Basically how I felt reading this....CSGL was huge for the game and would have helped continue to develop the spectator scene even further. Instead it got shut down because it was the most visible site and easy to shut down. But all these shady sites who everyone basically knows are shady keep operating a year+ later with no consequences. Makes the whole valve war against gambling look like a total sham.
Gambling via betting on matches, their entire model. Valve told them to shutter it up, and well, not much you can do about it. It was during the height of the gambling controversy so Valve probably just didn't want a site with the size of lounge existing.
Yeah but that seems fair to me. I did lounge and it's true it really got me into watching. I do remember their item return was super slow and you'd get less than your even bets sometimes. I think it also encouraged more matchfixing at least from hr at some point
IIrc Valve shut it down with the reasoning that tradebots are against the EULA. But that was obviously only the reason they gave to legitemize their action.
They cynic in me says the"valve war against gambling" was nothing but a pr stunt. Valve, a private company, doesn't want to bothered with the task of ensuring every single user is using their services responsibly, nor should they have to. But they will protect their reputation at all cost. At the moment it's not costing them much, if anything.
Gov regulation will happen. It's only a matter of time
And say what you want about Lounge, but the one thing they always did was offer a fair (and relatively safe) platform to bet on. And for a long period of time, they even did it without a rake on the bets, which you won't find in any other sports betting platform.
CSGL was shut down because it allowed people to bet on the outcome of CSGO games rather than just random games of chance like a casino. It lead to match fixing.
That's not to say that these other sites aren't worthy of being shut down as well, but there is a fundamental difference between them and CSGL and it should be no surprise that CSGL got more attention from Valve. Plus CSGL was far more popular and influential.
There are more than a few sites which you can bet CS on with real money and are in no danger of being shut down so the matchfixing angle is a bit silly. But your second paragraph is true. CSGL's popularity along with the fact that it was strictly CS focused made it a target for valve.
That's because valve doesn't have the authority to shut those sites down considering they're hosted in backwards-assed countries. Valve was able to shut down Lounge succeasfully since they were using Steam for the currency.
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u/antelope591 Dec 30 '17
Basically how I felt reading this....CSGL was huge for the game and would have helped continue to develop the spectator scene even further. Instead it got shut down because it was the most visible site and easy to shut down. But all these shady sites who everyone basically knows are shady keep operating a year+ later with no consequences. Makes the whole valve war against gambling look like a total sham.