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."

Comments

Think of the children!

[LarryRiedel]

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!

Re:Think of the children!

[Antique Geekmeister]

> The problem is most of these sites are scam sites.

It's not just "these sites". Must gambling businesses are subtle or outright frauds. Even state lotteries take an enormous cut of the proceeds to fund the lottery bureaucracy itself, and not to help the schools as promised. The schools have their funding _replced_ by lottery winnings, not augmented. Even the "honest casinos" forbid card counters, whose behavior is technically legal but can actually allow players to win in the long run, not just the short run.

The same problems exist in the stock market. Additional information is forbidden to the ordinary player, but those with additional information can and inevitably do play illicitly. And at the scales available to the larger cheaters, it sucks the possibility of profit right out of the system for ordinary players. Take a very good look at how "high speed trading" works to get a sense of how much of stock market funds are sucked right out of the business by larger companies that can afford the "insider information' that a few microseconds of lead time on stock announcements provides.