Valve's Counter-Strike - A Video Game Ripe With Gambling
In all fairness, online gambling has made a lot of strides to become a legitimate pastime. It has grown beyond its previous demonization and has currently turned into a worldwide phenomenon. In fact, the total market of digital gambling rakes up behemoth-like numbers that researchers only estimate to rise in the following years.
It has become so big mostly because there is incentivization that, in turn, creates demand. However, let’s not forget that a long-time lack of definitive legislation in markets where it was popular in the underground has also contributed to the popularization of online gambling. Ad-hoc and arbitrarily respected rules have created a wild and sprawling underground structure that many, even minors, came to know the allure of gambling.
There are many things at stake when you try to create a legitimate link between masked gambling and the real world of gambling. You have aspects like corruption, tacit endorsements, and even trickling-down effects that reach even the most vulnerable groups. When an illegitimate gambling sphere parasites a wildly popular IP like a mainstream video game, the situation gets murkier.
This article will serve as a curt and informative address of the current scandal that encompasses Counter-Strike’s current problem with the gambling market that it has created. Commendable exposes and analyses have joined the fray throughout the years, and we write this as an introducing and companion piece.
The system that facilitates gambling
The system that facilitates gambling in the context of the new Counter-Strike games (CS2 and its CS: GO predecessor) is how Valve, the company that houses the game it created, has set up its system of worth, digital commerce, and the idea behind microtransactions.
Microtransactions aren’t something new or original to Valve, but the company’s acumen for creating the perfect storm for a market that has clearly gone out of control. Despite starting in the arcade world of the 90s and continuing with various iterations in various games in the 2000s, the model arguably reached its apex with the implementation of chests, lootboxes, and packs. Nowadays, the system is present in most video games with live servicing, using this profile as a way to provide various benefits and privileges.
What makes Valve’s system so endearing to the point of becoming an anomaly is the fact that there is no tangible advantage to purchasing its lootboxes. While some games give you the possibility to obtain better players (sports games), car parts (racing games), premium in-game currency, or weapon upgrades, boxes for CS simply give you stratified visual customizations, otherwise known as skins.
These skins carry a lot of weight from various points of view. One is their aesthetic value, which is a stratified system of tiers. Another is the psychological gratification that comes from the authoritativeness that a valuable skin provides. The previous factor also creates a subjective, almost artistic value that drives highly funded players to spend astronomical sums on these skins. However, these transactions need a commercial infrastructure.
3rd-party sites provide the infrastructure
What we know about these Counter-Strike transactional websites is, essentially, that they work as commercial hubs.
Steam, Valve’s best-known platform, releases and sells games from all kinds of creators. It also allows players to commercialize their skins at a price based on market value. Some skins are extremely valuable and an immense asset, while others are entry-level items that can generate some money if picked up by someone interested.
Steam’s $1,800 transaction threshold inhibits big-money spending. However, we have finally come to the place where the ‘magic’ happens. In short, 3rd party websites are a chimeric hybrid between online casinos with fast withdrawals and commercial hubs where you can actually sell or buy these items. Essentially, this is a gray market that shows that there is a willing consumer base.
The scariest part is that the whole system is nothing more than a masked gambling ruse. You buy your way into a lootbox, hoping to receive items that can rake up good value on the market. Quite famously, landing a karambit can bag you an immense level of value that has already gone beyond the $1 million mark.
Paying your way into an RNG-like endeavor for the sake of landing something valuable is, for all intents and purposes, akin to a slot machine. Naturally, CS sites have an eBay-like quality that places its focus on bids and offers, thus necessitating someone buy your item in order to receive compensation. A more valuable skin means both more money and higher chances to sell your item faster.
Concerning signs
Many will consider this situation as being a situation ripe with ethical concerns, and they would be perfectly right. The entire system is a masked form of gambling that doesn’t require the taxation policy, strict verification protocol, or minor protection that regulated gambling does.
Minors are, by far, the biggest victims in this situation. As we said, there is no verification protocol about who basically buys these lootboxes and uses them to gamble. You can fill out a prepaid card while lying about your age and use that money to gamble. It matters not if you’re able to turn a profit afterward since the science of gambling shows that this phenomenon can alter you at the neurological level, especially since the minor is in the process of developing.
Another problem is the fact that influencer culture has been actively promoting and pushing this model of gambling. The first ring of issues comes with the promotion of gambling on wide-access platforms (YouTube and Twitch, as opposed to Kick’s open-ended policy with gambling). The second ring comes with scams perpetrated by these content creators who promote sites with rigged reward systems (fake lootboxes).
Conclusion
Investigations with open-ended results or inconclusive solutions have become the norm in many situations ever since this system first arose in the mid-2010s. Thanks to incisive investigations in these last few years, the trend appears to be changing. We can only hope that there will be decisive action that will protect vulnerable people from gambling in a system that was supposed to be all about normal video gaming!