This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this folio. Terms of use.

CSGoFeature

After months of silence, Valve has finally stepped up and said something about Counterstrike: Go-related gambling websites and practices. Unfortunately, that'southward nearly the only affair it's done.

First, some background. If y'all aren't familiar with how the whole situation has played out, Valve's most popular games, like CS: Go and Team Fortress 2, now incorporate various mechanics that allow players to spend real-earth money on cosmetic items like hats and other cosmetic changes. You can earn cases and item chests through play, but really opening what you've won (and finding out what you lot got) requires y'all spend real dollars. These items tin then exist resold via Steam's Community Market (where Valve takes a cut of each sale). Items within chests are of varying quality as you'd expect — common items sell for very little, while rare items can be worth hundreds or fifty-fifty thousands of dollars.

CSGo-Gambling

There are two facets to this problem. The first is that Valve'due south API allows for 3rd-party clients to create their own websites and then run gambling rings in which people wager skins, hats, and potentially other items on everything from slot games to e-sports matches. Unlike the 3rd-party gambling sites, Valve doesn't allow players to turn their winnings into real coin when they spend cash deposited in their Steam Wallet. If y'all sell a skin for $150 in the Steam Community Marketplace, you can't accept your winnings and transfer them back to your regular account. This is the issue Valve addressed today in its own update, writing:

In 2011, we added a characteristic to Steam that enabled users to trade in-game items as a way to make it easier for people to get the items they wanted in games featuring in-game economies.

Since so a number of gambling sites started leveraging the Steam trading system, and there'southward been some false assumptions about our interest with these sites. We'd similar to clarify that nosotros accept no business organisation 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.

These sites take basically pieced together their operations in a two-part fashion. First, they are using the OpenID API equally a style for users to show ownership of their Steam accounts and items. Any other information they obtain about a user'south Steam account is either manually disclosed by the user or obtained from the user'due south Steam Customs profile (when the user has chosen to make their profile public). Second, they create automated Steam accounts that make the same web calls every bit individual Steam users.

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. Nosotros are going to start sending notices to these sites requesting they stop operations through Steam, and further pursue the matter as necessary. Users should probably consider this data as they manage their in-game detail inventory and trade activity.

The bigger problem is that Valve is withal running what amounts to a gambling operation — and it'due south not performing any age verification when it does and then, equally Ars Technica reports. Gamers can spend real-world coin to buy particular chests with a random gamble of finding something expert within, and while the dollar amounts are small, that encourages frequent spending. Other forms of corruption have cropped up as well, including a highly publicized scandal last calendar week in which pop YouTubers who claimed to exist ordinary users of a CS:Get gambling site really owned information technology — without e'er disclosing that fact (the pair has since revised their own videos and taken down others to try and twist the public record). Valve has already been sued for facilitating gambling without a license and for enticing minors to chance. (PC Gamer has more details on the gambling scandal for those interested.)

It's time to cease thinking of Valve as a game developer

I've loved Valve games since the original Half-Life. Half-Life 2, Portal, Left 4 Expressionless — all of these were great titles, and corking series. Simply Valve, with its enormous acquirement and critical position as the digital distribution eye for near of PC gaming, isn't really a game programmer any more than. Non counting The Lab, which shipped as a VR demo for the HTC Vive, Valve hasn't shipped a new game since DOTA two in 2013. CS:Go is iv years old, Portal 2 is v, and Left 4 Dead 2 is 7. Team Fortress two is well-nigh nine. Some of these titles are still receiving regular updates and new content, while others, similar L4D2, have been mostly limited to some issues fixes and SteamOS support.

Valve doesn't develop new intellectual belongings and new games and it rarely builds sequels. Large ideas similar Steam Machines and the Steam Controller see an initial burst of furious activity and a corresponding surge in media coverage, and so trickle off to nada over a period of months or years. Valve is a distribution visitor, which is completely fine — just distribution companies have to pay attention to the manner their services are used and exploited if they want to go along to rake in the big bucks. Illegal gambling is something federal authorities take extremely seriously and Valve'south practices could come nether serious regime scrutiny if the cases against it proceed.

Valve's announcement today leaves much to be desired. Sending notices to third-parties that what they're doing is against Valve's terms of service doesn't amount to much when Valve could blacklist such sites from taking advantage of its own APIs and end their access to Steam's OpenID system.