Valve denies wrongdoing in skin gambling legal rumblings

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• bcbully Member EpicPosts: 11,843

  October 2016 edited October 2016

  Skin Gambling? Lock boxes?
  
  

  "In video games, skin gambling is the use of virtual goods (known as "skins"), which are most commonly cosmetic elements that have no direct influence on gameplay, as virtual currency to bet on the outcome of professional matches. It primarily has occurred within the player community for the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive by Valve Corporation, but practice of it exists in other game communities. Valve also runs the Steam marketplace which can be interfaced by third-parties to enable trading, buying, and selling of skins from players' Steam inventories for real-world or digital currency.

  Valve added random skin rewards as part of an update to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in 2013, believing that players would use these to trade with other players and bolster both the player community and its Steam marketplace. A number of websites were created to bypass monetary restrictions Valve set on the Steam marketplace to aid in high-value trading and allowing users to receive cash value for skins. Some of these sites subsequently added the ability to gamble on the results of professional matches with these skins, which in 2015 was estimated to handle around $2.3 billion of the virtual goods. These sites, along with Valve and various video game streamers, have come under scrutiny due to ethical and legal questions relating to gambling on sporting matches, underage gambling, undisclosed promotion, and outcome rigging. Discovery of evidence of such unethical practices was discovered in June 2016, and led to two formal lawsuits filed against these sites and Valve in the following month. Valve subsequently has taken steps to stop such sites from using Steam's interface for enabling gambling, leading many of these sites to close down."

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_gambling
  
• MaxBacon Member LegendaryPosts: 7,846

  October 2016 edited October 2016

  Wait, finally someone is knocking at Valve's door about this?
  
  The end of skin gambling is near? Hurry crowds of steam peoples; the skinpocalypse is coming! Sell everything! :chuffed:
• cheyane Member LegendaryPosts: 9,386

  October 2016

  Skin gambling my goodness what will they think of next.