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Valve reveals what games made the most money on Steam in 2024
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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2024
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The dark open secret here is that counterstrike (and potentially dota) made the most money due to being used as a vehicle for gambling
And the dark non-secret is that them and basically all the other top-grossing multiplayer games on the list are there because gambling is also their primary source of income.
I know you mean the general gambling of loot boxes, but no, I meant, literal gambling on 3rd party s(h)ites. CS2 skin gambling. Which iirc most other games are not doing.
I know, I was more expanding on your comment mocking the prevelence and acceptance of gambling by the industry as whole. That said, quite a few other the others do have external markets for selling accounts, often with rare items (from lootbox gambling) being a major factor in the value. I know my War Thunder account is worth well over a grand at this point, for example, because of some of the rare drops I have on it.
Ah gotcha. Thanks for the explanation. I'd argue reselling of accounts is nowhere near as bad as skin gambling though. It doesn't trigger the gambling addicts.
It absolutely still can, but its not quite as enticing. For example, you open a lootbox, get all the slot machine animations (usually with misleading visuals to play up your odds) and then a glowing red "legendary" item. You don't know how much its worth without looking it up, but you do still get the risk and payoff regardless. Even if you can't resell if, it can still be enough for people to get addicted to. If anything, its worse in a lot of new ways because its usually harder to avoid (Ie, mobile or sports games where lootboxes are needed to play the game) and can't be cashed out. The sunk cost without any way to cash out is often an intentional decision to to help keep users (esspecially those gambling) from leaving. You can see this esspecially in games that go to great lengths to show you your "earnings" at every turn. They're known as anchor purchases if I remeber right.
I insist that this is nowhere near the same as actual gambling with skins on slots and such. Those are much much worse.
What is that?
Here's a good start https://youtu.be/v6jhjjVy5Ls
Basically, Valve's game, Counter Strike sells cosmetics for the game. They can be bought from through in-game lootboxes (a form of gambling itself, but not what's being refrenced here) or, notably, from other players in an open market. Valve provides the infrastructure for managing this, but doesn't charge players for its use or otherwise moderate it. For a comparison, when NFTs were popular and people were saying it was already a solved problem with fewer issues, markets like what Valve set up for Counter-Strike cosmetics were the existing, non-blockchain version.
Ultimately, as this is an open market, with free trading, this has significant benifits and significant downsides. On one hand, I can buy hundreds of $0.02 skins to use in the game without every touching the $3 lootboxes, or can trade items with friends or other players. On the other hand, this is an largely unregulated market. Valve controls the "wallets" but doesn't have direct say over trade negotiations, and governments are either ignorant or intentionally looking away. This means scams, money launderers and illeagal or sketchy casinos can use Counter Strike Cosmetics as a currency or intermediary without having to fear oversight or law enforcement.
These casinos are the gambling being refered to here. Because they have have effectively no oversight, they can use every scheme in the book to abuse their players from rigging results, to ignoring normal casino legal payout rates, to advertising to children, to using bureaucracy to make receaving payouts as slow and difficult as possible. The casions advertise aggressively and are able to make millions and millions off this.
The reason Counter Strike, and to a lesser extent DotA benifit from this is because the items being used in this, are cosmetics in their games. As the only practical way to use these cosmetics (besides selling them) is in-game this encourages players to play the game. For example, if a player wins a jackpot in the casino, they might play a round of Counter Strike to show off their valuable new cosmetic item before the sell it. This adds to the games population and acts to advertising the costmetics in-game.
Thanks, I'm familiar with the lootbox mechanics in valve's games, but had no idea this kind of gambling existed...
No other games have a direct fake money to real money pipeline. The trade system, and its API for external use, make it super easy to run those sites.
They could take the API away, but I doubt that would actually kill the off-site gambling scene if the trade system itself is kept. As long as you can give your items to someone else, they will have ways of extracting real money from people and if they can do so in a way that greatly benefits themselves over the users (as with gambling for the skins), they will continue to do so. But at least Valve wouldn't be profiting off it, in that case.
It's kinda wild to me how the problem used to just be getting scammed out of your money or your items (or both) because these kinds of 3rd party, black market things have existed for MMOs and other games with trade systems for decades but you were just buying and selling straight up with little to no protections from the developers. But then in recent years, they've gone from just being resellers to casinos where you wager your skins.
Valve cracked down on dota gambling many years ago and since then, i dont think it is a thing anymore. However, normal gambling(for dota games or conventional sports) is the primary sponsor of most dota tournaments/teams.
Coffeezilla did a 3-part series about how CS2 skin gambling is flourishing and hooking children as young as 12 and Valve is profiting from its inaction to crack down on it.
But they did shut down the dota 2 gambling. I dont know why cs is different.
I don't see why valve is responsible tho? Blame the gambling sites.
Buying them randomly and being able to trade them is the a distinct decision and it powers this industry. They could shut this off immediately if they wanted to, but they profit from it.
So we take away the market functionality from all players because 3rd party sites misuse it for gambling?
What a dumbshit take, sorry to say.
The only thing that's dumbshit is your simplistic understanding of how the world works and how these systems interplay
Ah yes, lets blame an unrelated platform instead of the ones that are abusing it.
Bold of you to call me simplistic lmaooo.
Items for those games are also the preferred way for Account Hijackers to move money out of the target accounts.
The hijacker will use steam funds or the saved payment methods to buy Dota items worth a few cents for a much higher price from a chain of accounts to move the money.
Interestingly there is a session cookie stealing Trojan that enables Hijackers to do this even when the account has 2fa enabled. The session cookie eliminates the need for the 2fa code from the app or email for login, and steam only asks for additional codes if you want to sell an item over 1€.
I didn't even know this was possible until someone showed this to me live on a vbox and a honey pot account with 2fa email codes enabled and like 5€ steam funds.