A Skins Case Study: CSGOFast
Forms of skin wagering are still likely to exist in the future, despite significant
headwinds. No skin wagering operator illustrates this more readily than CSGOFast,
whose perseverant entrepreneurship has led to the development of several
creative workarounds.
“In light of the recent announcement from Valve CSGOFAST has
decided to close operations. All bots are stopped now, games
are not functioning,” a note on Fast’s website read. But as of
Sept. 1, over a month after Valve demanded it stop facilitating
skin gambling, Fast still operated games and still operated
bots—just outside the US.
When users in other parts of the world logged on to Fast, they
were presented with more options than ever to fund their account,
several of which involved real-money deposits through gaming
marketplace G2A and its suite of payment processors, which
inlcude PayPal, Webmoney, Skrill, Visa and MasterCard. In this sense,
Fast appeared to have pivoted to an unregulated, real-money
casino gambling site with no connection to CS:GO.
Gamblers on the site wagered with, and were paid out in, Fast
coins. But they could still purchase skins from Fast’s skins
marketplace. In fact, since Fast coins hold no value outside of the
ecosystem of Fast wagering, the primary way for gamblers to cash
out from the site was via the purchasing of skins with Fast coins.
Those skins were transferred to gamblers via Steam trade bots,
and could then be sold on third-party sites like OPSkins for $USD.
Thus, even if Fast wasn’t facilitating the use of skins as a deposit
currency, it was still facilitating skins as a gambling payout,
directly in violation of Valve’s order.
Instead of taking skins from a user’s Steam account, Fast
accepted skins from one’s G2A skin account, but the deposit
process still used Steam’s trade bots. So, Fast also used Steam’s
interface to conduct commercial gambling transactions.
Fast even facilitated skin betting. Via an advertising
partnership with HLTV.org, the site ran sportsbook-style betting
on HLTV’s individual match pages. The embedded betting option
was not visible to American users, but was visible to those
outside the US. The account funding options for this sportsbookstyle betting appeared to be the same as they were for funding
Casino-style gambling accounts.
It’s unclear why, as of Sept. 1, Valve hadn’t banned Fast’s trade
bots, and eliminated its skin transferring capabilities. Its cease
and desist order did not apply just to the US, but worldwide. But
Fast’s continued ability to do business demonstrates several key
takeaways (see page 10).
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