Jake

Idle Thumbs 270: BIG GAME HUCKSTER$$$$

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Idle Thumbs 270:

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BIG GAME HUCKSTER$$$$

This week we do our best to unpack the criminal scandal surrounding Counter-Strike: GO gambling sites and the streamers who secretly own them while publicly promoting them, then we play a game exclusively about criminals packing things.

Discussed: Counter-Strike: GO, Asemblance, Fitz Packerton, Demon's Souls, Imbroglio, Escape Velocity, System Shock (Remastered)

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I'm 1 minute in. Did Jake make a secret bet with himself to see how many times he could say 'doy' before someone called him out on it?

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I'm 1 minute in. Did Jake make a secret bet with himself to see how many times he could say 'doy' before someone called him out on it?

No, a more classic scenario unfolded: Nick said "doi" once and then I kept saying it, and somehow in the edit Nick's creation and quiet instigation of the mess that ensued was left out of the story.

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No, a more classic scenario unfolded: Nick said "doi" once and then I kept saying it, and somehow in the edit Nick's creation and quiet instigation of the mess that ensued was left out of the story.

 

It's all in there!

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It's all in there!

Oh I thought Nick's first doi was off mic. Listening now. Doi

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That would have been a real slyboots move from Chris.

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For clarification, CS:GO does have skin drops, so that is probably how new money gets introduced to the economy. And the only thing you need to get drops is free time, which of course kids have bullshit amounts of. 

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For clarification, CS:GO does have skin drops, so that is probably how new money gets introduced to the economy. And the only thing you need to get drops is free time, which of course kids have bullshit amounts of. 

 

Right but what Jake was asking is, where does the actual liquid cash come from? Like, are kids actually losing money? Or are they mainly just losing skins they obtained without sinking cash into them?

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Right but what Jake was asking is, where does the actual liquid cash come from? Like, are kids actually losing money? Or are they mainly just losing skins they obtained without sinking cash into them?

 

A mixture of both. Some are surely only losing the skins that they've accrued over playing time/trading and nothing more, which amounts to under a hundred dollars at most by itself.

 

It's hard to know for sure the breakdown of where kids are getting the money, but (hopefully) only a small amount of them are in the category of "see this video, become instilled with false hope, drop 100 bucks off of moms credit card and lose it all". Many are using a combination of real money, drops and smart trading to build huge inventories out of a small starting amount.

 

EDIT: I wanna also mention that, despite what it sounds like above, there are still a significant amount of people who are $100+ high rollers in CSGOLotto. I wasn't familiar with this particular site, and it seems to be a smaller community aimed at wayyy more ambitious players, with bigger payouts. 

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Aside from skins, weapon cases are also drops, which require a key ($2.50) to open. And of course cases can also be bought on the market for as of now about $0.25. I think this is where you can really pull kids in since the dollar figures required are much more modest and the potential return is so high. The whole gambling industry attached to this just helps pump up the dollar figures attached to the skins...amounts that compel people to buy keys or whatever who otherwise might not have. Honestly what the core system reminds me of from my childhood is baseball cards. Affordable packs with "rare" inserts that according to some magazine had a huge value...I remember the appeal going from getting my favorite players to almost exclusively wanting rare cards of whoever (look at how ugly the most valuable skins are...it has nothing to do with looks and everything to do with rarity). At least with cards there wasn't some easily accessible gambling system attached to the whole thing that I'd have been too young to fully understand. Honestly I find the whole skin system as it's currently implemented really gross and it doesn't make me look kindly on Valve in the least.

 

BTW I think I saw someone say that these gambling sites get their money from things like ads...I'm not sure if there's a casino rake equivalent or not.

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So much to chew on here.  First, kudos to H3H3 and the researchers for such a well executed expose.   Second, WTF Valve, really?  It's not credible you had NO IDEA there was gambling going on around your game.  I no longer trust Valve, in any situation, after this it's foolish to do so.

 

Third, I think Chris put it out there very well.  Promoting and lying to lure teens and children into gambling is among the lowest of low pursuits.  I hope these Huckers$$$ get prosecuted or lose in civil court, big time.

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On the message about phishing etc. appearing and later being removed: It sounds to me exactly like something an automated system would add to outgoing links to sites where the SSL certificate has expired or is otherwise invalid for some reason. I think Nick is right and the robots are to blame.

 

Unfortunately, as it happened in the past, I have no way to prove this.

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I just wanted to reinforce that what those guys were doing is incredibly sleazy even without the getting-kids-into-gambling aspect! I know we all know that, I'd just like to make it clear that this is not only a "think of the children!" scenario.

 

Also, I don't see a problem with the gambling by itself, but if one of the big sports betting websites started a series of videos where people discover their site and go on to win huge prizes without disclosing those are ads, they'd be in all sorts of trouble. It gets ugly when a potentially harmful industry like gambling meets the complete lack of regulation of social media/youtube.

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This resedit stuff sounds amazing. I'd love a game jam on a similar principle where you make games with very open data and players are encouraged to mess with them and customise their plays. (this probably already exists)

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Speaking of The Neverhood soundtrack and the word 'doi', I think this is the appropriate track to reference.

 

 

On the subject of CS:GO gambling, I imagine the availability of pre-paid Steam Currency cards through supermarkets and major retailers makes it really easy for children to enter the market. They can either ask relatives to buy them pre-paid cards as birthday or Christmas gifts, or convert any cash gifts or allowance directly into Steambucks - no debit or credit card required.

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I went to idlethumbs.casino and was pleased.

 

I am also pleased by the introduction of new musical flourishes.

 

Per Video Game Attorney (@mrryanmorrison), who was my gateway into learning about this crazy scandal, besides the outrage that they're skirting legality to allow children to gamble, the lack of disclosure is Very Extremely Illegal and if the FTC comes down hard on the guys who own the website they could very well face jail time.

 

He did an extremely long podcast/interview that discusses this stuff. I'm just now diving into it. 

 

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Valve has been providing tech support because these sites are using a Valve API. I'm not suggesting Valve should be absolvered, but if the sites weren't under heavy scrutiny right now no one would be concerned with Valve's tech and back end involvement. This current scandal is about the way in which the site owners conducted business and not the way money or other tokens of value are introduced into the system. Should there be regulation? Almost certainly. Will Valve end up on the regulated side of things? We shall see, hopefully.

 

Idle Thumbs Gun Skins

 

AWP Puffin

M1A1-S Wizard Battle-Scarred

Karambit Far Cry

UMP-45 Golden Bloom Factory New

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If you play Asemblance (And you should) it's worth going for other endings beyond the first one. They're not really "alternate" endings since each one requires playing a bit further in, and some of them require you having seen other endings before you can reach them. I don't think there's any major revelations to those endings since the game is very cryptic, but it's a short enough game that you should attempt to see at least three of them.

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I just wanted to reinforce that what those guys were doing is incredibly sleazy even without the getting-kids-into-gambling aspect! I know we all know that, I'd just like to make it clear that this is not only a "think of the children!" scenario.

There are so many layers to the dirtbag onion. These streamer/youtube guys just have absolutely no moral compass. 

 

Like, I know there are sleazy people out there, but it's still shocking when you see the kind of stuff people will do.

 

The only part of this whole thing that I find amusing instead of saddening and angering is the absurd attempts at "apology." They're like, "I'm sorry that people felt misled; I will be more transparent in the future. I love you guys!"

 

Yeah, you clearly love your subscribers and don't think of them as a bunch of suckers at all.

 

Just seriously fuck all these people, and Valve, too.

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I was pretty excited to hear my reader mail about ResEdit on this episode! Hopefully it wasn't too inaccurate-- I was trying to remember stuff from when I was, like, eight years old or whatever.

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I finished listening to that podcast. It's full of quite good information, I'd recommend it if you're interested in the lawyer's perspective.

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I'm just posting to say I'm so excited my mail about System Shock was read. I've never had an email read out on a podcast before, although I've never sent in an email to a podcast before either. I guess that means it would have been super weird if any podcast had read out my email before now, unless the NSA / GCHQ has some internal podcast for that purpose! That would be funny / amazing / totally weird.

 

Anyway, I was so excited / nervous when I heard it being read I almost exploded. It felt like I had some kind of magic power that enabled me to make people say things; then I thought that was a delusional thing to think and felt super self critical; then I managed to centre muyself.

 

Anyway, these forums seem nice. I think I'll hang around :)

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Oh yeah, I did want to add that Escape Velocity is awesome. If anyone is curious about them, the last game, Nova, is available for Windows and modern Mac OS, and there are plug-ins (mods, as mentioned in the podcast) that basically act as total conversions to recreate the other two games in the series.

There have been a lot of open-ended space combat and trading games in that vein, but none have quite captured the fun of EV for me.

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