
Valve Faces Lawsuit Over Video Game Gambling - robocaptain
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-24/valve-faces-lawsuit-over-video-game-gambling
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tinalumfoil
A lawsuit against Valve for gambling violations was really a long time coming
and I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. For those not familiar, CS:GO
contains cosmetic items which are distributed through chests. Chests cost real
money and will randomly give the purchaser a cosmetic item. These cosmetic
items have real-world values ranging from pennies to hundreds of dollars and
can be sold at independent online stores [0] (against Steam's policy, although
this rule is unenforced) or used to buy Steam merchandise (ie. video games).

Of the two people I know who play CS:GO neither play for the matches, but only
use it to gamble. It's worth noting Valve isn't the first or only game to have
these illegal markets built around them [1] but it's by far the largest.

[0] [https://skinxchange.com/](https://skinxchange.com/)

[1] [http://iskmarket.com/](http://iskmarket.com/)

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coralreef
Isn't the biggest difference that the skins have no real world value other
than the market price a person is willing to pay for it? You can't cash them
in like casino chips, they are digital goods with no inherent value, you have
find someone willing to pay for it.

IMO Valve has no responsibility here, as you can use anything as a currency.
The government can't stop you from trading baseball cards.

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xyzzy123
Actually several parties have tried to make the case that sports cards
constitute an illegal lottery, e.g:
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB846202501868224000](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB846202501868224000)

From a brief read around though I couldn't find any successful suits.

