Strictly speaking, he broke the enforcing agency’s definition of it, and they did pursue the American company whose ad contact stipulated he do so… And promptly chided them rather than issuing actual punishment.
But still!
He has a multi-million dollar enterprise doing business with multiple American based companies including both YouTube and Warner Brothers. Ignorance is not a defense. The EU has similar protections anyway and he didn’t care about any of it. Screw him.
More CS GO gambling scams out today – pretty much the same thing: a streamer revealed to be secret owner of gambling site they constantly stream, rigging bets to look like it’s easy to win for them, etc.
I guess there’s no ethical standard of an organization they are violating since these people are just youtubers and streamers, not journalists, but damnnnn.
And these people are casually driving around multiple 100k cars made directly off this incredibly scummy stuff. Good business, they charge subscribers to watch them gamble, they gamble donated money, the ‘gambled’ money goes right back into their pocketbook in teh first place, and they get people to use the site raffles on stream etc.
That is not only an ethical issue (business ownership has its own ethical standards), but a criminal one. I hope all these creeps are prosecuted.
IANAL, but I can’t see how YT being some ‘new and unregulated’ platform that legislation has yet to catch up with can possibly protect these creeps from what is obvious criminal activity on any other medium.
Even if they were unable to stream any more, which isn’t the case, they already walked away with six if not seven figures.
In the case of CSGLotto - allegedly per month!
Knew I was in the wrong business…
This article has a pretty good piece of the puzzle.
[quote]
Morrison said his law firm has received multiple calls from young people who have lost money, often taken from parents. “These kids don’t know anything about the law but they are scared to tell their parents they just lost five grand betting online. I’ve been getting emails saying, ‘I’m 12 and just lost $3,000 on a CS: GO gambling website, what do I do?’”
Legal protections are almost nonexistent, with state-level commissions unable to comprehend or process the problem.
“A lot of these commissioners don’t even know how to open emails,” said Morrison. “If you try to explain skin gambling to a legislator, it’s near impossible. I’ve been trying for a long time. They don’t know what this is.”
Polygon contacted the Washington State Gambling Commission, where Valve is based. A spokesperson said, “I have not heard of anything lately that involved children gambling with skins from the game Counter-Strike.”[/quote]
u guys want pokemon go articles?
Re:CSGO Gambling:
Twitch has permanently banned some numpty called phantoml0rd, but less due to leaked video/chat logs showing manipulation of gambling systems to get desired results and more them also showing that he was using bots to boost his sub numbers.
Twitch gonna Twitch, I guess, but I guess that is a simple violation of their own terms they can easily action decisively.
I’m a bit bored today, so let’s take a look at a week’s worth of Polygon’s messages about “some sort of social cause.”
July 21
How women in gaming face hostility
Polysplaining: All men victimize all women all the time.
Not whether, not how much, not what percentage. That it’s universal is just a given. Think I’m overstating it? It “offers multiple perspectives on working in the game industry and dealing with the industry’s inherent hostility to women.”
July 21
Ghostbusters is still haunted by negative racial tropes
Polysplaining: It’s not good enough to check some of the social justice boxes, ALL must be checked.
“Scoot a little further to the first trailer of the movie … and my heart breaking at the stereotype that is Patty. The grief of seeing the sassy, streetwise black friend trope played out again, and realizing that an opportunity to do better with the reboot had been missed.”
July 20
Getting banned on Twitter has nothing to do with freedom of speech
Polysplaining: It’s not bad when we do it, we’re the good guys.
“A few months ago a colleague was handed a 24-hour ban by Twitter for tweeting to a sitting senator (a Republican, too) that he wished that the senator would die. Was it political speech? Inherently. Tough shit.”
The great part is that the providently-named Mr. Good has to grudgingly concede that Milo’s banning wasn’t related to anything he actually put on Twitter, it was because he was purportedly “dog-whistling his followers to flood his targets with harassment” in his off-Twitter writings. Mr. Good is perfectly ok with a media company investigating your activities so they can punish you for violating their terms of service for stuff you didn’t actually do on their service. Got it, no way that could possibly backfire on anyone.
July 11 (but displayed among the July 20 entries)
External title: SATIRICAL GAMES TAKE AIM AT POLITICAL FIGURES, Internal Title: POLITICAL SATIRE GAMES TAKE AIM AT THE GOP
Polysplaining: Shitting on Republicans and Christians is fun and easy, why aren’t more people doing it?
The featured ‘gameplay,’ oddly enough, is not actually described in the article, so I’ll do it here. Bad stuff happens in the US and you can either hit a button called “think” or “pray.” The author explains why it’s devastating satire: “We like the fact that people play two or three times, thinking that, ‘oh, man, if I get to 250 I’ll be able to save a life’. But it doesn’t ever happen. You realize, holy shit, this actually doesn’t do anything. That’s the connection we want to make. A lot of people have that reaction. It’s all that we could hope for in that situation.” Because thoughts and prayers are USELESS, and anyone who thinks that matters is a MORON, GET IT?!
July 20
Guns, games, violence, Star Wars, Minecraft and just about everything else
Polysplaining: I am so smart, I am so smart, S-M-R-T.
Brian Crecente pats himself on the back for participating in the Games for Change Festival. From the linked opinion piece, Crecente was worried that video games might make his son like guns: “As someone who spent a decade and a half covering crime and the evils people can do to one another with guns and a diabolical assortment of other items, as a uncle whose teenage niece was killed by an ex-boyfriend with a gunshot to the head, I’m not a gun owner, or really a fan of guns.
But somehow my son was steering toward becoming both.”
July 19
Attack on Ghostbusters’ Leslie Jones proves Twitter needs solutions, not excuses
Polyspaining: You don’t get to say mean things to celebrities who are women or minorities, ever.
The big reveal: Milo Yiannopoulos published his review of the film, which was preempted with a Periscope livestream — watched by 20,000 people — that included vicious, vile and derogatory comments about each of the cast members, including Jones. In his official review, called “Teenage Boys with Tits,” Yiannopoulos wrote that Jones’ character was the “worst of the lot” and “spectacularly unappealing, even relative to the rest of the odious cast.”
Really? He said she was “unappealing”? Can we skip the trial and go right to the execution?
Fun fact: number of actual tweets quoted in the article is 1, and it’s by Jones. But they were “absolutely vile,” Ms. Alexander assures us. Modern journalism doesn’t need to cite sources, just characterizations of the stuff they are protecting you from being triggered by. It’s for your own safety.
July 16
Grand Theft Auto 5 modders bring Pride march to Los Santos
Polysplaining: Gay-bashers are everywhere but we screwed them over, so download this GTA mod and revel in victory
“Lothman and the team had considered that some users might use the mod to stage a massacre on the Pride parade in Los Santos and possibly upload videos of that to YouTube or Facebook. Still, they decided to let that kind of hate speech speak for itself — until the June 12 mass shooting on Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, which killed 49 and wounded another 53. Pulse was a prominent club to central Florida’s gay nightlife. They decided to finish after reaching a group decision to make the parade and its participants indestructible. That means it marches on in the game no matter what any player may try to do to stop it.”
July 14
Why I am one of the most-banned developers on Twitch
Polysplaining: The straights can’t handle gay erotica, so they are censoring it.
“I had thought I found a safe ground of “acceptable sexuality” (an extremely dangerous concept in of itself) but with this move, they’ve now banned basically everything I’ve made. Now, nowhere is safe for me as a creator.
What’s too gay for them, what’s too sexual for them? Why did they change their mind when I re-mastered my games and put them on Steam?
I have no idea, and that’s the biggest problem: Twitch never says anything. No e-mail, no notification, no rationale, no reason, no pity tweet. Am I just supposed to keep refreshing the ban list page to see if they banned me, for every single game I make, forever?
This is humiliating and dehumanizing treatment, and I wish Twitch would stop it.”
Sorry man, but six days from now Mr. Good will tell you that attitude is bullshit, Twitch can do what it damn well pleases.
I just wanted to know when the Dark Souls 3 DLC was coming out!
On the flipside, Polygon has an interview with G2A’s CEO Bartosz Skwarczek, regarding the recent fraud allegations. That’s good journalism that the other sites don’t have.
Oh, they aren’t bad, they’re just lefty-preachy. Not a dealbreaker, but still a bit obvious that My Betters have something important to tell me.
Kotaku follows up on their earlier story about slut-shaming Twitch girls with one about Raihnbowkidz, a self-described “ex-boobie-streamer” and her mother who moderates her Twitch chat channel.
[quote]
In fact, a counter on Raihnbowkidz’s channel estimates that her breasts have been mentioned in Twitch chat nearly 30,000 times. Until recently, Raihnbowkidz wore a double push-up bra, highlighting her cleavage for her audience. Viewers would pay real money to have their commentary of her read out loud, much of which was deliberately offensive. Criticisms of her body or gameplay were bolstered by targeted, personal attacks meant to get a rise out of her. Variations on the word “slut” were a common refrain in Raihnbowkidz’ Twitch chat, which, one day, included her mother.
“At first, I was surprised,” Maureen Jomha, 52, remembered when I spoke with her on Skype earlier this week. “She was what you’d call a ‘boobie streamer,’ where you’d attract viewers to your stream—trolls—who come to harass or hit on female streamers,” she said. Jomha is now one of her daughter’s most dedicated Twitch moderators, tasked with keeping Raihnbowkidz’s chat in line so it continues to abide by Twitch’s Terms of Service. And, even after consistently witnessing complete strangers sling some of the most shocking and offensive language possible against her daughter, she is also one of her Raihnbowkidz’ most lenient mods, enforcing the streamer’s “Come at me!” approach to trolls.[/quote]
Blowing the lid off of the peviously unknown ability of bosoms to gain attention! : )
RickH,
People who use bland, neutral terms like “social commentary” for PC/Left agit-prop or put SJW in scare quotes are showing their cards whether they mean to or not.
They exhibit the very things they claim are illusory.
Good list, though. Sorry you had to go through it. That much Polygon is not healthy for anyone. :)
Online gambling (including CSGO stuff), getting attention in Oz. Good article (not sure about the proposed policy yet), aside from the stupid URL
just-when-we-got-used-to-kids-dying-or-killing-on-screen
Seriously?
Legislation could make it illegal for games to seek payment for items of varying value according to chance, as is the case in Japan. There could be minimum age requirements on paying to play, and games could be required to carry clear warnings of gambling content
…
The scale of eSports gambling in Australia is unclear but it is believed to be widespread. As a clue, 9000 people placed skin bets on a Counter-Strike match involving Sydney teams that 3000 people watched live on Thursday night. The match was equivalent in profile to a weekly NRL match.
NRL (Rugby) is our second largest football code, fyi, but those viewing numbers seem way low.
RIP Joyce Katz.
Katz was one of the original pioneers of videogame journalism. She helped start Electronic Games in 1981. You can find the whole run saved here: http://www.digitpress.com/library/magazines/electronic_games/electronic_games.htm