Finally
And to take the matter to the press and gain publicity loud enough.
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Interesting framing of the situation that.
When Valve keeps their hands off, they're accused of profiteering or having their fingers in the pie.
When Valve makes a statement to say they're totally unrelated to those sites, and are taking measures to ensure their dealings don't use Steam's systems directly, then they're supposedly clawing for publicity?
People are naturally going to accuse them of being heavy-handed and oppressive too.
I keep getting a waft of "you're big, therefore I hate you".
Is there more to this that I'm not seeing?
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The problem is more a lack of communication. They just refuse to mention or address serious issues for years, then do something out of nowhere.
In their defence, whenever they do acknowledge something and promise to fix it, they NEVER meet their deadline and something that was expected to take days can end up arriving years later. So I guess they just entirely gave up on making any promises or announcements and now just release stuff when it's ready.
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CSGO community was talking about gambling for months if not years. Valve done nothing.
Valve faces serious legal problems. Valve says "we are innocent, look, we even block them".
If gambling would appear in May 2016, you'd be right. But it exist for few years, for some starting when Valve added "pay $2.50 for little chance to get knife" cases, then CSGOLounge (and Pro Players betting against themselves, Valve even given life-long bans to few players who were proved to fix their match), now all those CSGO Diamonds and CSGO Lotto.
You know, it looks that Valve will only make Support great again after we'd sue them. :)
Going court is probably also only way to ever see how Half Life series ends :P
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make Support great again
Unfortunately it never was. Nice try though :D
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thing is that valve keeps their hands off because the profit from things like gambling (it drives the market, microtransactions etc), but when they get busted, suddenly they PRETEND like they care, but only because they basically got caught out and want to pretend like they are innocent. THATS the problem...
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Unless Valve were found to be actually collaborating with the gambling sites, then they kind of are actually innocent.
You can argue they didn't do enough to investigate accounts related to the gambling sites, which would be far more on-point, but people are talking as if Valve were some kind of overshadowing force in this. Had they stepped in before the revelation of foul play, they would have been slapped with a lot of rage about bullying those operations because it was somehow interfering with their money.
Of course they want to distance themselves and throw up roadblocks when there is proof it's rigged. It wouldn't serve any purpose to halt gambling sites otherwise, except to further annoy the userbase. Any time restrictions have been placed, it has always caused a lot of grouching, regardless of whether it was entirely in Valve's self-interest or for more quality of life reasons. People simply don't like change at the best of times, much less when it tightens around functionality we got used to. It just seems like part and parcel of having such an open system, to me. Steam is one of the few places people can literally turn an 'honest profit' through trading, and allowing that (be it for directly selfish reasons, or for wanting to allow something cool) comes with all kinds of messy hangups.
I'm not saying Valve are angels by any means. They're a business, of course they're in it to profit and keep up that thirsty line of their profit charts. I'm just confused to the fine points of why people are so bitter towards Valve when they are at worst a passive enabler, and the fault lies squarely with entirely willing participants throwing their money away. Instead of being angry at Valve, why don't they accept the responsibility of their poor spending choices? :P
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Not publicity for Valve, publicity about the problem. Their stance on everything so far was that even if it is broken, unless the press talks abut it, they don't care. The entire phone number/authenticator thing started when more and more sites were doing articles about how scammers steal virtual items and sell them for real money. The paid mods disappeared when even non-gaming media picked up the sound of disapproval. And now the gambling, which has been around for months, if not years, with their knowledge (as they made statement s on it in the past), gets plugged in only when a YouTube video generated a media-wide uproar.
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haha, they earned enough money, before there was that much attention.
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They earned nothing from CS:GO item prices skyrocketing? Yeah, sure.
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CS:GO item prices were already high enough which is why there were gambling sites to take advantage of that. I doubt any anti-gambling enforcement will have a negative impact on the value of skins.
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People buy skins to gamble. They can't gamble, they don't buy skins.
No demand, prices fall down.
There are hundreds of people who only use CSGO to gamble, they don't even have game on their account.
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People buy skins to gamble? That's sick.
Spending money to play a losers game on potentially rigged sites.
If you have to gamble, why not gamble on a real gambling site with real money?
If you're a minor, you're not allowed to gamble anyway :)
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If you have to gamble, why not gamble on a real gambling site with real money?
AFAIK US have strict laws against online gambling - they went really hard after online gambling. Also AFAIK CSGO-gambling isn't gambling by the law, so they were safe (notice that this whole case didn't start because of gambling itself, but because owners of site lied when they were advertising it).
Also, normal gambling sites are required to properly ID gamers - get photo of some registration and use of credit card. CSGO gambling required ticking "I am a fu11y gr0wn adu1t" tickbox.
If you're a minor, you're not allowed to gamble anyway :)
Nobody cared :)
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If you're a minor, you're not allowed to gamble anyway :)
As a minor, you can gamble in CSGO, Hearthstone, League of Legends, TF2, <insert infinite list of real money gambling opportunities>, and do real gambling for silly ingame content.
Unfortunately it's still legal in most of the world.
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It will. If for nothing else, then because you cannot ask more than 400 for an item on the market.
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Majority of items that are considered "gambling/betting" skins will drop, but otherwise prices will be pretty stable.
Many items are worth 400$+ in the community, and won't just drop because of inability to bet / gamble them anymore. Some of them are even underpriced on the betting / gambling sites, for example the item worth like 2000$ is only considered 400$ on the betting site.
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Markets fluctuate. Just as items can rocket in price (think of certain earbuds and a rabbit's head in TF2), they can plummet. The value is assigned by the desire of people, and that's something that Valve themselves can't wave a magic wand to control.
Though, I'm curious, how exactly did gambling sites cause item prices to skyrocket?
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I actually just thought of that at the end of another post.
I had assumed that people would simply pay money to gamble, rather than buy out a ton of skins to act as effective gambling chits. It seems like an awful lot of extra steps just to gamble when instead they could just use paypal and get a much quicker and more direct effect. The idea of using skins to gamble with occured to me as a way to offload unwanted items in lieu of having to tag in more direct currency.
So is that where the rage is coming from? The gambling sites were basically stockpiling skins by using the gambling base as a funnel, and in turn it was screwing with availability for actual players? It still seems a bit odd, because if the prices were spiking, wouldn't that mean you could also sell your previously £0.01 skins at a higher mark-up on the marketplace, and in turn use that heightened profit on the more expensive skins? Sure the price spikes wouldn't be uniform, but I don't really think having a sea of skins at the price of a penny is something worth spitting venom at Valve for. Ultimately it was the actions of the playerbase that did the damage, and prior to finding out about it being a scam (something that I assumed most people would have suspected anyway), Valve would have also got a ton of hate for stepping in. It makes it a bit of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation, and by taking a passive approach they at least had a positive side-effect of a stimulated marketplace. Even now, their new approach is simply to try sever usage of official systems, but it won't stop the gambling sites. It'll simply make them more inconvenient to use.
As I said elsewhere, I'm not really up on the gambling/trader scene, so are there other factors I'm not seeing, here?
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I had assumed that people would simply pay money to gamble (...) It seems like an awful lot of extra steps just to gamble when instead they could just use paypal and get a much quicker and more direct effect
You need to remember, normal online gambling has tons of various laws against it - not just "no kida allows", but AFAIK it's completely forbidden in USA, for example. CSGOmbling was about to exist on a loophole and general lack of governments interest with gaming industry.
are there other factors I'm not seeing, here?
Can't say for sure. When it comes to CSGOmbling and trading, I know there's bell ringing, but I have no idea in which church.
But when you ask:
So is that where the rage is coming from?
I think it comes from the fact Valve still done nothing, they just said "gambling was always illegal on Steam". So why they didn't said that year or two ago, when those sites started to flourish, but now, when they face being judged as "accessory to gambling"?
There are millions of people who want CSGO to be best game ever. And they often say "Valve wants DOTA2 to be best, and they use CSGO to fund their DOTA2, while having no idea what to do with CSGO".
Moments like this, or December's Revolvo-Apocalypse are great examples they might be right
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Not Valve, but the CS developers have been accused of not knowing what to do with the game since the original 1.2 (or was it 1.3?) patch of CS. Counter-Strike always, since its creation, drew all the whining bitching players towards it and continued to soak up that demography until the kiddie shooters came along with CoD and its clones.
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Hmm, wiki says Valve bought CS in 2000, while 1.3 was released in 2001. Coincidence? :P
Jokes aside, I have no idea about CS history, no idea when original team stopped working on CS. But CSS had nearly zero Valve support, CSGO also was going to be abandoned project, but it looks like skins rescued it from obscurity.
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By generating interest in the items. Gambling sites removed any item value limitation, opposed to the store, so suddenly the previously 400-dollar skins could go for 3000 dollars and the 100-dollar skins jumped their prices up over 250. And when somebody buys them in Steam, Valve gets their nice little cut.
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The value is assigned by the desire of people, and that's something that Valve themselves can't wave a magic wand to control.
I'm afraid this is the point where you need a reminder that you're being intellectually dishonest. Valve control precisely how often each item exists. Valve make the drop rates, Valve define exactly what happens how. There's a reason that one of the key people in this system was employed as finance minister in a real life country. This is not some isolated Free Market where Invisible Hands spawn goods and The People determine the demand. The hands are the hands of Valve.
And obviously this system is engineered to make Valve money.
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And we need to add: it's the same guy who had a large role in regulating the CS:GO economy… So if anyone, he knows how to fleece the most money out of people while making them think it is good for them.
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I've been spending the day on http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a-strange-email/
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[quote]intellectually dishonest[/quote]
Alternatively : Overlooking something or not having my finger on the pulse of every factor in the CSGO/market/gambling community.
Funnily enough, I'm pretty sure that comment actually qualifies as intellectual dishonesty itself. \:3/
My point was that while yes Valve is in charge of the game, drops and market the gambling orbits around, they have taken a hands-off approach to what people do with the marketplace (and even gifting) provided it doesn't breach certain regional issues, and so long as it doesn't run into gray market issues (chargebacks, fraud, etc). It falls squarely within the "a fool and their money are easily parted". Maybe it's just me being dense to the inner workings of economies, but even if gambling didn't exist, wouldn't the items still have the same values, driven by the desire of the players? Or is there some kind of system on the gambling sites where they offer a premium trade-in on certain items? I can't see how gambling sites would specifically drive up costs, when surely they would be basing the gamble value of the items based on their (steam)market value? What am I missing here?
And yes, Valve define the drop rates, but do you have a source for them basing the drops on the number of existing items? For there to be a moral issue Valve would have had to be collaborating with the gambling sites. Profiting passively from something that their userbase willingly seeks out and participates in doesn't strike me as something bad, much like how Steam would profit from gifts purchased for sites like this. I mean, of course there isn't some horrible misleading scam on this site, but short of Valve giving a disclaimer warning about such sites and to always show caution, what can they do? Their current update simply says they're going to be forcing them to stop using the integrated steam features, but that won't actually stop the gambling from taking place will it?
Again, genuine question here, am I just totally overlooking something? I fully admit I don't even go near gambling sites so I'm only going off assumptions of basic gambling operation. You ante up items for their market/cash value, that serves as your wager, you (more than likely) lose, or you win proportionally. Is there some other mechanic to this? Is it more akin to the match-fixing garbage rather than a roulette? I just don't quite grok why the onus is shoveled onto Valve. Had they tried to enact measures before the reveals about foul play, they would have faced a ton of venom for ruining something people liked 'because it didnt make them money'.
The only thing I can think of about the price alteration is if gamblers were buying up tons of cheap skins just to use a gambling tokens (driving the price up and the availability down), but that seems unlikely because those sites would surely allow for cash bids, which is less complex than buying items to act as chits?
Care to give me the 101 on this?
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I can't see how gambling sites would specifically drive up costs, when surely they would be basing the gamble value of the items based on their (steam)market value? What am I missing here?
Multiple users in this thread pointed out that a sizable percentage of the Steam Economy is participants that solely interact in it for the purpose of gambling. If their demand for CSGO items disappears, the value of all CSGO items drops. It's like a real stock market in that sense.
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I was bored of hearing kids crying because they lost their skins by gambling. xD Finally, it was about time to get steam rid of this gambling infestation. Some of these sites are rigged anyway.
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Now you'll hear everyone complaining because the weapon value will go down :V
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That's not necessary. And I'm pretty sure they'll find a workaround anyway. :P But still, f*cking gambling ruins lives and they even allow KIDS to gamble? They are sick! -_-
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They don't allow children to gamble, they just do that, like they buy cigarettes or alcohol if they find a seller that doesn't care.
Parents are the problem :p
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Well, it's totally true that parents are a problem. :P They are the ones that should take care of their kids, not gambling sites. xD But still, they shouldn't be allowed to exist without a working way of age verification. :P
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Yep, that's why betting sites require documents, but literally no one would send personal documents to a csgo betting website xD
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there was a website somewhere that was asking you for credit card and ID (for bonuses and stuff, but you could still use the website). Dont remember the website tho.
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Well, I don't know them all, so I can't really talk about every single one of them. :P
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2 of the biggest Youtubers + 1 huge Twitch streamer who advertised and streamed themselves gambling and on a Site were found to in fact be the Owners/CEO of said Site. Rigged would be an understatement =p
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Yep, heard about it. I can't really know if all gambling sites are rigged, but I'm sure that a lot of them are rigged. Anyway, gambling is never about letting you win, but about making you lose, so the owner will become rich. It usually gives you false hope in the beginning, until you get addicted, so kids should watch out, because they're too young to gamble. ;P
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That was CSGO Lotto. But there are other gambling sites that I don't see how they could be rigged: CSGOLounge, for example.
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CSGOLounge can be only "rigged" if any of the admins goes rogue. The admin controls everything, ticking outcomes, drafting skins and adding / closing matches at will.
It happened few times, that an admin "screwed up", by ticking a wrong winner, drafting skins to the losing team bettors, and also by closing matches for weird reasons. But all of those issues were fixed ASAP, and were not made for admin's profits.
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CSGOLounge is far from not rigged, sometimes you don't even get a reward even if you put 10+ euros on 1 team. I won 3 times in a row, around 70-30% odds, I won 30 cents once and 2 times I got nothing.
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That kind of thing never happened to me. There were dark times when I gambled $5 worth skins, and I always got my reward when I won. And recently I gambled all my worthless skins to teams with low chances of winning, just to get rid of them. But I won 3 times in a row before losing, and I earned about $1 in the process.
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Thats because the people who put more money on the bet get drafted first. When youre at the end of the line and they dont have skins left youre screwed. Shit like this happens because of the max bets. You can only win what people add to the bets. If there arent enough low value skins to share youre very likely to get nothing.
I think its in the rules/faq file on lounge. I believe you need about 2$ or 3$ winnings to be certain you get something.
Btw, I only got 0 a few times, when my winnings were below 1$.
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Somewhat more nuanced option:
It sucks that kids are free to gamble and that some if not all of the sites running these things are somewhat fraudulent, but using the Steam API added some protection to the people involved. Not to mention if you wanted to gamble your digital items away why shouldn't you.
Steam would probably want a cut out of it as well and this probably means more market transactions.
It's bad if you want to think you own your items and want to be able to do whatever you'd like with them. It's good in that it can hinder the actions of corrupt sites and somewhat keep children from gambling. Overall, it's better than nothing.
To clarify: I wouldn't gamble, but if people want to, it's up to them.
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Actually, allowing children to gamble is illegal in most civilized portions of the world. All the websites in question have a minimum age requirement of 13 years only (from the Steam ToS) and hardly even adhere to that. More over, these websites purposely target the younger populace in an extremely predatory manner. They claim that it is NOT gambling since it is digital goods.
Let's put it this way: If a 13 year old went to a casino and tried to gamble, he/she would be handed to their parents and kicked out. Meanwhile CS:GO sites have banners specifically designed to attract them.
But, all of that is only 1 of the major problems with the gambling sites.
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I agree.
A similar "loophole" happens with most F2P games where the gambling happens for ingame items after you buy their ingame currency.
The whole discriminate by age thing is a problem with all age restricted sites. I don't think you can really blame porn sites for not doing enough to check your age. But, as far as advertising to/targeting children goes, that is a different matter and certainly wrong (Not having used those sites, I can't know how little they do to keep underage people from using the site).
My only point was that other people can also be affected by this.
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Online Poker was exactly like this, with no age-restriction etc. So the gambling agencies and the US FTC clamped down hard on them till the point that now you have to provide so much proof of age and ID that even legitimate adults sometimes get rejected. It's not hard, it just costs them some profit to put in a proper verification process.
But, what am I saying. They're not gambling sites at all, they're just "Happy sunshine centers of CS:GO Skin trading and Rainbows" where everyone of every age is welcome!
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Actually, gambling is illegal in most states, and the lmoved to close down the illegal activities
The casinos actually pushed for the restructuons, because they weren't making any money off it
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its only legally considered gambling if you play for money. on CS:GO sites you play for in game items, the items are classified as prizes. what this means is if CS:GO sites are guilty of child gambling the so is chuck-e-cheese. think about it they both sell tokens that you use to try and win prizes.
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We don't have chuck-e-cheese over here so I don't exactly know what kind of games they offer but from having a quick look over their website I have to disagree. Games like Skee ball are considered skill games and for skill games different rules apply.
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Every Casino in the world uses similar 'in game items'
It is in fact Gambling.
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the difference is the site dose not pay you money for the items.
poker chips are assigned ther monetary value by the casino it self and they personalty exchange them for money
CS:GO sites dont handle on site money for item exchanges.
for it to legally be gambling the site has to pay you for all your winnings, but they dont you are playing for the item it self not money
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I don't know where you got that from but Gambling can be done without money by using a monetary equivalent or token amounting to monetary value, and that has always been the case. The monetary value is decided by the Websites and Steam marketplace in conjunction.
If you go to for instance Las vegas strip, you can buy Chips at point of entry and use them in all the smaller 1 table places, and cash out at Exit point, so they don't even have to personally exchange any money but it is still in fact Gambling. The item has a specific and considerate monetary equivalence.
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One gambling thing addressed. I wonder if there will be a time when the crates kick the bucket, those things are basically slot machines.
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cs:go/dota gambling is not as bad as, in my town, the one-armed bandit casinos claiming to be internet cafes. This shit is illegal, cops are crooked and do nothing about it. Internet is a scary place for children, but where were their parents?
Are betting sites get a shot too?
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I don't gamble or bet (online or offline), but I guess that such legal online websites ask for a valid CC.
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OK listed here, you might all find this as "haha these fuckers already made lots of money, shut them down!" this is going to fuck the market. Most skins will lose their value since bots and players that stack X item 500 times to go betting will spam the market with panic sell prices, resulting in other people panic selling their stuff. We can see how it goes on normal steam sales, every item goes down but goes up again once sales are over... This won't happen once all gambling sites get shut down, you get my point.
Luckily only high tier items (FN Lores, sapphires, rubies, etc) will survive, but still, their prices are going down.
Sorry If typos, kinda drunk and on phone
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this is going to fuck the market.
And it is a bad thing… why? People spend dozens, hundreds, thousands of dollars on a simple texture file. Yes, their money, but this is so artificially inflated beyond recognition, it is not even funny. In real-world economics, this bubble would have lead to a larger crash than the one in '29.
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guy this isn't a bad thing at all xDDF people will only lose their money looolz!!! XDDD
Buy a 50,000 car and the next day go sell it for 5,000.
People trade for reasons, the main reason is to obtain money.
but... But... I'm talking about gambling!
Shutting them down will fuck the market and trades until something new comes around the corner.
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Naw, it just teaches them that digital markets are notoriously unstable and given to forces that don't effect physical stock.
You're also talking about a group of people quite close to those who donate money to streamers just so they could watch them spend it on uncrating game-loot. A fool and his money are easily parted.
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Shutting them down will fuck the market
You mean make it more accessible to humans? :)
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Even so I think gambling (roulettes) is bad, valve shouldn't react to it.... it's law issue, government should regulate it, it's a same shady thing as fantasy football, etc. Valve created free market and it's beautiful by itself, but every time they interfere, they ruin part of it. Now lots of harmless people might loose lots of money. People should be able to manage themselves, so if someone will loose on gambling, it's his own problem. Also I think you should differentiate roulettes and bets, one of them just flipping the coin, the other is part of sport (kinda), which makes it more enjoyable to watch. Basically crate opening is the same thing to gambling, but valve avoid it cause steam wallet legally are not a money. So it's sanctimony.
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it's law issue, government should regulate it
There is an issue with that though. There's only so much governments can do when it comes to the internet. The US government can for example not take down a site that is located in the UK. There really is not a good way for governments to regulate it, except for stuff in the country of said government.
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They were aware, their defence was that it is not real money, so they don't have to do anything about it.
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…as usual. Not the first time Valve doesn't give a shit until the press blows most of the gaming media with something of their stuff. They release some few-paragraph article, maybe change the API a bit, then move on. Seriously, it's like watching early 2000s EA all over again. Let's hope that in 5-10 years Valve gets their shit together as well.
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The only shit EA got together was tech support. The games still only exist to somehow milk money out of hapless people.
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People traded imaginary items to make money from nothing. One might try to argue that stock exchange trades imaginary items as well, but there you have a tangible thing coming with a stock: the dividend. Here, it is just blatant artificial price inflation in hopes to find a bigger chump that pays a little more.
Shutting them down will fuck the market and trades until something new comes around the corner.
Good. The entire Steam market needs a wake-up call to realise, maybe paying dozens of dollars for nothing is not as fun as a hobby as people try to make everyone believe it is. This only packs the pockets of Valve for doing nothing and gambling site owners for doing even less.
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my god man, it's 21th century... digital items same as real ones, and they cost regulated by free market (people) in this case, which is really fair. There are so many possibilities here for valve and gamedevs, they could make investment system, so everyone could help to create games in active way (not like ea or kickstarter). Thing is prohibitions are often bad, believe me cause I live in Russia.
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There are certain rumours that most of these websites are actually supported by Steam volunteer moderators, especially after 1 website address was blocked from Steam and then unblocked a few hours later and no one knew what or why or how. All the bot accounts they use for trading have to be whitelisted by the mods as well.
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This is great and all, not really idgaf about gambling on either a moral or ethical level, but it has much wider implications. Pretty much any middle man website, that uses the steam api for legitimate trading/selling/buying will also be affected by this. Kiss sites like scrap.tf goodbye.
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It should theoretically not affect pure trading sites, the API is designed for those tools. At least that is what the announcement seems to hint at.
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Im not sure that steam can make a distinction between a gambling business and a regular business, unless their tos specifically forbids gambling. Especially if said gambling businesses are legal in their own jurisdiction. I would tend to think if one of these gambling sites does as mullins suggests below, and forces valve's hand in court, valve will have to either allow it for all, or none.
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In all honesty, no one expects Valve to actually go through and take legal action on each and every e-gambling CS:GO website, it will be the mere threat and perhaps a singular example which will do it.
And yeah, it is actually in Steams ToS about gambling not being allowed. The gambling sites have no legal standing.
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That occurred to me as well. Nothing to do but wait and see though...
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LOL, people will get soooooo angry xD
omg i run a business here this is unfair i'm taking you to court stupid valve!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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hmm... what would a csgo player say...? oh, I know!
REKT
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If they can remove the betting side they are actually million times better in terms of easy trading. Just imagine trading on steam forums writing [H] .. [W] .. is just sad.
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Can we please stop calling every minor event X"gate"? I vouch for only allowing Watergate & Driv3rgate to be allowed.
About time this happened. This unregulated gambling was a recipe for scams and other shady practices.
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I'm sick of "gate" also. The media gleefully suffixes it to everything remotely scandalous, no matter if it's politics or business. It's tiresome.
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How's Fnordravenrevokegate going?
P.S.: I never even knew about Driv3rgate, did I miss much?
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'#'Ravenrevokegate, has died down, but the question of ethics in trading still remain!
Driv3rgate is one of those cases where there actually was a clear "bad guy", and the anger was directed at the right target(s). I did not follow it, as the Driver series was never one I payed much attention to (I don't even remember if I've played any of them)
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And still these bad guys are happily part of the gaming media, eh.
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Nah, they got what they deserved, both gaming magazines that were willing to lie to their customers for early access to a game are gone. Though only Atari really suffered directly from releasing a shoddy game and trying to cover it up. Something they never really recovered from.
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Eh, https://twitter.com/ultrabrilliant for example, who reviewed Driv3r in the Playstation 2 Magazine and gave it a score of infinity (and may have scrubbed Google of information about this under European data protection laws, as I get barely any results searching for him in this regard), happily works in the Review Manufacturing Industry even now.
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It's entirely possible that the individual reviewers were simply forced to give the game a certain score, or risk losing their jobs, as the deal was between Atari & the magazines. Sure, they could have tried to refuse, but when you risk losing your job, that's not something that's very easy to do if you don't have another job lined up.
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Finally all those damn CSGO Scammer Spammers Advertising can finally stop...eventally
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well read again, the spammer/hijacker have nothing to do with the gamble ....
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I just... why the hate? This is the exact same reason why he have ISIS. Because people can't live their lives without bitching at how others live their lives. Don't like it? Don't use it.
P.S: It is gambling and it should only be allowed for 18. And no i don't gamble. (Except that one time that i gambled useless cs.go skins)
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Misleading, rigging, fraudulent misrepresentation, underage gambling, predating minors, illegal profiteering, racketeering, and Legal and Tax evasion.
But yeah, Live and let live. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
P.S. I am guessing you have been blacklisted a lot for this comment (I did not), in the future it might be better to read the main post or have some knowledge whatsoever regarding the topic before posting an extremely provocative comment.
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The same way that CS:GO is a 18+ game, and steam doesn't care if a 8 year old plays it? Because being blind to certain things can make a s**** load of money, ritgh?
And my post wasn't towards you and your topic, it was about people hating things they don't like in the comments.
And what if people blacklisted me? I won't cry, because some people are butthurt.
And sure some things are illegal, you are right. But that isn't your/my job. Make a fuss about it? Yes i am okay with that, so that authorities can check them out to see if they are legit our doing shady stuff. But let's be honest a lot of websites do. Even big ones.
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We have Isis and salty people hating gambling because -> "Because people can't live their lives without bitching at how others live their lives."
Next time please read before replying to someone. Ty
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What the hell does terrorists have to do with gambling site that broke laws?
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Well, these underground gambling places usually fund illegal operations—usually the mob, often one of the Eastern European ones. But maybe some random terrorist cell is using that… internet crime is one of the sources of them, that is sure. I can hardly think CS:GO is one of them, that is usually Russian territory.
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They are born from the same thing. I didn't say they worked together or whatever.
"Because people can't live their lives without bitching at how others live their lives."
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Fuck these scamming websites. Many of them will just take your skins and run. Or rig the odds in their favor.
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I just hope this won't affect giveaway sites and giveaway groups.
We depend heavily on the Steam API's, so it would be bad if those API's would suddenly be disabled as a measure to stop the gambling.
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I had the same thought, if this escalates it might mean trouble for steamgifts community. They don't even have to disable to API-s just when they start to send out the letters some other sites get them as well which are not to related to gambling.
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It really shouldn't, Steam wants people to use their API for legitimate means. Because every legitimate tool that uses the Steam API is 1 less thing Valve has to develop but still reap the benefits from. They've also mentioned sending notices to the sites and not blanket API bans for suspicious behaviour.
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Yes and no.
Some API's were indeed intended for the public to use. And we can request a key for it and use them according to their user agreement.
Most of the user based API's are among this.
However, there are also a number of API's we use, that weren't released to the public.
They were created for Steam Big Screen to get the info to show. Now some smart people reverse engineered them and now a lot of people are using these unofficial API's.
Most of the game and package info API's are among here.
It's off-course very easy for Valve to disable these API's and say they never intended them to be used by 3rd parties.
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That's a really interesting point (of which I don't have much knowledge), hopefully it doesn't affect those and only the culprits mentioned.
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Good for me tbh.
I've been addicted to betting for some time now (CSGO on CSGOlounge, and sports on Fanobet). Its hasnt run out of hand yet though, got and sticking to a budget. But overall I lost about 5 hundred euros with betting last 18 or so months. The worst for me is that its time consuming. I spent a lot of time watching scores and betting. Time I should spent on more important things.
I stopped 10 days ago and I hope it ends there, this will help a lot and I consider it the best news of the week.
I work at a school and I know some kids aged 15-16 who are addicted and got into trouble because of this. That was the eye opener for me and I decided to stop when I heard about the 4th kid who got into trouble.
Gambling like this is illegal, but making it possible for kids to bet is even worse.
BUT FUCK YOU VALVE. YOU KNEW, YOU MADE A LOT OF MONEY OUT OF IT. It shouldnt have been possible to begin with. Greedy bastards.
EDIT: This is a huge blow for the CSGO scene though. I'm pretty sure a great percentage of the people watching are people who bet. Less viewers equals less income. Less income means less tournaments / prize money. We'll see what will happen.
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Always good to see people overcome their addictions =)
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Good luck on the path to recovery. I've been clean with regard to some sad MOBA for a few months now, spending that time/money on more meaningful things now (and buying Steam games).
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Looks like the highrollers are already dropping their skins.
The AWP asiimovs are generally the most seen betting skins. At opskins (selling skins for PayPal) the prices are already dropping 35-40% compared to the Steam prices.
For example a field tested AWP Asiimov costs $19.75 on opskins whilst the cheapest atm is $31.26 on Steam. Skins are always cheaper on opskins but I havent seen these percentages yet. Prices on Steam are dropping as well, but people with a lot of valuable skins prefer real money over Steam wallet.
I'm glad I havent got any really expensive skin left.
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On the Steam Market every weapon had a dip of a few % but are going up again.
Guess some skins got dumped, picked up and resold for a profit, oops! :P
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in other other words "pack yo shit keeeds, sites gun git closed soon" - i'm guessing those
sites have already stopped giving out the skins you put in - at least if their smart enough lol
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http://store.steampowered.com/news/22883/
"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."
Update: Twitch statement https://blog.twitch.tv/twitch-and-third-party-terms-of-service-and-user-agreements-b9827599e0fc#.gcvwdwoo7 As such, content in which the broadcaster uses or promotes services that violate Valve’s stated restrictions is prohibited on Twitch.
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