After the events of the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive lotto controversy weeks ago, Valve had release statements concerning their stance on the topic. Earlier in the week, a letter had started to circulate around the internet from Valve to various owners of lotto sites. The letter can be found below:
The Cease and Desist letter was met with some forgery allegations, with many people within the eSports channels arguing the validity of these allegations. The most notable is by eSports reporter Richard Lewis who went about analyzing the validity of the letter in his video.
Reasoning behind the accusations was that the letter’s contents were questionable due to various factors including a lack of a date in which to corroborate with the ’10 day’ time frame stated in the letter. Furthermore, having an open letter to various recipients being listed seemed odd when it comes to these forms of letters, as it isn’t normal practice to have these companies mentioned in one letter and it omits some sites that have been blatantly shown to be part of the scandal. Richard Lewis has gone on to state that the lawyer, Karl Quackenbush is an actual lawyer in the Seattle area. Not only that, but getting into contact with Valve, they have confirmed to him that this letter was legitimate.
The letter includes many CS:GO lotto sites including CSGO Lotto and CSGO Diamonds. At the time of writing the article, all of these sites are still up and running. Some have lost its users while others are slowly phasing out until the final closure.