Etter en bølge med skandaler knyttet til gambling med skins fra Counter-Strike: Global Offensive har Valves Erik Johnson skrevet et åpent brev der han forsvarer selskapets standpunkt og lover at Valve skal slå ned på de som bryter brukervilkårene på spillbutikken Steam. Ettersom gamblingsider ofte benytter falske kontoer (bots) på Steam for å distribuere skins, bryter de med vilkårene og kan bli utestengt.
Valve har selv blitt saksøkt av spillere på grunn av selskapets tilknytning til disse gamblingsidene, og selv om de neppe vil bli dømt har de tydeligvis fått nok av at en tredjepart tjener penger med deres hjelp.
Her er brevet fra Valves Erik Johnson i sin helhet:
"In 2011, we added a feature to Steam that enabled users to trade in-game items as a way to make it easier for people to get the items they wanted in games featuring in-game economies.
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. 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.
These sites have basically pieced together their operations in two-part fashion. First, they are using the OpenID API as a way for users to prove ownership of their Steam accounts and items. Any other information they obtain about a user's Steam account is either manually disclosed by the user or obtained from the user's Steam Community profile (when the user has chosen to make their profile public). Second, they create automated Steam accounts that make the same web calls as individual Steam users.
Using the OpenID API and making the same web calls as Steam users to run a gambling business is not allowed by our API nor our user agreements. We are going to start sending notices to these sites requesting they cease operations through Steam, and further pursue the matter as necessary. Users should probably consider this information as they manage their in-game item inventory and trade activity."
Dette ser ut til å være en dødsdom for de mange gamblingsidene inntil de finner en vei utenom, og det gjenstår å se hva dette betyr for bruktmarkedet der man kan kjøpe og selge skins.