ESPN.com: Can Valve Realign the eSports Gambling Econsystem?
The past few months have seen a meaningful surge in coverage surrounding the betting side of the esports industry, and it hasn't been pretty, remarks Bryce Blum of ESPN.com.
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Video game developer Valve has remained silent throughout a series of controversies that came to a head last week with the revelation that two Youtubers had failed to disclose their ownership interest in an online gambling skin, CS:GO Lotto. Valve has also been accused of allowing minors to gamble on various skins.
Valve remained silent up until this week when they announced a crack down on gambling skins.
Valve issued this statement:
"In 2011, we added a feature 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 then a number of gambling sites started leveraging the Steam trading system, and there's been some false assumptions about our involvement with these sites. We'd like to clarify that we have no business 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 have basically pieced together their operations in a two-part fashion. First, they are using the OpenID API as a way for users to prove ownership of their Steam accounts and items. Any other information they obtain about a user's Steam account is either manually disclosed by the user or obtained from the user's Steam Community profile (when the user has chosen to make their profile public). Second, they create automated Steam accounts that make the same web calls as 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."
Blum notes:
It could be argued that Valve has supported gambling sites to a certain extent by allowing users to log in via Steam, and Valve games have certainly become more popular as a result of these sites. But that is not the same thing as receiving revenue from their operations. Perhaps more information will come to light over time to support the allegations leveled against Valve in the class action lawsuit filed in Connecticut, but I haven't seen any credible evidence that contradicts Valve's assertion in its public statement.
He added:
The dominant skin marketplace website, OPSkins, released a statement yesterday that it doesn't believe it is impacted by Valve's statement because it is not a gambling site. While it is certainly true that OPSkins users cannot gamble on the site, it does not appear to address the fact that OPSkins makes precisely the same type of automated API calls as betting sites in order to facilitate the large volume of transactions.
Blum points out that Bets.gg says it will continue to operate as well while intending to "implement changes to comply with the ToS update from Valve."
How they plan to do this remains to be seen.
Blum suggests that the current Valve position “leaves room” for sites like Bets.gg to still comply with the API and other Valve user agreements and presumably – judging by their name – continue to act as a gambling business.
Blum writes:
I sincerely hope that Valve's statement marks the beginning of the end for unregulated, unlicensed betting sites that prey on underage users and offer no safeguards against fraud, threats to competitive integrity and much more. That being said, I'm not sure today is that day.
The fact that Valve's statement relies on API misuse is particularly telling. So long as sites can find a way to comply with the terms of use, they may be allowed to continue operating.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
