eSports provider lowers the boom on skin gambling

After over a week of intense criticism, the threat of legal actions and a boycott by one developer, eSports provider Valve has finally responded to a skin gambling scandal by warning that its marketplace subsidiary Steam will not allow itself to be used as a vehicle for skin gambling by third party operators.

According to ESPN, Valve has identified third party sites that it considers are in violation of its anti-gambling stance and is currently writing to the operators concerned warning them to cease such operations via Steam under pain of possible legal or other action.

Valve is facing two lawsuits in Connecticut and Florida, alleging that the company knowingly and willingly allowed gambling sites to operate unregulated gambling markets (see previous reports).

Valve claims that it has no business affiliation with any of the sites which are alleged to be offering gambling via cashable skins, and say that it has not profited in any manner from their earnings.

“According to insight and analytics company Narus Advisors, over $7.4 billion will be wagered annually through the Counter-Strike and Dota gambling and betting industries by the end of 2016, based off trends from previous years.

“A total of $3.3 billion of that is through sports books, such as popular site CSGO Lounge, $1.9 billion via lottery sites, such as CSGO Lotto and CSGO Diamonds, and the remaining amount throughout other types of “skin” gambling,” ESPN reports.

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