Valve Clamping Down On Sites That Potentially Let Children Gamble

Valve, the entertainment software and technology company that specializes in online and mobile gaming, is finally getting tough with the “gambling ecosystem” that has sprung up around many of its games, according to a report from The Next Web.

The gaming company is threatening to ban users and websites that encourage gambling on its games because Valve is, quite literally, tired of underage kids spending their parents’ money on these online pursuits.

Valve launched a feature on its Steam platform that allowed users to trade in-game items for money or other products, but the internet soon corrupted and pirated this feature — as the internet is wont to do — and an ecosystem developed around the feature as spinoff websites launched and grew that allowed users to bet these items for actual money.

And, of course, since many of Valve’s users are children and these sites and practices are largely unregulated and unsupervised, a lot of children were betting money on these sites.

“We’d like to clarify that we have no business relationships with any of these sites,” Erik Johnson, a Valve spokesman, said in a statement. “We are going to start sending notices to these sites requesting they cease operations through Steam.”

This, of course, has led to a lot of negative publicity for Valve and controversy after a number of YouTube stars were recently discovered promoting some of these gambling sites that they claimed were independently owned when they, in fact, owned them or financially benefited from the gambling taking place on them.

Bloomberg has estimated Valve’s gambling ecosystem at about $7.4 billion in bets this year alone and projects it to grow to $22.6 billion by 2020.

So, even though Valve appears to be doing all it can to cut down on illegal and illicit underage gambling on its platforms, it remains to be seen how successful its efforts will actually be.