How Valve is Profiting from Steam's Back-Door Casinos

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Strong rec crtasm · 2023-04 · on “Ban all gambling adverts, say more than half of Britons”

More people need to see interviews such as those in the People Make Games video "How Valve is Profiting from Steam's Back-Door Casinos" - skip to 15mins for them. [this video]

Recommends maxbond · 2022-11 · on “A lobbying blitz made sports betting ubiquitous”

> This is inane bullshit. It's a video game. I think you may be unaware of the extent to which players, including children, are engaging in real-money gambling at the periphery of video games. Here's some recent reporting on the topic. [this video] Tl;Dw there's a thriving, multibillion dollar gray market for gambling with cosmetic items in games, as well as a market for trading these items for real money. Together this creates stealth real money casinos.

Recommends follower · 2023-03 · on “Facebook is aggressively going after LLaMA repos with DMCA's”

For people interested in this topic, the "People Make Games" channel on YouTube have a couple of related videos with original research/interviews: * "How Valve is Profiting from Steam's Back-Door Casinos": < [this video] > * "Working at Valve: 'A Fearless Adventure' or 'Lord of the Flies'?": < [LINK] >

Recommends drngdds · 2023-11 · on “Steam Deck OLED”

It's not even just loot boxes, but them letting people gamble with the items (which can be worth a lot of money!) on unregulated gambling sites that allow minors. It's insidious stuff. Good video on it: [this video]

Recommends pityJuke · 2025-02 · on “Valve releases Team Fortress 2 code”

> Underage gambling in the sense of spending real money to redeem things that may be impossible to redeem without spending it? Critically, Valve allows you to trade items. This results in a couple of downstream effects: 1. Items have real-world value because they can be traded for money outside of Steam. Multiple sites exist for people to convert items into real-world money (certain rare items have been sold for >$1m [0]). 2. As these items have value, they can serve as a surrogate for money in casinos, or for sports betting. 3. This can even lead to money laundering [1]. As such, skins should be considered money, but the sites running these services don't. Therefore, it is trivial for a chi

Recommends crtasm · 2025-12 · on “Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers”

Their games and systems tie into huge gambling operations on 3rd party sites If you have 30mins for a video I recommend People Make Games' documentary on it [this video]

Cites AlexandrB · 2022-11 · on “Genesis' Crypto-Lending Unit Is Suspending Withdrawals in Wake of FTX Collapse”

Steam makes it possible, but this has also created a gambling black market: [this video] Anything that can be easily traded for currency can also act as currency so you quickly fall down the KYC rabbit hole if you want to - for example - keep children from gambling.

Cites jerf · 2022-12 · on “The Child Is the Teacher: A Life of Maria Montessori”

I went with the total honesty approach. It doesn't seem to have affected them negatively in my case. I mean, I still enjoy Santa Claus to some degree. I don't think thinking it's real is a critical component of the experience. My kids enjoy the elf on the shelf sort of thing, and they were always fully aware the elf is not actually getting up to shenanigans at night. Nevertheless it's fun for the entire family, because it stretches us parents to be creative a little bit every night as well. Most recently the elf was starring as Batman in a three-night, three-act structure in which he menanced Joker, then the tables were turned with the Joker having hijacked the Batmobile and running over Bat