7 ms·

Steam warns users against gambling site after YouTube stars discovered as owners

110 points by bond 10y ago

poopsintub 10y ago
Reddit story from yesterday? I wonder why the article shows as published in April.
adamnemecek 10y ago
It's weird when h3h3 is doing investigative journalism.
- TomHubelbauer 10y ago
  They've got a pretty large audience, as it appears, large enough to bring enough attention to this, so while it definitely was a risk they must've been weighing heavily to publish this (being so different from their usual stuff), I'm glad they did.
- jgrowl 10y ago
  To give credit where it's due, it was HonorTheCall that actually looked up the info and broke the story I believe.
eertami 10y ago
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: > 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. 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. [1]: http://archive.is/wHdZG http://archive.is/wHdZG
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  I call it the "perfectly legal" defense. There are lots of people who will engage in morally reprehensible behavior for their own gain which is otherwise legal. When I find folks who are of that persuasion I seek to find ways to no associate with them (sometimes easy, sometimes less so). Generally, if they do it "right", then cannot be sued. But you can shine light on their activity (like this article is) and shame them.
  - eertami 10y ago
    I'm not American, nor a lawyer, but I have read that as they offered no disclaimers of ownership of the website they were promoting, that it might be possible to challenge them.
    - oldmanjay 10y ago
      Challenge them in what sense, and for what affront?
      - wlesieutre 10y ago
        Not my field of expertise, but I know the FCC enforces a lot of disclosure requirements in advertising, even on YouTube. If you're running a game review channel and somebody pays you for covering their game, you're legally required to disclose the sponsorship of the videos. Hopefully someone else can jump in with more specific rules, but I would imagine that if you're pretending to be a neutral third party mentioning a service when you actually own it, the FCC might have a problem with that.
        DanBC 10y ago
        Here's the FTC faqs: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...
      - woodruffw 10y ago
bluejellybean 10y ago
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
- anc84 10y ago
  I wish they would also remove those addicting elements from their games to make the world a better place instead of draining money by exploiting psychological effects.
- r1ch 10y ago
  It turns out the warning interstitial was actually added by a volunteer admin and has since been removed. Steam login to the gambling site is back to 100% functionality now with no warnings.
jswny 10y ago
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.
- poopsintub 10y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if a good amount of accounts on the site were created and ran by the owners.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Wait, what? Who are these mothers giving children unfettered access to their credit cards? Not even a little onus on them?
  - Kephael 10y ago
    This is likely related, I wouldn't be surprised if the son in question was buying CSGO or DOTA 2 skins. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/congressman-blames-son-for-spending-1300-in-campaign-funds-on-steam-games/ http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/congressman-blames-son...
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    Teenagers can find ways to access things their parents have hidden faster than parents can block them.
nkrisc 10y ago
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. Maybe they've not changed quite so much.
- blaisio 10y ago
  It's not all video games, just the ones that have become competitive, like CS:GO. Any time something becomes "like a sport" people start using these tried and true ways of tricking people into giving them money.
  - dr_zoidberg 10y ago
    Good call on the competetive edge, arcade games (the ones that eat up childrens quarters in the first place) also had it: there was a scoreboard, and there was fame to be had by being there.
    - tetraodonpuffer 10y ago
      you couldn't buy your way on the scoreboard the same way you can buy your way nowadays in "freemium" / "pay to win" games, and your ship in gyruss looked the same whether this was your first time playing or whether you had already spent weeks playing it it's just not the same, the incentive in the old days was to get money out of players by making the game as hard as possible (which could be beaten by just getting better at it, which was where the fun was also), now it's always psychological pressure like FOMO or skinner boxes and so on, and there is no limit to how many "best value xxxx gems for $99.99" boxes / chests / ... you can buy
      - nkrisc 10y ago
        You're not wrong at all, but with many games the money being spent has zero impact on performance. All this CS:GO business is for stuff that's 100% cosmetic and changes nothing about gameplay.
  - 10y ago
sandworm101 10y ago
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.
- sbarre 10y ago
  This is not something limited to gamers, it is a byproduct of the many-to-many social economy, where fame is a currency.. Everyone wants to stand out.. Whether it's a "Verified" badge on Twitter, or going viral in a Vine, or hitting a certain follower count on Instagram, or a very rare skin in a game, etc.. Fame, notoriety, visibility, anything but being part of "the rest" is something many people are willing to pay a high price for.. And there are tons of people out there more than happy to take those payments..
- rasz_pl 10y ago
  Veblen goods, like $1000 'Im rich' app that made the rounds few years back.
macspoofing 10y ago
Had they been honest would this have been a problem?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dontlie 10y ago
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).
wnevets 10y ago
If there is money to be made someone is trying to screw you over. How can anyone be surprised about this?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
paulsutter 10y ago
Class action lawyers will have a field day with these guys. Especially their attempts to coverup, add disclaimers, etc, after the fact. 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. 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. [1] http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&group=17001-18000&file=17200-17210 http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&gr...
dblooman 10y ago
There are so many of these sites, some sit behind a proxy because they are somewhat illegal in a lot of countries, e.g https://ezskinz.org/ https://ezskinz.org/. 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.
- toolz 10y ago
  So create some vague laws to save the [women and] children? This mentality worries me. There's no problem here besides some privileged kids losing almost nothing in exchange for a less than healthy activity. Is this really a big enough deal that we should devote public time and add complexity into a very impactful domain in order to have a mere attempt at solving this perceived problem?
lllorddino 10y ago
How is buying CSGO skins or whatever different from any other game that sells virtual goods from RNGesus? A.) Why does your kid have your credit card B.) Youtubers have always made money from their viewers
- andrewchambers 10y ago
  The deception is that they probably rigged their own gambling site to make winning seem more likely than it really is to trick young people.
  - lllorddino 10y ago
    Fair enough.
rasz_pl 10y ago
Those 'legal' gambling scams are all over gaming. Where the F are authorities? Eve Online has a juggernaut EVEBet, plus hundreds of smaller 'oh look I won XX mones its legit' scams per month. 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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnXeFDQqBQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnXeFDQqBQw , 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) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCeq--49Fu4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCeq--49Fu4

110 points by bond 10y ago

poopsintub 10y ago

Reddit story from yesterday? I wonder why the article shows as published in April.

adamnemecek 10y ago

It's weird when h3h3 is doing investigative journalism.

TomHubelbauer 10y ago
They've got a pretty large audience, as it appears, large enough to bring enough attention to this, so while it definitely was a risk they must've been weighing heavily to publish this (being so different from their usual stuff), I'm glad they did.
jgrowl 10y ago
To give credit where it's due, it was HonorTheCall that actually looked up the info and broke the story I believe.

eertami 10y ago

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: > 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. 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. [1]: http://archive.is/wHdZG http://archive.is/wHdZG

ChuckMcM 10y ago
I call it the "perfectly legal" defense. There are lots of people who will engage in morally reprehensible behavior for their own gain which is otherwise legal. When I find folks who are of that persuasion I seek to find ways to no associate with them (sometimes easy, sometimes less so). Generally, if they do it "right", then cannot be sued. But you can shine light on their activity (like this article is) and shame them.
- eertami 10y ago
  I'm not American, nor a lawyer, but I have read that as they offered no disclaimers of ownership of the website they were promoting, that it might be possible to challenge them.
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    Challenge them in what sense, and for what affront?
    - wlesieutre 10y ago
      Not my field of expertise, but I know the FCC enforces a lot of disclosure requirements in advertising, even on YouTube. If you're running a game review channel and somebody pays you for covering their game, you're legally required to disclose the sponsorship of the videos. Hopefully someone else can jump in with more specific rules, but I would imagine that if you're pretending to be a neutral third party mentioning a service when you actually own it, the FCC might have a problem with that.
      - DanBC 10y ago
        Here's the FTC faqs: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...
    - woodruffw 10y ago

bluejellybean 10y ago

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

anc84 10y ago
I wish they would also remove those addicting elements from their games to make the world a better place instead of draining money by exploiting psychological effects.
r1ch 10y ago
It turns out the warning interstitial was actually added by a volunteer admin and has since been removed. Steam login to the gambling site is back to 100% functionality now with no warnings.

jswny 10y ago

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.

poopsintub 10y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if a good amount of accounts on the site were created and ran by the owners.
ryandrake 10y ago
Wait, what? Who are these mothers giving children unfettered access to their credit cards? Not even a little onus on them?
- Kephael 10y ago
  This is likely related, I wouldn't be surprised if the son in question was buying CSGO or DOTA 2 skins. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/congressman-blames-son-for-spending-1300-in-campaign-funds-on-steam-games/ http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/congressman-blames-son...
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Teenagers can find ways to access things their parents have hidden faster than parents can block them.

nkrisc 10y ago

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. Maybe they've not changed quite so much.

blaisio 10y ago
It's not all video games, just the ones that have become competitive, like CS:GO. Any time something becomes "like a sport" people start using these tried and true ways of tricking people into giving them money.
- dr_zoidberg 10y ago
  Good call on the competetive edge, arcade games (the ones that eat up childrens quarters in the first place) also had it: there was a scoreboard, and there was fame to be had by being there.
  - tetraodonpuffer 10y ago
    you couldn't buy your way on the scoreboard the same way you can buy your way nowadays in "freemium" / "pay to win" games, and your ship in gyruss looked the same whether this was your first time playing or whether you had already spent weeks playing it it's just not the same, the incentive in the old days was to get money out of players by making the game as hard as possible (which could be beaten by just getting better at it, which was where the fun was also), now it's always psychological pressure like FOMO or skinner boxes and so on, and there is no limit to how many "best value xxxx gems for $99.99" boxes / chests / ... you can buy
    - nkrisc 10y ago
      You're not wrong at all, but with many games the money being spent has zero impact on performance. All this CS:GO business is for stuff that's 100% cosmetic and changes nothing about gameplay.
- 10y ago

sandworm101 10y ago

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.

sbarre 10y ago
This is not something limited to gamers, it is a byproduct of the many-to-many social economy, where fame is a currency.. Everyone wants to stand out.. Whether it's a "Verified" badge on Twitter, or going viral in a Vine, or hitting a certain follower count on Instagram, or a very rare skin in a game, etc.. Fame, notoriety, visibility, anything but being part of "the rest" is something many people are willing to pay a high price for.. And there are tons of people out there more than happy to take those payments..
rasz_pl 10y ago
Veblen goods, like $1000 'Im rich' app that made the rounds few years back.

macspoofing 10y ago

Had they been honest would this have been a problem?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dontlie 10y ago

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).

wnevets 10y ago

If there is money to be made someone is trying to screw you over. How can anyone be surprised about this?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

paulsutter 10y ago

Class action lawyers will have a field day with these guys. Especially their attempts to coverup, add disclaimers, etc, after the fact. 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. 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. [1] http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&group=17001-18000&file=17200-17210 http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&gr...

dblooman 10y ago

There are so many of these sites, some sit behind a proxy because they are somewhat illegal in a lot of countries, e.g https://ezskinz.org/ https://ezskinz.org/. 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.

toolz 10y ago
So create some vague laws to save the [women and] children? This mentality worries me. There's no problem here besides some privileged kids losing almost nothing in exchange for a less than healthy activity. Is this really a big enough deal that we should devote public time and add complexity into a very impactful domain in order to have a mere attempt at solving this perceived problem?

lllorddino 10y ago

How is buying CSGO skins or whatever different from any other game that sells virtual goods from RNGesus? A.) Why does your kid have your credit card B.) Youtubers have always made money from their viewers

andrewchambers 10y ago
The deception is that they probably rigged their own gambling site to make winning seem more likely than it really is to trick young people.
- lllorddino 10y ago
  Fair enough.

rasz_pl 10y ago

Those 'legal' gambling scams are all over gaming. Where the F are authorities? Eve Online has a juggernaut EVEBet, plus hundreds of smaller 'oh look I won XX mones its legit' scams per month. 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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnXeFDQqBQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnXeFDQqBQw , 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) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCeq--49Fu4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCeq--49Fu4