Government Agency Tells Valve To Stop “Facilitating” Gambling
The Washington State Gambling Commission has told Valve in a statement released earlier in the week that it “stop facilitating gambling” on Steam. The issue seems to be concerned with the use of Steam skins, which a variety of sites have been using to run gambling systems that use the skins as currency to bet with.
The main issue with this is that the gambling is completely unregulated. It also potentially allows those who are underage to gamble. While Valve has recently begun to send out cease and desist letters to these types of sites, the state agency thinks they should be doing more to make sure it doesn’t continue to take place.
According to a statement released by the Gambling Commission, they first contacted Valve in February but have now want swift action to be taken by the game company to show that they are compliant with all state gambling laws.
“Based on the information it has gathered, the Gambling Commission directed Valve Corporation to stop facilitating the use of ‘skins’ for gambling activities through its Steam Platform. The Gambling Commission expects Valve to take whatever actions are necessary to stop third party websites from using ‘skins’ for gambling through its Steam Platform system, including preventing these sites from using their accounts and ‘bots’ to facilitate gambling transactions.”