this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2024
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I know you mean the general gambling of loot boxes, but no, I meant, literal gambling on 3rd party s(h)ites. CS2 skin gambling. Which iirc most other games are not doing.
I know, I was more expanding on your comment mocking the prevelence and acceptance of gambling by the industry as whole. That said, quite a few other the others do have external markets for selling accounts, often with rare items (from lootbox gambling) being a major factor in the value. I know my War Thunder account is worth well over a grand at this point, for example, because of some of the rare drops I have on it.
Ah gotcha. Thanks for the explanation. I'd argue reselling of accounts is nowhere near as bad as skin gambling though. It doesn't trigger the gambling addicts.
It absolutely still can, but its not quite as enticing. For example, you open a lootbox, get all the slot machine animations (usually with misleading visuals to play up your odds) and then a glowing red "legendary" item. You don't know how much its worth without looking it up, but you do still get the risk and payoff regardless. Even if you can't resell if, it can still be enough for people to get addicted to. If anything, its worse in a lot of new ways because its usually harder to avoid (Ie, mobile or sports games where lootboxes are needed to play the game) and can't be cashed out. The sunk cost without any way to cash out is often an intentional decision to to help keep users (esspecially those gambling) from leaving. You can see this esspecially in games that go to great lengths to show you your "earnings" at every turn. They're known as anchor purchases if I remeber right.
I insist that this is nowhere near the same as actual gambling with skins on slots and such. Those are much much worse.
What is that?
Basically, Valve's game, Counter Strike sells cosmetics for the game. They can be bought from through in-game lootboxes (a form of gambling itself, but not what's being refrenced here) or, notably, from other players in an open market. Valve provides the infrastructure for managing this, but doesn't charge players for its use or otherwise moderate it. For a comparison, when NFTs were popular and people were saying it was already a solved problem with fewer issues, markets like what Valve set up for Counter-Strike cosmetics were the existing, non-blockchain version.
Ultimately, as this is an open market, with free trading, this has significant benifits and significant downsides. On one hand, I can buy hundreds of $0.02 skins to use in the game without every touching the $3 lootboxes, or can trade items with friends or other players. On the other hand, this is an largely unregulated market. Valve controls the "wallets" but doesn't have direct say over trade negotiations, and governments are either ignorant or intentionally looking away. This means scams, money launderers and illeagal or sketchy casinos can use Counter Strike Cosmetics as a currency or intermediary without having to fear oversight or law enforcement.
These casinos are the gambling being refered to here. Because they have have effectively no oversight, they can use every scheme in the book to abuse their players from rigging results, to ignoring normal casino legal payout rates, to advertising to children, to using bureaucracy to make receaving payouts as slow and difficult as possible. The casions advertise aggressively and are able to make millions and millions off this.
The reason Counter Strike, and to a lesser extent DotA benifit from this is because the items being used in this, are cosmetics in their games. As the only practical way to use these cosmetics (besides selling them) is in-game this encourages players to play the game. For example, if a player wins a jackpot in the casino, they might play a round of Counter Strike to show off their valuable new cosmetic item before the sell it. This adds to the games population and acts to advertising the costmetics in-game.
Thanks, I'm familiar with the lootbox mechanics in valve's games, but had no idea this kind of gambling existed...
Here's a good start https://youtu.be/v6jhjjVy5Ls
No other games have a direct fake money to real money pipeline. The trade system, and its API for external use, make it super easy to run those sites.
They could take the API away, but I doubt that would actually kill the off-site gambling scene if the trade system itself is kept. As long as you can give your items to someone else, they will have ways of extracting real money from people and if they can do so in a way that greatly benefits themselves over the users (as with gambling for the skins), they will continue to do so. But at least Valve wouldn't be profiting off it, in that case.
It's kinda wild to me how the problem used to just be getting scammed out of your money or your items (or both) because these kinds of 3rd party, black market things have existed for MMOs and other games with trade systems for decades but you were just buying and selling straight up with little to no protections from the developers. But then in recent years, they've gone from just being resellers to casinos where you wager your skins.