Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Game Links

Skin In The Game. You guys know I normally throw a few links up here covering whatever noteworthy web articles I've stumbled across over the last day or two but today all I've got is this one long form article by ESPN. I actually read it in ESPN the magazine last night, which is something I don't ever remember subscribing to but just started showing up at my house last year. It's a staggeringly good article, and is a real insight to a side of eSports that I've never really heard about, unregulated gambling.

Specifically this article deals with all the gambling that goes on related to Counter Strike: Global Offensive. I knew CS:GO was a popular game, I know there are professional players with twitch and youtube streams that rake in the bank. I even knew the game had micro-transactions where players could pay for and trade in game items. What I didn't know is that there is a huge gambling market related to those in game items. Players won't just bet unique gun or knife skins on professional Counter Strike games, they'll bet them on online slot machines or coin flip games (yes, apparently these on-line gambling sites were inspired by Vegas Vacation).

I'm telling you this is the kind of thing that scares the crap out of me as a parent because by the time you actually learn about what's going on your kid can be neck deep in a $10,000 gambling problem. They could be 12, they could be 20 the trap is there and from the article there's a ton of youtube and online personalities out there that make bank off these gambling sites. It's like the 1960s, when Robert Mitchum would be telling all the cool kids how great smoking is. Most kids are stupid they'll do anything their heroes tell them to do. Last year an estimated 5 Billion dollars worth of in-game content was gambled on these sites. 5 billion. That's absolutely insane.

It's a long article but trust me it's well worth the read. Unless you're too cool for school and you already know about all this stuff but if that's the case why didn't you tell me about it already? I thought we were friends.

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