Valve Finally Cracks Down Hard on Gambling


Gambling on Steam has been a pretty controversial topic the last couple of years. Sites had popped up where people could make wagers on all sorts of random things for items in steam games, and people were making and losing a lot of real money.

People were creating gambling sites, and then promoting them via their Youtube channels, pretending they didn’t even own a stake in the sites. It’s all pretty shady, and Value is taking steps to combat this.

image: wikimedia
image: wikimedia

There was speculation that these sites were used for all sorts of bad things, from simple fraud / rigged games, all the way up to international money laundering rings.

They started by cracking down on the CS:GO gambling situation, but then the underworld started to focus on Team Fortress 2 instead, and now that’s where Valve has moved the fight.

image: youtube
image: youtube

Last July, dozens of cease and desist letters went out to the top CS:GO gambling sites, and now they’re culling the TF2 under ground market.

“In July of last year we outlined our position on gambling web sites, specifically noting that Valve has no business relationship with these sites. At that time we also began blocking many CS:GO gambling accounts. You can view the original post here.

“More recently, some gambling web sites started leveraging TF2 items. Today we began the process of blocking TF2 gambling accounts as well. We recommend you don’t trade with these sites.”

Valve has come under pressure from the Washington State Gambling Commission for their API being used to assist in gambling, but they deny any involvement, and are cracking down on people using Steam for illegal gaming sites.