Steam Bans Gambling In Huge Shake-Up To Counter-Strike Markets
It's no secret that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has a huge gambling problem. Non-affiliated websites offer Counter-Strike players the ability to put up their hard-earned skins for potential prizes, up to and including cold-hard cash. It's for this very reason that CS:GO developer Valve has been accused of facilitating online gambling for minors, but since Valve doesn't own any of the sites, the charges have always been dropped.
Gambling remains a problematic aspect of Counter-Strike's extremely active secondary market and one that Valve has largely seemed unable to stop. However, that might have just changed with a new rule that Valve has quietly snuck into Steam's Online Code of Conduct.
Related: Counter-Strike 2 Needs To Solve Valve’s Gambling Problem
As spotted by xMercy_CS on Twitter (with thanks to Kotaku), Steam has added "gambling" to its list of bannable offenses. Under the category of "engage in commercial activity," you can now be banned for gambling on Steam. We should also note that Steam also bans buying or selling Steam accounts, selling Steam gift cards, and other items for real-world cash; all of which still happens, but at least it's there in black and white.
CS:GO's secondary market is something of an abnormality in the world of gaming, where certain items can go for as high as $400,000. Just recently a Danish CS:GO player sold their AK-47 skin for this astronomical figure--the largest in Counter-Strike history. It was so high that the website which listed the transaction had to increase its listing value limit, and there needed to be a go-between to facilitate the exchange.
Those skins achieve such high value for their rarity, but there are plenty of skins that hit the hundreds or even
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