Valve Sends Cease and Desist Letters to CS:GO Gambling Sites

Last week, Valve posted a response to the recent scandals involving Counter Strike: Global Offensive gambling websites, stating that they were aware of the situation and would be taking action. You can read about TechRaptors coverage of the scandal in our articles.

Yesterday, July 19, 2016, Richard Lewis posted the following video to his YouTube account, discussing a letter allegedly issued from Valve to CS:GO gambling websites, instructing them to cease and desist using their Steam accounts for commercial reasons. The letter the video discusses was given to him by Twitter user LiquidLindsey.

Lewis' initial response to seeing the letter was that it was a forgery; his rationale for this is that the blue signature in the letter is easy to edit into the picture via software such as PhotoShop, that the letter says Steam accounts have ten days to stop but doesn't have a date on it, and that all of the CS: GO websites were listed together in one article - he thought that each website would have been approached separately, and the letter would reflect the site approached this way. His initial theory was that the listed sites knew that they were going to shut down, and wanted to make it look like Valve had forced them to shut down.

However, Lewis has since said he was able to look into the authenticity of the letter (which can be read below; the image has been slightly altered in terms of size so as to not take up as much room in our article, the original image can be found in Lewis' video description and also here). The lawyer who signed the letter, Karl Quackenbush, is indeed a legitimate laywer contracted as General Consul for Valve. Lewis also contacted Valve and was able to obtain confirmation from them that this letter is legitimate.

While the cease and desist letter does list a large number of CS: GO gambling websites (such as CSGOLotto.com, the site owned by Trevor “TmarTn” Martin and Tom “ProSyndicate” Cassell), there are a few that are absent, such as CSGOJackpot.com, CSGOShuffle.com (which Lewis recently did a video segment on), and SteamLoto.org.

CSGO Big has posted the letter via their twitter as well and stated that they will be disabling deposits and shutting down temporarily to comply with Valve.

Stay tuned to TechRaptor for continuing coverage on the Counter Strike: Global Offensive gambling scandal.

What are your thoughts on the cease and desist letter? Let us know in the comment section below.