# Forum > News > OC News > Articles and Interviews >  Has Steam legallized gambling for youngers?

## Mcskeen

Have Steam legalized gambling for youngsters?

Gambling in general is a big issue for some people but as competitive gaming is becoming a normal thing for gamers, gambling is as well. If you have a 13 year old boy or girl playing (lets say Counter Strike) with skins and they decide to go bet on their favorite team and lost or won a lot of money, shouldn’t that be illegal since you have to be 18 or even older to bet on like “normal” gambling sites? 
Take (CSGODOUBLE) that’s just like a casino where you place coins on a color and the site will spin for you. Do you think it’s okay to make money on kids that’s addicted to gambling? 




Or just the fact that for example Counter Strike have their cases like a form of gambling and use micro transactions to allow kids or anyone to use a little amount of money at once to gamble.
I personally think the sites should make a age restriction policy that won’t allow “kids” to use the sites.







> Apparently, because Twitch is based in California, giveaways on it fall under the gambling laws of California, so it brings with it a bunch of restrictions. This is supposedly in the terms of service actually, they just haven't been enforcing them, or they just changed it. Towliee got his account suspended for it "earlier this week". But twitch has yet to release an official statement.
> " - We can no longer do subscriber, donator, or (insert monetary benefit) giveaways.
> If we choose to do any kind of giveaway, it must be free to all people in chat, the winner and contestants must be 18+ and be a resident of the United States of America
> If a giveaway is done, the winner must be shown on screen, verified of everything in the above, as well as all contestants entered must be shown so people can verify that they were entered (?) "
> sources: https://twitter.com/NorthernlionLP/s...61452461731840
> TwitLonger â€” When you talk too much for Twitter
> Twitch ToS, relevant part under "Promotions": http://www.twitch.tv/user/legal
> If this turns out to be true, that's gonna suck.






In America alone is it illegal to gamble in some states and CSGODOUBLE is located in one of those states (Delaware) which means they are breaking the law acording to the law in Delaware. The owners clearly don’t care that they are making money on addicted humans or kids for that matter. 
Since our world today is about money would you ever stop to think if this will end? 
I mean the sites that are running these games that allow kids to make thousands of dollars.. 

Please let me know what you think..

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## Kenneth

You know, this topic has been coming up a lot lately as these CS:GO gambling websites have become so main stream. It has gotten to the point that they are now giving big streamers their unique website currency to gamble with on their website, basically meaning the streamers don't have to gamble their own skins anymore. As far as children gambling away hundreds if not thousands of dollars in the form of skins...yea that seems like it might end up being a gigantic issue. 

A great read on some of this information is the AMA with reddit.com's famous /u/VideoGameAttorney. (Link Here) In this AMA somebody asks about the exact same topic, wondering if these gambling sites will be taken down and he replies "They will" pretty confidently. If you click the link you can see it really gets into a heated discussion on "oh well its not illegal in some countries unlike the U.S." and replies to that being similar to "well Valve is U.S. based" so maybe this will have something to do with the confident answer by the VideoGameAttorney. In the end though I am just not sure. To answer your question has steam legalized gambling for youngsters? Legal? I don't know but they sure as hell made it a lot easier for them.

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## Dante

Yep this is very real. "It's just in-game skins bro, not real money!" Pshhh!

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## herkelp

Yes, its just ingame pixels, but if you have gamble'd your way up, thrust me there are money to be earned.

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## nazgul111

Yeah Skin Gambling has become quite mainstream these last couple of months especially, if you want to gamble you gonna gamble, and well kids? well i am of the opinion kids shouldn't be allowed to use the internet, just look at their behavior in say a cs go match, were i to behave in such a way when i was a kid i would of gotten a good old fashioned beating so these kids deserve whatever they get.

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## bt411

I find this law rather hypocritical considering wall street is just another casino with speculation being another form for gambling your money away and you won't see that closed ever. 

Personally i would first question how high the stakes on those sites really are on average. It's likely better for kids to learn not to gamble on very low stakes instead of trying it later at 18 with much more money. This here is also just one form of it, we got those RNG Boxes in many F2P games wich constitutes the same thing essentially - invest money for RNG based uncertain rewards.

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## bt411

i would first question how high the stakes on those sites really are on average. It's likely better for kids to learn not to gamble on very low stakes instead of trying it later at 18 with much more money. This here is also just one form of it, we got those RNG Boxes in many F2P games wich constitutes the same thing essentially - invest money for RNG based uncertain rewards.

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## advanta

> I find this law rather hypocritical considering wall street is just another casino with speculation being another form for gambling your money away and you won't see that closed ever.


Very true.

The online gambling laws in the US aren't really anything to do with protecting people from gambling addiction. They are mainly to serve powerful bricks and mortar casino interests.

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## Roccatex

Well, here in Germany you need to be 16 years old to buy counterstrike, which is basically the age of getting your first school degree(Hauptschule).
From this point you could live an adult live, like working, earning money etc.

In my opinion, and this is just for germany, it's totally ok to gamble on this site then.If you are 5-15 and gamble for CSGO Skins, it's the cashiers fault(the government could come after him big time) who sold you CSGO and the parents fault.

So you can't really gamble, if you can't or should'nt own the game in the first place.And that's how it should be in every country in my opinion.

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## TehVoyager

> contestants must be 18+ and be a resident of the *United States of America*


Well heres one giant stiff quivering middle finger from the great white north. looks like i'll be finding somewhere else to stream.

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## Mcskeen

> Yep this is very real. "It's just in-game skins bro, not real money!" Pshhh!


True but they can still be converted into "real" money.
It's like the people who are really interested in pokemon and some of the pokemon cards value. 
They can just convert in into money by selling it online. 

No matter how you look at it it's still gambling.

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## Laykith

For all the people who think its just pixels or not worth a lot of money I will share on of my closet irl friends story.
So around end of may last year when the new operation came he got a drop in-game worth about €200 on steammarket, he sold it and bought keys to open cases.
He got very lucky and opened a ST M9 Doppler P2 (very expensive knife :3 ) in one of them. Fast forward to his 16th birthday in the end of July, he decided that he would gamble the knife on a jackpot website.
Once again he got very lucky and won the jackpot with 2% chance getting his knife back and about €2500. The following week he continued to try his chances on these websites, he won 6 more times and lost once.
I managed to convince him that he was retarded for playing and that he should sell off the skins for real money (about 28k€) which he did.
It has been almost a year since this happened and my friend still gets days where he just buys a knife for irl money just to gamble and sometimes he gets lucky and wins but gambles it all away minutes later.
I would estimate that he has about 19k€ left so he is still + but gambling away more than 9k€ when you haven't even turned 17 is a pretty huge deal. 

Don't gamble kids, do like me and Poopzoor and trade for profit.  :Smile: )
.

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## HunterHero

Well written article McSkeen. It's definitely gamling and it's been happening for quite some time. Gambling takes form in a lot of different kind of sports, activities and what not.

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## Cyph

This isn't legally gambling. Skins have no legal real world value and thus "gambling" skins is not legally considered gambling.

These sites are not breaking any laws. If you actually think they are, then report them to the police.
I suppose that wouldn't make for a good fluff piece though, would it?

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## Killalots

> This isn't legally gambling. Skins have no legal real world value and thus "gambling" skins is not legally considered gambling.
> 
> These sites are not breaking any laws. If you actually think they are, then report them to the police.
> I suppose that wouldn't make for a good fluff piece though, would it?


This is gambling. Plain and Simple.

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## Flux4Skins

Gambling is bad  :Frown:

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## lorens323

should be illegal  :Big Grin:

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## Bals

is not a good idea.

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## phoxape

totally agree

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