There have been recent controversies where two reports were filed against Valve accusing them of being beneficiaries from the third party gambling site facilitated by their digital platform Steam. Steam allows users to trade in-game items from games like Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and Dota 2, where real money is also involved. According to a data analysis firm, it was projected that bets would have made around $7.4 billion by the end of this year.
Recently, two popular eSports YouTubers, Trevor ‘TmarTn’ Martin and Tom ‘ProSyndicate’ Cassell were revealed to be connected to a third party CS:GO site named CSGO Lotto, which they promoted through allegedly rigged YouTube videos.
But now, Valve’s Erik Johnson has released a statement in an attempt to clarify their part in the whole controversy and how these sites are violating Steam’s agreements:
“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. 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.”
Even Twitch has taken the recent turn of events into consideration and has barred any sort of third party gambling content to be streamed on their channels.