Crackdown on Counter Strike gambling sites
Following a law-suit filed against game makers Valve, platforms move to clampdown on the $7.4 billion industry.
Video game maker Valve and their digital distribution platform Steam, are distancing themselves from gambling, after wagering on one their titles - Counter Strike: Global Offensive - resulted in a US lawsuit being filed with the developers standing accused of knowingly benefitting from in-game gambling.
The practise, known as skin betting, is where players wager skins on the outcome of a game much like they would with casino chips.
It had been estimated that game gambling, who previously had Valve's support, was expected to rake in around $7.4 billion in bets this year, with future projections suggesting, if left to grow organically, could have reached as high as $22.6 billion by 2020.
U-turn on skin betting
Now though, the lawsuit has seen the developers make a U-turn and have instead pledged to crack down on websites using Steam for gambling purposes, including sending a letter to sites involved in skin betting.
Pulling out of such a growing market could have strong repercussions for the company who have benefitted from skins betting in the past, with gambling widely credited for turning Counter Strike into one of the world’s most popular competitive video games.
For their part, Valve maintain that they only originally added the feature to Steam in order to allow users to trade in-game items and that gambling sites have simply piggy backed the system.
Since the lawsuit, popular streaming site Twitch have also now banned a user thought to be involved.
