Real shady stuff and definitely immoral. The most telling part of this whole debacle for me came from a (now deleted) tweet by TmarTn[1] where he states:<p>> That being said, everything we've done up until this point has been legal, that has been a #1 priority of ours. The day it becomes illegal is the day we cease activity.<p>So just because something is apparently not illegal (questionable, actually), it is apparently an acceptable thing to do. Hopefully legal action is successful against these frauds.<p>[1]: <a href="http://archive.is/wHdZG" rel="nofollow">http://archive.is/wHdZG</a>
The fact that these YouTubers are using their own site to make these insane videos where they win thousands of dollars is disgusting. All of the teenagers and children who watch them are spending their mothers' credit cards on these basically-a-scam websites thinking they are going to win thousands of dollars. This is gambling, this is extremely shady, and these guys need to be stopped.
Oh how video games have changed. They've gone from sucking up all the quarters a kid had to turning them into a gambling addict and draining their parents' credit card.<p>Maybe they've not changed quite so much.
Class action lawyers will have a field day with these guys. Especially their attempts to coverup, add disclaimers, etc, after the fact.<p>IANAL, but business fraud statutes are extremely broad. For consumers in California for example,
"any unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business act or practice" or "unfair, deceptive, untrue or misleading advertising" have a civil penalty of $2,500 per incident (for example, if 100,000 people were persuaded to visit their website, that might be $250,000,000 in damages). These are civil claims, where only a simple majority of the jury is needed.<p>When someone has to say their actions are "perfectly legal", they're usually running afoul of several laws they aren't aware of. Especially in an Internet business where you have potential exposure to so many jurisdictions.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&group=17001-18000&file=17200-17210" rel="nofollow">http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&gr...</a>
This article is wrong, that warning on red was literaly there months before this drama. This is done for many website not only lotto (the website owned by the youtuber).
Absolutely fantastic step in the right direction for Valve.
Stop actual scammers, hackers, thieves, and criminals on your system rather than constantly adding "security theater" type features
Those 'legal' gambling scams are all over gaming. Where the F are authorities?<p>Eve Online has a juggernaut EVEBet, plus hundreds of smaller 'oh look I won XX mones its legit' scams per month.<p>Even Nintendo cartridge collecting gets its share of rare cartridge Facebook group Raffle Wheels with shill accounts of the owner of said raffle winning x-xxK items repeatedly.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnXeFDQqBQw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnXeFDQqBQw</a> , one of the "winner" suckers not acknowledging the reality he got scammed(probably because he runs illegal raffle wheels too, which he admits at the end, mind blown :o) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCeq--49Fu4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCeq--49Fu4</a>
There are so many of these sites, some sit behind a proxy because they are somewhat illegal in a lot of countries, e.g <a href="https://ezskinz.org/" rel="nofollow">https://ezskinz.org/</a>. It's basically the wild west for these sites, no regulation, no liability, just people making a load of money off of kids, it's sickening.
When did gamers become such divas? Some of these skins cost more than realworld weapons. If this craving for fashion and bright colours holds, perhaps realworld gun ranges won't be so boring: less camo, more camp.
How is buying CSGO skins or whatever different from any other game that sells virtual goods from RNGesus?<p>A.) Why does your kid have your credit card<p>B.) Youtubers have always made money from their viewers