Quote Originally Posted by Flex View Post
Okay that makes sense yes. my example might have been a bit off. But Valve did not create any of these websites used for gambling. All they did was create the skins. A kind of in game currency you can say. Same as many other games. Dota, LoL, Warcraft, Over Watch and many many many others. These people (Owners of the sites) just used the competitive nature of CSGO and the people that play it imo. Not Steam or Valves fault at all
Again I am going to disagree with you. There are many games that has the same mechanics of using real world money to buy a skin or an in-game item. This is a very traditional product based business model; I give you money in exchange for a product. Now, this product has a monetary value, because I am capable of buying it, and thus, if the game allows, I am able to trade it for something of equal value. This is more of a barter economy. Now, if I create an economy like this, the onus lies with me to ensure that there are the necessary control and monitoring processes in place to ensure people don't take advantage of my economy. In the real world, money producers include a whole host of security measures to ensure that the money they produce cannot easily be manipulated within the economy it is produced for. The same onus lies with Steam. They have created this economy where skins have a huge monetary value. This is not just a simple "buy a product" business model, this is more leaning towards the model of an economy. And as the creators and managers of this economy, the onus lies with them to ensure proper control of the economy to not allow exploitation. Steam has not done this. They made it possible for external sites to access these barter items. They didn't properly control their own created economy. Other games have done the exact same system as CS:GO, yet they do not let outside influences gain access to their created system and potentially defraud it. I guarantee you that there is a proper black market for CS:GO skins, which is something Steam could have easily prevented by just preventing access to that API, yet they didn't, and thus they are guilty