Gambling: Steam are going to close all the gambling csgo sites?

[NOTdeduction]

Hello,
What do you think about the gamble sites? all the csgo gamble sites!
I heard that almost all the Team Fortress 2 gamble sites are now closed.
You think like steam are going to close all the ''illegal'' sites?

[Dimebag]

It will depend on the relevent authorities . The group they are targeting is just reprehensible and maybe the legislators will eventually catch up and all this grey area gambling will finally be regulated . As it stands the PR about Valve allowing customers to link their accounts to those sites is damning enough without the added issue of legalities .

If they had a shred of decency they would shut it down NOW ..... however you must remeber they initially allowed it so looking out for their customer base is obviously the last thing they are worried about , and as a parent I find the whole situation morally abhorrent .

Shame on those who prey on the young and shame on Valve for allowing it to be a thing in the first place .

[profile name]

i really hope this kills the entire skins trading scheme. Or becomes so toughly regulated that Valve cant make billions on them anymore.

[NOTdeduction]

HardDisk Productions님이 먼저 게시:

i really hope this kills the entire skins trading scheme. Or becomes so toughly regulated that Valve cant make billions on them anymore.

If it will happen, Skins prices will be a lot less then now.
Will cause less price in market = less fees for steam = less profit for them.
Im not sure if they will do it..

[Spawn of Totoro]

cinedine님이 먼저 게시:

This is probably the best example of doing it right.
The cards are completely void of value. You can't trade them in anyway or turn them into money (which is the whole problem with Steam's skins) while at the same time no card is useless. You can use them to craft the exact card that you want. Which makes it far less of a gamble.

But still a gamble. You could get junk cards or you can get good cards that will help when you play. Same with the Blind Boxes and they even have the chances stated on the side as to what you can get. Some figures are worth less then the Blind Box and some are worth more.

cinedine님이 먼저 게시:

Skins are a completely different beast. A skin you don't use - either because you already have one of it or a "better" one - is literally useless. All you can do is selling them on the market or try to trade it, but the supply far exceeds the demand in many cases. Making it dead weight on your account.

Dead weight is a matter of opinion though. Some like those skins and want them, some do not. If looks were useless, then where would the clothing industry be? Why buy a suit and tie as they have to use other then to change what you look like. Should we all just wear a burlap sack?

cinedine님이 먼저 게시:

You could easily come around this issue if you allow to trade up your skins within Steam.Combine 3 of the same skin to the next better quality, combine 3 random skins into a random one, ... like the TF2 crafting system works.

Don't they have trade up contracts on CS:GO?

http://counterstrike.wikia.com/wiki/Trade_Up_Contract

Yes, they do.

cinedine님이 먼저 게시:

The really sad thing is that Valve so obviously weasels out of it all and uses technicalities to cover their arses. How can they claim skins have no value while at the same time say that duplicating them for hijacked accounts devalues them? How can they say they have no value while at the same time allowing them to be traded on the market for real money equivalency? How can they say they have no value while they are the sole source of scamming and hijacking? How can they say they have no value while almost every "I got scammed"-post includes something along the lines of "I just lost 100 bucks"?
Yes, they technically have no value assigned to them - by Valve. But it's evidently that community assigns a value to them and this is supported (and welcome) by Valve.

Because they don't have any real value. It is all perceived value. Just like a diamond has no real value, yet is worth so much, simply because people want to think it does.

Like you said, it is the community that that assigns a value, not Valve. As long as the community puts a value on them, then people will take advantage of said value.

Valve doesn't restore the items because the community doesn't want to lose the value they feel an item has.

Valve doesn't "weasel" out of anything. They explained things from their side and point of view.

Honestly, I'm one of the people who vote for the trade system to be removed to begin with as I feel it solves a lot of the problems, such as the trade restriction, hijackings and such. Unfortunately (imho), I am in the minority on that opionion.

[Spawn of Totoro]

http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/358416640406367264/

Please use an existing thread.

[NOTdeduction]

Spawn of Totoro님이 먼저 게시:

http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/358416640406367264/

Please use an existing thread.

why you linked the theard link and said 'Please use an existing theard''?
what does that mean? I don't understand..

[Melina]

lol

[Spawn of Totoro]

Mr. Tree13님이 먼저 게시:

I'll try and explain the logic for you:
If a casino said here you can open crates for money some of them have useless rocks some of them have diamonds some have ruby's, oh yeah and nothing in these crates has value, could kids join in on this game according to you? because this is the crate system and kids are allowed to do it if up to steam.

So now how is steam not weasling it's way out of this? giving your point of view could be weasling out.

Steam is promoting gambling and they know it. I am not going to stop using it because of that but I can come to an objective conclusion on a subject thru logic. You on the other hand do not seem to see the diffrence between something that is ok and something that is ok because of a loophole.

If a casino said that, they wouldn't be a casino, no would they? With a casino, those chips are markers, intended by them and the people, as proof of money/payment. Skins were never intended to be used as such.

As per my examples, if what you say is true, then the baseball card industry is guilty of gambling for far longer then digital crates have been around, yet they are not considered gambling?

How about buying a house? You don't know how the plumbing is made or the installation is placed, what about the electric wiring? If I go by your idea, then this is also a gamble and should be illegal.

Looks like anything we do is in a legal grey area. Even walking doen the street (on the sidewalk), there is a change of getting to your destination or getting hit by a car.

Intent plays a large part in what makes something part of something illegal.

Gun makers? Are they responsible for how the owner of a gun uses it? All the crimes commited with something being used in a way it was not intended?

Doesn't the victim, who lost their case to the gun makers, also thing they "weaseled" their way out of justice?

If you say Valve is promoting gambling, then how many other places are doing the same thing?

You are looking at too narrow of a scope and not at the overall picture here. You are not looking objectively at all, but are only seeing what you want to see and there is very little logic in it.

I'll leave a link to my previous post so you can see some of the other places that also fall into this "gambling" catagory.

http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/358416640406367264/#c358416640406606634

There is a clear line on what gambling is. If the laws change that line, then they change, but more then Valve will be effected by such change as it sets a precedence for other industries to be sued. There is no "weaseling" out of the laws, only a discussion to decide what is and is not included in that part of the law.

Mr. Tree13님이 먼저 게시:

What if I told you nothing in this world has 'real' value. Value is something a community gives to something as you stated yourself. Nothing has a value because the company dealing it says it has, it has value because the people give that to it, that's called supply and demand.

Real value of an item is the cost to make said item. The cost to mine a diamond is not much, yet they sell for a lot of money. Gold has a real value because it is used in many industries as a great conductor, while diamonds are only used to cut other diamonds (we have harder substances then diamonds not too) and for cosmetic reasons, so it has little real value.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_versus_nominal_value

Skins are generated by the system at random, so have no real value.

Your food? That has real value. The cost of the ingredients, for example, the cost of the gas/electricity to cook it, ect. All that adds up to the real value of that food.

-----

Kids by baseball cards. If they decide to use them as bets for poker, do we hold the companies that make them responsible?

It encourages them to buy cards, so they can gamble with them. They can then sell the cards to a collector or cards/pawn shop for real money as well. There is no regulation on them either. Should there be? And again, should the companies that make them be heald responsible? Even if they know that kids are doing this with the cards?

That is the same argument. That is why I agree something should be done about the gambling, but that Valve isn't the one who should do anything about it or be heald responsible for it.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Depends on what y'all mean by "value".

"Value" in economics is defined as what someone pays to get something or pays to not lose that something.

That is not the only sense of "value" out there though.

[cinedine]

Spawn of Totoro님이 먼저 게시:

Like you said, it is the community that that assigns a value, not Valve. As long as the community puts a value on them, then people will take advantage of said value.

Valve doesn't restore the items because the community doesn't want to lose the value they feel an item has.

Valve doesn't "weasel" out of anything. They explained things from their side and point of view.

My biggest issues is that this assigned value is backed by real life money. Every cent on the market and thus Valve's share is generated through user putting money into the system. And for Valve this IS deductable money. They somehow directly and measureably profit from this "value-less" items. They have stated so themselves more than once. So even if you argue that Steam wallet money is "monopoly money" (which I strongly contest), it isn't for Valve.
You can also argue that each skin is worth ca USD 2.50 - the price you have to pay to get it out of a crate in the first place.
And lastly, if you sell those items on the market place, it is considered taxable income. Which also indicates strongly that the government considers them of having some value.

The only conclusion we can draw is the law is still a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around digital goods.

Spawn of Totoro님이 먼저 게시:

Real value of an item is the cost to make said item.

Value of any item is always an arbitrary. It all can be broken down into how much someone values the time invested into providing something. Stuff like gold, diamonds, oil, food is all available for free to everyone in theory. You just need to get it out of the earth.
Also skins are not generated out of thin air. Someone had to sit down and design it. Someone had to sit down to integrate it into Steam and the loot table. Even if they were generated at random, someone had to code the algorithm to do so. By saying they have no costs assigned to it, you are basically devoiding our whole economy which relies strongly on the tertiary sector.

So IMO this argument is very, very weak.

[Das Claw]

The big difference in gambling sites imo... is the risk of getting nothing. You can pay $2.50 for a case key, and you get an item every time; it might not be the quality you want... but you always get something. You're purchasing a random item; not wagering your money on something that can fail. Steam funds do have monetary value... since if you reach a threshold of market transactions, you're required to file an IRS form via steam.

Case keys: Using monetary value for something else of monetary value.
Gambling sites: Using something of monetary value for possibly something else of monetary value.

[Dimebag]

Mr. Tree13님이 먼저 게시:

Das Claw님이 먼저 게시:

The big difference in gambling sites imo... is the risk of getting nothing. You can pay $2.50 for a case key, and you get an item every time; it might not be the quality you want... but you always get something. You're purchasing a random item; not wagering your money on something that can fail. Steam funds do have monetary value... since if you reach a threshold of market transactions, you're required to file an IRS form via steam.

Case keys: Using monetary value for something else of monetary value.
Gambling sites: Using something of monetary value for possibly something else of monetary value.

realy like your train of thought here!
think you just made a very good case for why the crate system is ok.

As long as you ignore the fact it attracts people who are too young to excercise proper judgement on what is fair value and the odds... are they skewed ? Who knows as there is NO REGULATION . Add onto this that Valve is complicit with the gambling sites by allowing their customer base to link their accounts to these sites .

And even if it isn't illegal (yet) is it extremely bad PR for the company , what parent or community group would be pleased with a company creating kiddie slots ? And what does it say about the company that enables it ?

[Play4Blood]

its like sports card trading. you can always sell the card

[Insanity Claus]

Levi님이 먼저 게시:

Washell님이 먼저 게시:

Steam, or more correctly, Valve can't close gambling sites. The best they can do is lock the accounts associated with them.

You know that they are giving them api key or something like that to make the people sign in trought the site..

Valve didn't give them a key. The API is open to anyone that wants to use it. This includes sites that track the rarity of certain items as well as other sites that track non-inventory stuff, like Steam Spy and Raptr. Valve is not in collusion with these 3rd-party sites.

[merfab76]

Nixon Fury: Agent of SHIELD님이 먼저 게시:

Valve didn't give them a key. The API is open to anyone that wants to use it. This includes sites that track the rarity of certain items as well as other sites that track non-inventory stuff, like Steam Spy and Raptr. Valve is not in collusion with these 3rd-party sites.

I'm not sure that's entirely correct, actually :

API Keys

Some Web API methods return publicly accessible data and do not require authorization when called. Other methods may require clients to register for an API key and pass that in using the key parameter. There are also methods that return sensitive data or perform a protected action and require special access permissions. These APIs require a publisher key, which you will need to create before calling these APIs. To create one of these keys, please see Creating a Publisher Key below. If you don't require access to these special methods, you can register a regular API key from the registration page on the Steam Community

I don't really have time to look further into this, but obviously, some functions require a key provided by "Steamworks"