Minors are losing their money with popular FPS 'Skin Betting', the manufacturers are charged with commissions

ByGchampeau

Valve's FPS game released in 2012 "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive"Is a game that boasts high popularity around the world and is also adopted as one of e sports events. In April 2016, a four-day tournament was held in the arena, the home of the NHL team, and the number of online viewers reached 71 million. However, behind the popular game, there are people who lose a lot of money, due to "skin gambling", minors are involved as well.

Virtual Weapons Are Turning Teen Gamers Into Serious Gamblers - Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-virtual-guns-counterstrike-gambling/


In August 2013, Valve became Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO)Introduce skinsDid. This is a substitute that weapon performance does not change, but looks change, it is possible to make official dealings in the community market. If you do it well, you can purchase the game purchase price with money sold skins and items, and even purchase a new Steam game.

Counterstrike: Global Offensive - Arms Deal
http://blog.counter-strike.net/armsdeal/


Although purchasing such "skins" and items is not particularly novelty as online games, the number of CSGO players seems to have increased by 16 times in two years, now, almost every 380 The player is playing the game. The reason is in the prosperity of "skin gambling" by betting tradable skins.

One of the examples taken up by Bloomberg is the story of Mr. Sven, a 16-year-old boy in the Netherlands. He came to be interested in having friends listening to the story that there are people who earn tens of thousands of dollars on skins, and they do skin gambling. I am totally interested in leaning skin gambling more than CSGO itself, and it seems that the time of playing CSGO itself is decreasing. Mr. Sven uses the "CSGO Lounge", a major site, which information on the site is owner, what kind of law it is, what consumer protection is like, etc. Although it is enough, "We trust because many people in the community are using it, and Vavle is also approved," Svens is using with confidence.

The CSGO lounge is a site visited by 38 million people in a month, which means that there are five times as many users as sports betting site Bovada.lv. The bet is "Who will win the competing team (person)", the average wager is $ 134,000 (about 15 million yen), the battle between "Luminosity" and "Fnatic" attracted attention I heard that $ 1.2 million (about 134 million yen) was betted. However, it is said that this amount of money is moving behind the scenes, and in professional games you can see matches suspected to be fixed.

Valve is not unreasonable, but contacts the CSGO lounge and expels seven players from the event sponsored by himself. Furthermore, we prohibited professional players, staff teams "betting against battles", "contact with high-value gambler" and "sharing internal information". However, no visible measures were taken on the gaming site.

In the first place, the gambling site is a site made with Valve software, and it seems that if CSGO skins are sold there, 15% commission enters Valve. According to research company SuperData, CSGO was sold 21 million books in 4 years, and sales were 566 million dollars (about 63.4 billion yen). And the number of people who participated in the bet in 2015 is more than 3 million people, it is said that 2.3 billion dollars (about 257 billion yen) is moving.

Valve's unique point is that it has a mechanism to transfer virtual items to third party items. This third party site is mostly a gaming site. As mentioned above, there is also a site that places skills on professional team battles, but some sites do gambling which does not have any relation with CSGO. In this site, called "roulette", each person betting items, a certain number or more or when a prescribed time comes, a lottery is held, and one person who took the winning totals the item bet A mechanism is adopted. The Valve logo is also displayed on these sites, but with the notice that "Please do not write on Valve or Steam's forums even if there is anything".

In the United States, sports betting is illegal in 46 states. The CSGO lounge does not restrict access based on the location information of the access source, and many Americans are considered to be participating.

Blythe Blum, a lawyer familiar with this type of problem, says, "It will not be doubt that regulations will catch up soon, the" sad days "of those who operate this kind of site will come." Also, under the lawyer Ryan Morrison specializing in legal matters related to games, it seems that more than 24 consultations have been received in the past 4 months to lose money with skin gaming and to appeal Valve. Many consultants are underage, and if it is a big case, there are things of thousands of dollars. It seems that Mr. Morrison has already been talking about skin betting, but Valve who is the party is strictly expressed as "It looks like an indie game company with just 10 employees."