Steam removes momentary block of controversial CS:GO gambling site

Steam has unblocked a URL for a Counter-Strike:GO gambling site. This was initiated by volunteer moderators after the site was found to be owned by the owners of two well-known CS:GO YouTube channels. They advertised the site in their videos.

The channels in question are owned by ‘Syndicate’ and ‘TmarTn’, which publish CS:GO videos, among other things. In these videos they regularly use a gambling site for weapon skins and other items, for example. It was recently revealed that they are the owners of this gambling site, which raises questions about the trustworthiness of the site and its owners. They would never have mentioned that they are the founders of the gambling site themselves. In total, the two channels have about 10 million subscribers.

In response to this news, a group of volunteer Steam moderators had blocked the gambling site’s URL, Eurogamer writes. However, this has since been removed. A moderator explains on Reddit that the site was not intended to be blocked. The use of a blacklist is only intended for sites that are malicious and, for example, known for phishing or malware, he further states. At this time, there would be no indication that this applies to the gambling site in question.

A lawyer tells Eurogamer that it is legally unclear how this case should be assessed. It could be that there are consequences associated with not mentioning so-called paid content. In addition, the rules surrounding online gambling often differ from country to country, making it difficult to estimate the practice of gambling with CS:GO items.