[Three of Seven]

Yesterday Valve announced that they were going to be sending notices to gambling websites using the Steam API to facilitate the trading on the website to get them to stop. This is a massive step that should end up shutting down a lot of these sites - http://store.steampowered.com/news/22883/

Twitch followed suit by stating that violations of third-party agreements are not allowed to be streamed, so these gambling sites using the Steam API can no longer appear on Twitch - https://blog.twitch.tv/twitch-and-th...0fc#.f0ocmxi16

I have nothing against gambling, gamble responsibly etc etc, just know that the house always wins! But both of these moves I agree with because it was an unregulated market with a lot of shady stuff going on in the background, more of which is probably still to leak out. One of the CS:GO gambling sites was under the jurisdiction of a country with some very lax financial laws as well, I forget which and what country, but yeah.

[Infinity]

This is a good step forward for Valve & Twitch. After the recent fiasco regarding online gambling its good that they are finally taking action. I do remember seeing a few gambling streams on some games for Twitch so hopefully they are gone now.

[Solace]

Personally I think it's terrible that Valve allowed this to go on for so long. It literally encouraged children to bet for skins with mum and dads credit card. I used to have alot of respect for those involved in the "scandal" such as TheSyndicateProject, but now I just find that I can't trust him at his word considering he owned part of CS:GO Lotto!

I'm glad that Valve and Twitch are cracking down on this issue.

[Three of Seven]

ProSyndicate hasn't been trustworthy for a long time, nither of the two involved with CS:GO lotto were, always pretty shady. Though there are a lot more names involved. Also the person in the video isn't your friend, they are an entertainer, there is little point trusting anyone you don't know, you can value their opinions and like them, never put trust into the mix though, unless you know them personally!

I also don't see what is entertaining about watching someone gamble for skins on stream or video, seems a bit odd, but hey, whatever people are into! People watch poker and all sorts of stuff.

Valve will only have cracked down on it now because of public outrage, trading through the Steam market makes a nice tasty profit. While they were never directly involved in the running of these sites, they may have turned a blind eye.

[Solace]

ProSyndicate hasn't been trustworthy for a long time, nither of the two involved with CS:GO lotto were, always pretty shady. Though there are a lot more names involved. Also the person in the video isn't your friend, they are an entertainer, there is little point trusting anyone you don't know, you can value their opinions and like them, never put trust into the mix though, unless you know them personally!

I also don't see what is entertaining about watching someone gamble for skins on stream or video, seems a bit odd, but hey, whatever people are into! People watch poker and all sorts of stuff.

Valve will only have cracked down on it now because of public outrage, trading through the Steam market makes a nice tasty profit. While they were never directly involved in the running of these sites, they may have turned a blind eye.

Also the Class Action that has been brought against ProSyndicate and TmarTn, also Valve I think as well have named in the lawsuit? I can't quite remember. Still its all rather crappy, doesn't really affect them in the long run they have millions in their bank accounts so why should they care?

[pintDMG]

Valve will only have cracked down on it now because of public outrage, trading through the Steam market makes a nice tasty profit. While they were never directly involved in the running of these sites, they may have turned a blind eye.

Quite precisely. The existence of these sites was never a secret. There's no point pretending Valve didn't know what was going on. They created a multi-billion dollar gambling industry with their in-game economies, and they knew just how flimsy their excuse for doing it on their own service was - let alone when third parties do it.

Their statement also seems much more focused on formal breaches of their ToS than actually getting rid of said gambling industry - they focus on the bots that scrape the site and all that, instead of actually cracking down on gambling itself. Granted, they can't reasonably do much more without opening a huge other can of worms, but they could at least make an effort to properly distance themselves from that mess.