Valve Isn’t Screwing Around
Counter-Strike gambling sites are apparently quite rampant and Valve has no affiliation with any of these. In fact, in an effort to distance itself from the controversy Valve (CS: GO’s publisher and developer) has recently stated that it has zero affiliation with any third-party skin gambling services. Apparently these skins can go for thousands of dollars and Valve does not get anything for the sales.
Today we learned, Valve sent a letter demanding these gambling sites change practices in the next 10 days or the company will “pursue all available remedies including without limitation terminating your accounts.”
The letter in question first appeared last night, though its validity was questioned. Soon after, one of the most popular Counter-Strike gambling sites, CS:GO Big, uploaded a high-resolution version of the letter and announced it would be disabling deposits and temporarily shutting down.
Valve said the following in their letter to these sites:
“We are aware that you are operating one of the gambling sites listed below. You are using Steam accounts to conduct this business. Your use of Steam is subject to the terms of the Steam Subscriber Agreement (“SSA”). Under the SSA Steam and Steam services are licensed for persona, non-commercial use only. Your commercial use of Steam accounts is unlicensed and in violation of the SSA. You should immediately cease and desist further use of your Steam accounts for any commercial purposes. If you fail to do this within ten (10) days Valve will pursue all available remedies including without limitation terminating your accounts.”
Around the same time the letter surfaced, another popular betting site, CS:GO Wild, pinned a tweet pointing towards a video titled “CS:GO gambling sites say goodbye,” cribbing a farewell scene from Furious 7.
We will be making some changes over the next week, in light of the statement released by Valve, to comply with the issues they addressed.
— CSGO2x (@csgo2x) July 14, 2016
Well it appears this story isn’t over anytime soon. What do you think of all this? Tell us in the comments below.