After the huge bout of controversy that recently arose surrounding gambling in "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive," Twitch has announced that it's banning streams that feature gambling sites.
Valve got sued recently by plaintiffs claiming the service was making money from gambling involving "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" skins that could be won on suspect third-party sites. GameSpot reports that not only did Valve release a statement saying it had nothing to do with these third-party gambling sites, but also that Twitch is striking down streams that feature these sites (that use the Steam API in an illegal manner).
How does skin gambling in "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" work? Sites like CSGOLotto pretty much just a lottery, where a bunch of players—gamblers—bet on a pot by adding weapon skins to it. A random number generator picks out a winner, who takes the whole pot of skins.
Their worth is exactly what their monetary worth is in the Steam Store when players buy or trade for them, and players can also sell the skins they have through third-party sites that enable sales. It's also quite illegal, as a lot of "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's" players are minors, and underage gambling is even more iffy than regular, unregulated gambling is.
Twitch emphasized that this behavior is now permissible under their terms of service, specifically pointing at use and content that also violates the rules and terms set by other entities and parties—in this particular case, Valve, who operates Steam. On their part, Valve is also banning them from using the OpenID API that allows the sites from getting into Steam for their operations.
GameSpot also cites a Bloomberg report that reveals around $2.3 billion in "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" skins were bet on last year. On that note, it's highly possible that the amount has increased to around $7.4 billion in skins, and the year's not even over yet.
