With multiple sites allowing for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skin gambling Valve is starting to hammer down on them with legal action. So just recently they’ve attacked 20 sites for taking such gambling. Even Twitch booted a popular streamer for being a part of one of the sites. From this one case it shows just how big of a deal this gambling issue is to Valve. Cause even the popular streamers for Counter Strike are being punished for this form of gambling.
If you are unaware about what this gambling, there basically are some third party websites that will hold onto the gun skins until a match was over and then deliver them to the winner. Then he can use the winnings to trade in for real money. There are also some other sites that use it as the virtual currency to use in virtual gambling like virtual roulette and virtual slots. The main reason why Valve has started to crack down on these sites is because people have been using it to abuse the trade function of Steam that they added in to allow players to have easier access on getting in game items from friends or in game economies.
This trade function was added in back in 2011, but Valve did not start to force sites to shut down til about two weeks ago. At first sites were just shut down without any warning, but now they are getting a warning to shut down within a certain time period. The first wave of these site warnings ends on Wednesday so we’ll have to see which sites cooperate and what action will take place for those that do not. While this should not have a huge effect on the gameplay of Counter-Strike, this could have a larger effect on how the community values their skins or purchases of crates.