In a statement that feels a little bit lacking in power, we have the official word from Valve in regards to the current spate of CS:GO lottery sites. Now, I think it’s great that Valve are distancing themselves from this, but it feels as my father would say “too little, too late” while the internet has a surge of hate over the actions of 2 YouTube personalities and their own lottery site.

The article is very sparse, as you can see here, but with the fact of that Valve has said that they are going to send “shut down or lose access to your accounts” notifications is a good step forwards, and will reduce the sites. However, knowing people, there will now be massively back-room illegitimate gambling sites, think like speak-easy’s during the US’ prohibition period.

While this will do some good in reducing the amount of sites and I would say pressure of gambling for a skin, the flip side is that we will see the money enter Valve’s pockets as more people would trade using the Steam Community Market. So it’s also a good strategy for helping Valve make money.

While investigating this, I had found a few sites that were registered about 2 years ago, and the vast majority of big ones have been registered in the last 16 months. It does seem that Valve is going down this route due to it going from a small side affair to what could be considered mainstream. The other problem is that the first thing that pops up on a search engine when I type in CS:GO is “CS:GO Lotto.”