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

People Make Games · documentary · Watch on YouTube

Games (other)Gaming culture & analysisLaw, policing & justice

What it is

People Make Games investigates the unregulated CS:GO skin gambling economy and Valve's role in it. It includes interviews with people who lost large sums and examines why Valve does not intervene.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN recommends it as well-researched reporting on skin gambling, especially its effect on minors, in threads about gambling and Valve.

  • 5 people recommended it
  • 6 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2022, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “More people need to see interviews such as those in the People Make Games video”

    Interviews more people need to see

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

  2. “there's a thriving, multibillion dollar gray market for gambling with cosmetic items in games”

    Multibillion gray market gambling with cosmetic items

    maxbond, 2022-11 · Recommendation · in “A lobbying blitz made sports betting ubiquitous”

  3. “the "People Make Games" channel on YouTube have a couple of related videos with original research/interviews”

    Original research and interviews on Valve gambling

    follower, 2023-03 · Recommendation · in “Facebook is aggressively going after LLaMA repos with DMCA's”

  4. “Good video on it”

    Item gambling on unregulated sites allowing minors

    drngdds, 2023-11 · Recommendation · in “Steam Deck OLED”

  5. “Some video resources that might be useful”

    Video resource on skin gambling and minors

    pityJuke, 2025-02 · Recommendation · in “Valve releases Team Fortress 2 code”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: steam, cs:go, skin gambling, valve, regulation

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