Twitch Pulls Plug on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Skin Gambling
The social video streaming site Twitch has warned its streamers not to broadcast or promote Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on its service.
Principals tied to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have come under fire for not disclosing their ownership interests in the game. Meanwhile, its developer, Valve, has been named in at least two lawsuits, one filed this week by a mother claiming they allowed her young child to gamble on the site.
Just yesterday, Valve announced its crackdown on gambling skins. They began sending out cease-and-desist notices to websites that operate so-called online weapon skin casinos for which CS:GO is one.
This is the full statement released by Twitch:
Today Valve released an announcement clarifying the intended use of Steam’s trading system and OpenID API. Valve specifically notes that 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.”
As a reminder, per Twitch’s Terms of Service, broadcasters are not permitted to stream content that breaks the terms of service or user agreements of third-parties. As such, content in which the broadcaster uses or promotes services that violate Valve’s stated restrictions is prohibited on Twitch. Our Rules of Conduct lists other examples such as playing pirated games and playing on unauthorized private servers.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
