Valve Says Enough Is Enough, All Steam-Related Gambling Sites To Be Put Down

Valve’s games have been involved in some very shady transactions over the years and none more so than the gambling sites that have made an industry of the practice, which is even expected to rake in as much as $7.4 billion by the end of 2016. However, in the wake of the “Counter Strike: Global Offensive/YouTube” scandal, the company has had no choice but to respond. As a result, Valve has declared that any gambling site that has to do with any game or feature from Steam will be put down for good.

The whole thing started when it was discovered that two YouTube content creators were promoting a gambling website that they both owned without disclosing the information to their viewers. As a result, the couple will likely face monetary charges and perhaps even jail time.

At the same time, a lot of criticism was directed at Valve for allowing the practice in the first place. After a week of not saying anything of substance, the company finally released a statement through their spokesperson Erik Johnson, Bloomberg reports.

“Since then a number of gambling sites started leveraging the Steam trading system, and there’s been some false assumptions about our involvement with these sites,” the statement read. “We’d like to clarify that we have no business relationships with any of these sites. We have never received any revenue from them. And Steam does not have a system for turning in-game items into real world currency.”

There’s no telling how much impact Steam will actually have on these gambling sites, or how long it will take for any observable effect to take place, according to Kotaku. Gambling sites in every industry have existed for as long as the internet has, regardless of the steps taken to prevent them, even when they are outlawed. In any case, Valve’s decision to completely destroy the industry will likely mollify opponents of gambling and infuriate those who operate the sites.