There have been recent scandals involving third-party Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skin gambling websites and YouTube personalities. These websites allowed players to gamble skins that they owned on Valve’s Steam gaming platform in the hopes of obtaining skins that had high real world value. Now, Valve has issued a statement concerning the scandal.
In the response, Valve states how the company plans on addressing player concerns as well as the lawsuit filed against them. The company clarified that they had no business relationship with the gambling websites, nor do they have any systems in place to let Steam users turn items into real world currency.
“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,” Valve’s Erik Johnson stated. “Since then a number of gambling websites started leveraging the Steam trading system, and there’s been some false assumptions about our involvement with 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.
“We are going to start sending notices to these sites requesting they cease operations through Steam, and further pursue the matter as necessary. Users should probably consider this information as they manage their in-game item inventory and trade activity.”
As of now, there has been no public response to Steam’s announcement from the gambling websites, their owners, or from the website’s legal counsel, Watson LLP.