. John Oliver has a funny and lengthy video on how the scam works.
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What? You've completely missed the point.
Everyone since the dawn of time has been able to go to websites like FPSBanana (which still loads slow because apparently it's 2004 or something) and download and install every custom skin/model/voice/particle effect they could possibly want. They can still do this. Thousands of people do. The problem is that such modifications are entirely client side, and thus can only ever be for personal satisfaction.
The point of microtransaction items like "cosmetics in TF2 and shitty mspaint reskins in CS:GO" is for other people to see your fancy hat/weapon. It's to show it off to people other than yourself. Some of it is conspicuous consumption to be sure, but a lot of people like customizing their digital avatars for everyone else to see. That appeal will never disappear. For good or for ill, microtransactions are the lifeblood of many games that millions of people play literally every day. The peak today for DOTA 2 was nearly a million players. League of Legends claims tens of millions of unique players monthly.
Of course valve shutting down these gambling sites is about money. It's also about gambling, but in reality gambling is about money anyways so... yeah. It's just not about mods like you erroneously seem to think it is.
You should turn signatures off.
It's clientside and Valve STILL killed it with forced clientside consistency.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
And for competitive play at least, that makes sense. IMO default models should be enforced for competitive play.
There are plenty of things you can do that are exploitative with custom skins (hunter orange 3rd person skins, invisible first person skins, long time ago you could even change the flashbang .bmp so it was clear instead of white and make smoke invisible as well).
Most people just want badass guns, and its cool that others can see your badass guns but if you want to ensure there is no cheating you either have to force default models or restrict them to known custom models.