This isn’t new information, here’s the People Make Games video on this topic from 2 years ago, I can’t see Valve taking action on this unless they’re forced to. Seeing that - apart from this...
This isn’t new information, here’s the People Make Games video on this topic from 2 years ago, I can’t see Valve taking action on this unless they’re forced to. Seeing that - apart from this massive exception - Valve is relatively pro consumer, I do wonder if this is essentially their safety net for their more risky endeavors like the index, deck, or arch investments.
Ultimately I think this is a situation where government intervention is warranted. The gambling sites themselves usually dodge this by being located in particular favorable jurisdictions, but...
Ultimately I think this is a situation where government intervention is warranted. The gambling sites themselves usually dodge this by being located in particular favorable jurisdictions, but afaik Valve isn't, and they're definitely the root you ultimately would need to uproot to actually get rid of this whole network of child gambling weeds.
I like many of Valve's other products, but I don't think any of it justifies them profiting off child gambling like this.
Valve added item trading to Steam. This means that microtransactions can be traded between users (if the developer implements it). Additionally, some even have markets, where these items can be...
Valve added item trading to Steam. This means that microtransactions can be traded between users (if the developer implements it). Additionally, some even have markets, where these items can be bought or sold with steam wallet funds.
Basically, this creates an unregulated digital currency. Like bitcoin but with Valve as the guarantor. The items have guaranteed liquidity because you can then use steam wallet funds to buy games.
As a result, rather large industries of gambling and betting industries have been built around steam items. These function basically exactly like any other gambling sites, and there’s everything from slots to sports betting.
I haven't seen any real change in attitude. People are rabidly defensive of Steam, in spite of their outsized market share, and whine about games being sold through other storefronts. They turn a...
I haven't seen any real change in attitude. People are rabidly defensive of Steam, in spite of their outsized market share, and whine about games being sold through other storefronts. They turn a blind eye to Steam Marketplace while complaining about loot boxes or battle passes in games that have zero trading being "gambling."
If anything, we're just seeing problem gambling being normalized, with esports events even having sponsorships and legacy sports shoving Draft Kings everywhere.
Barron's had an article about the current state of Counter-Strike gambling, earlier in the month.
It's honestly not that surprising. My qualms with loot boxes in general aside*, Valve is remarkably pro-consumer in the gaming space. They've picked up a lot of goodwill among gamers because they...
It's honestly not that surprising. My qualms with loot boxes in general aside*, Valve is remarkably pro-consumer in the gaming space. They've picked up a lot of goodwill among gamers because they sell stuff cheap and they add a lot of benefit to games that utilize their feature set (workshop for mods, save syncing, etc.). Not to mention they're basically single-handedly enabling the progression of linux gaming these days via the Steamdeck.
* - idk how CS handles lootboxes, but the way they were handled in TF2 is mostly fine by me. Primarily cosmetic items, with a few functional items that are also available via dumb luck without participating in the gambling. All that being said, I do think it's largely immoral to do lootboxes because they're clearly predatory toward those with gambling problems (otherwise known as "whales"). But lootboxes are also not a hill I'll die on when assessing whether or not I'll do business with a company. Especially given how tame Valve's seem to be compared to the endless supply of pay-to-win mobile games, AAA games, etc.
CS lootboxes are entirely cosmetic items. The main difference is the amount of money in the ecosystem. CS skins regularly go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's absolutely insane to me, but...
CS lootboxes are entirely cosmetic items. The main difference is the amount of money in the ecosystem. CS skins regularly go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's absolutely insane to me, but the demand and the market cap for CS skins is unlike any other digital item.
This is one that always baffled me. It’s a store, who cares? I remember that (a probably tiny, but very loud group of) people were freaking out about World of Goo 2 only being available on Epic,...
talk about how EGS is fine
This is one that always baffled me. It’s a store, who cares? I remember that (a probably tiny, but very loud group of) people were freaking out about World of Goo 2 only being available on Epic, despite it having a DRM-free purchase option as well, direct from the devs.
As someone that doesn't really like EGS, but isn't really strongly opposed either I can try to answer. EGS is just kind of a bad store propped up by some business practices that aren't very...
As someone that doesn't really like EGS, but isn't really strongly opposed either I can try to answer. EGS is just kind of a bad store propped up by some business practices that aren't very popular.
It is a bad store largely due to bad implementation. To this day it still doesn't have user reviews, a critical part of many people's buying process, instead just linking to other sites. They also have an extra bad reputation for slop, eclipsing even Steam's, due to allowing crypto games. For me personally I also think it sucks that they have no Linux support at all, forcing the open source community to pick up the slack for them. This isn't even getting into missing the social features that make many online games nicer to play with friends on, remote play together, or even just remote play.
The unpopular business practices are mostly just the contracted exclusivity. Because EGS kind of sucks as a store and launcher I usually end up skipping games that I did want but ended up EGS exclusives. Some do also get separate releases, such as the example you gave, but some don't. I also think that many people, myself included, aren't really all that interested in dealing with the hassle of a custom account, payment, download, and installation process for each random company that offers direct sales either.
In exclusivity I was also counting timed exclusively, which they've done a number of times. It's not a big deal if you are the kind of person that waits to get games, but it's a frustrating and...
In exclusivity I was also counting timed exclusively, which they've done a number of times. It's not a big deal if you are the kind of person that waits to get games, but it's a frustrating and unpopular business practice if you want a title on launch. For many it may as well be an announcement that they've delayed the PC release by a year because Epic paid them to do so.
Aside from the mess surrounding Rocket League, where it was on Steam and then was pulled which obviously wouldn't be well-liked, I've never really seen anyone upset that games made by the owning studios aren't on the opposing platforms. What does upset them is getting excited by some game and then later learning that it'll be locked to EGS for a year. The broken expectations are worse than the actual exclusivity. Finding a game people are already excited about, sometimes even that already have Steam support via demos or early access, and paying them to rip out support for the superior platform doesn't sit well with a lot of people even if it's temporary.
That's all fair enough, and I agree that the actual program is pretty terrible. I usually just add icons to my start menu once I've installed a game, so I don't spend that much time interfacing...
That's all fair enough, and I agree that the actual program is pretty terrible. I usually just add icons to my start menu once I've installed a game, so I don't spend that much time interfacing with the launcher.
Having some DRM free games is the one positive thing that EGS has over Steam to me. I tend to just download the DRM free copy and move it over to my SteamDeck though. The store itself is kinda ass...
Having some DRM free games is the one positive thing that EGS has over Steam to me.
I tend to just download the DRM free copy and move it over to my SteamDeck though.
The store itself is kinda ass from my experience , I’m willing to put up with it but no way is it gonna replace Steam for me. Library aside, Steam never gave me issues and is more functional, while EGS seems to log me out after a while and put me once on a login loop.
That being said I haven’t bought a game on EGS yet, I tend to go for GOG if it is available in multiple stores, then Steam if it is cheaper due to regional pricing or availability, EGS is mainly when they have a free game that I’m interested in(or when I remember they give away free games).
early on a lot of the criticism could charitably be attributed to failings with the store itself -- even people who vocally welcomed anything to shake up the Steam monopoly were criticizing it for...
early on a lot of the criticism could charitably be attributed to failings with the store itself -- even people who vocally welcomed anything to shake up the Steam monopoly were criticizing it for lacking basic features a store should have. But a lot of that carried on into what basically amounts to tribalism.
Aside from being the pretender to the throne, another issue people have with EGS is Tencent's investment in it. A couple years ago there was a lot of sinophobia and fearmongering over investment...
Aside from being the pretender to the throne, another issue people have with EGS is Tencent's investment in it. A couple years ago there was a lot of sinophobia and fearmongering over investment of Chinese corporations into American software and video game companies. I know adults who still believe, and refuse to use EGS, because they "know" it has Chinese spyware in it now. Meanwhile I know they don't use Antivirus or VPNs.
To add to this, many people have huge libraries of games. Part of this is because Steam has been around so long, they have such a large library/inventory, and they frequently have sales where you...
To add to this, many people have huge libraries of games. Part of this is because Steam has been around so long, they have such a large library/inventory, and they frequently have sales where you are picking up bundles of games for a buck a piece (not necessarily good games, but in a bundle with so many games, how can you resist?). So when it comes time to contemplate not using Steam, you look at your game library total count, and you've got 2000 titles in it? Feels pretty crappy to just lose those, since you can't carry them to another service or even save directly to your computer.
Edit: I suppose the counterpoint is that you can continue to use steam for what you have, and just start buying elsewhere.
Under capitalism almost every company will seek money over social perfection, but goodwill is capable of being valuable. There are a lot of reasons that people like them even though there is still...
Under capitalism almost every company will seek money over social perfection, but goodwill is capable of being valuable. There are a lot of reasons that people like them even though there is still plenty to criticize. They did do a decent job positioning many of their biggest criticisms to be things that are a bit harder to notice so can keep goodwill high despite them.
Some reasons they're liked:
Most of their games are exceptionally well done
The ease of use of Steam, including the centralized location for so many games and support even for codes bought off-platform
Sales
Advancing Linux gaming
The refund policy
It doesn't seem like they plan to enshittify Steam
And some criticisms:
Lootboxes and the marketplace. I think these fly under the radar most of the time just because the amount of people interacting with those is so much smaller than the number using Steam.
Motivations not being to help customers. Linux push is to insulate themselves from Microsoft and notoriously the refund policy is the result of a lawsuit.
The store cut is too high. It's in line with similar stores, but all those stores have frankly insane cuts.
There is a lot of garbage software on Steam. People only really seem to care that the software isn't malware or illegal because stuff that's just bad can be refunded.
Some people claim it's a monopoly, although some claim such a monopoly can be a positive by disallowing some bad developer behaviors (see discussions about their recent DLC rule changes).
While that isn't an exhaustive list of criticisms they are the ones I'm aware of right now. Notably they're all very easy to miss with most of them requiring some rather specific interactions to even notice.
I’ve used that quite a bit over the last couple of months. Paid for about 6 or 7 games that didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped, and refunded within 2 hours. It’s super useful.
I’ve used that quite a bit over the last couple of months. Paid for about 6 or 7 games that didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped, and refunded within 2 hours. It’s super useful.
EDIT: Leaving my comment below, but actually you can likely ignore it. I did forget how many of the Steam items for games like CS are the “loot boxes” and keys…which are straight up gambling IMO....
EDIT: Leaving my comment below, but actually you can likely ignore it. I did forget how many of the Steam items for games like CS are the “loot boxes” and keys…which are straight up gambling IMO. Having the games drop the loot boxes for free, but then having to spend real money on keys is absolutely predatory. [Though by selling these freely-obtained cases through the Steam market, high school me was able to buy skins and other games that I wanted].
I did not watch the video, so not sure if this is addressed in it or not- but the clarifying point IMO, is that none of the gambling is directly “on steam”, it’s all on third party websites, though I believe on ones with steam inventory integrations or “log in with steam.”
But I do think Steam should be cracking down harder on making gambling with Steam items against TOS, and making it harder to do so. (Though I’m not sure how well they could enforce it, because they can’t easily directly punish a third-party site hosting gambling without catching other things in the crossfire.)
No. I think the reason for that is that Steam offers a pretty reliable customer-friendly service that - so far - has been free from shareholder-driven enshittification, and most people are simply...
are people revising their opinions of him in regards to this?
No. I think the reason for that is that Steam offers a pretty reliable customer-friendly service that - so far - has been free from shareholder-driven enshittification, and most people are simply glad that they exist. Additionally the gambling is not really a part of using Steam unless you seek it out. I'd guess most people are not aware that it's even a thing.
And there aren't really any good alternatives. The EpicGameStore has basically no features at all, and Epic isn't any better when it comes to ethical behaviour, e.g. they had to pay more than 500 million dollars just to settle a lawsuit for tricking kids into making unwanted charges. And I'd argue that Fortnite is basically designed to attract kids/teens and collect billions of dollars in microtransactions from them.
Other stores (GOG, itch.io, Ubisoft and EA stores) are mostly specialized with much smaller catalogues. Or the Microsoft store, but AFAIK the user experience there is pretty awful. It's just not comparable to what Steam does, which also has social functions, forums, family sharing and all that stuff .
So, if someone is interested in PC Gaming, then Steam is the most obvious, rational choice to use, it's a good experience, and that makes it easy to turn a blind eye to its gambling problem (especially when so many other companies on the market have questionable ethics too).
We really need legislation to fight gambling in the gaming markets. Otherwise this won't stop.
I agree with the conclusion of the video, however, it bothers me how absolutely petty the people involved are. Nobody wants to look in the mirror. Everyone (including the victims) points back at...
I agree with the conclusion of the video, however, it bothers me how absolutely petty the people involved are. Nobody wants to look in the mirror. Everyone (including the victims) points back at Valve for enabling their acts.
Whilst I agree gambling addiction is a huge issue, everyone involved is well into the acceptance which makes it even more bizarre of any of them to point fingers.
Children don't understand the psychology involved, but these grown ups do.
I think it's absolutely fair for people who began gambling as very young children to blame the companies that profited off their gambling -- and ultimately that very much includes Valve. I think...
I think it's absolutely fair for people who began gambling as very young children to blame the companies that profited off their gambling -- and ultimately that very much includes Valve. I think it's much more hypocritical for those running the casinos and esports teams to blame Valve rather than accepting responsibility for what they've done, but I can understand why.
On the part of the casinos, obviously their very existence depends on the people that own and run them not giving a shit about the harms gambling causes. Expecting them to take responsibility is a spider and the frog situation. On the part of the esports teams, Coffeezilla makes a strong point (iirc mostly in the video preceding this one) that it's an arms race due to how much gambling money is in the industry -- the teams that don't take gambling sponsors are at a disadvantage. I don't respect the influencers who expose children to this gambling in the first place, but when you hear about the money they make, it's understandable that many are swayed. The interview with the guy who turned them down was very telling in that respect -- this is "your mom can retire" money. Money that can change your life. It takes a lot of principle to stand up against that.
Ultimately the big reason Valve deserves to have the finger pointed at it in this situation is that they have far more power over it than any other actor. No single influencer or esports team or even casino owner can stop the problem -- even if they refuse to participate further based on principle, there are plenty of competitors to pick up their slack. Valve, on the other hand, has the power to shut this down entirely. They could get rid of cosmetic skins in CS:GO in the next patch if they chose. They just won't, because they profit off it. They deserve an amount of blame proportionate to the amount of power they have to change things -- which is enormous.
This is not a problem unique to Valve (other than perhaps the scale of it), and in my opinion any platform that allows people to attach monetary value to virtual currencies should be banned or...
This is not a problem unique to Valve (other than perhaps the scale of it), and in my opinion any platform that allows people to attach monetary value to virtual currencies should be banned or very heavily regulated.
When I used to play WoW maybe 8 years ago, some of my more hardcore guildies were betting on world first runs. Sure, they were using in-game gold for bets, which was not against ToS, but the in-game cold gold can be turned into WoW tokens, which can then be used to purchase game subscription and other cash shop items, effectively giving it real world value.
This isn’t new information, here’s the People Make Games video on this topic from 2 years ago, I can’t see Valve taking action on this unless they’re forced to. Seeing that - apart from this massive exception - Valve is relatively pro consumer, I do wonder if this is essentially their safety net for their more risky endeavors like the index, deck, or arch investments.
Ultimately I think this is a situation where government intervention is warranted. The gambling sites themselves usually dodge this by being located in particular favorable jurisdictions, but afaik Valve isn't, and they're definitely the root you ultimately would need to uproot to actually get rid of this whole network of child gambling weeds.
I like many of Valve's other products, but I don't think any of it justifies them profiting off child gambling like this.
Valve added item trading to Steam. This means that microtransactions can be traded between users (if the developer implements it). Additionally, some even have markets, where these items can be bought or sold with steam wallet funds.
Basically, this creates an unregulated digital currency. Like bitcoin but with Valve as the guarantor. The items have guaranteed liquidity because you can then use steam wallet funds to buy games.
As a result, rather large industries of gambling and betting industries have been built around steam items. These function basically exactly like any other gambling sites, and there’s everything from slots to sports betting.
I haven't seen any real change in attitude. People are rabidly defensive of Steam, in spite of their outsized market share, and whine about games being sold through other storefronts. They turn a blind eye to Steam Marketplace while complaining about loot boxes or battle passes in games that have zero trading being "gambling."
If anything, we're just seeing problem gambling being normalized, with esports events even having sponsorships and legacy sports shoving Draft Kings everywhere.
Barron's had an article about the current state of Counter-Strike gambling, earlier in the month.
It's honestly not that surprising. My qualms with loot boxes in general aside*, Valve is remarkably pro-consumer in the gaming space. They've picked up a lot of goodwill among gamers because they sell stuff cheap and they add a lot of benefit to games that utilize their feature set (workshop for mods, save syncing, etc.). Not to mention they're basically single-handedly enabling the progression of linux gaming these days via the Steamdeck.
* - idk how CS handles lootboxes, but the way they were handled in TF2 is mostly fine by me. Primarily cosmetic items, with a few functional items that are also available via dumb luck without participating in the gambling. All that being said, I do think it's largely immoral to do lootboxes because they're clearly predatory toward those with gambling problems (otherwise known as "whales"). But lootboxes are also not a hill I'll die on when assessing whether or not I'll do business with a company. Especially given how tame Valve's seem to be compared to the endless supply of pay-to-win mobile games, AAA games, etc.
CS lootboxes are entirely cosmetic items. The main difference is the amount of money in the ecosystem. CS skins regularly go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's absolutely insane to me, but the demand and the market cap for CS skins is unlike any other digital item.
This is one that always baffled me. It’s a store, who cares? I remember that (a probably tiny, but very loud group of) people were freaking out about World of Goo 2 only being available on Epic, despite it having a DRM-free purchase option as well, direct from the devs.
As someone that doesn't really like EGS, but isn't really strongly opposed either I can try to answer. EGS is just kind of a bad store propped up by some business practices that aren't very popular.
It is a bad store largely due to bad implementation. To this day it still doesn't have user reviews, a critical part of many people's buying process, instead just linking to other sites. They also have an extra bad reputation for slop, eclipsing even Steam's, due to allowing crypto games. For me personally I also think it sucks that they have no Linux support at all, forcing the open source community to pick up the slack for them. This isn't even getting into missing the social features that make many online games nicer to play with friends on, remote play together, or even just remote play.
The unpopular business practices are mostly just the contracted exclusivity. Because EGS kind of sucks as a store and launcher I usually end up skipping games that I did want but ended up EGS exclusives. Some do also get separate releases, such as the example you gave, but some don't. I also think that many people, myself included, aren't really all that interested in dealing with the hassle of a custom account, payment, download, and installation process for each random company that offers direct sales either.
In exclusivity I was also counting timed exclusively, which they've done a number of times. It's not a big deal if you are the kind of person that waits to get games, but it's a frustrating and unpopular business practice if you want a title on launch. For many it may as well be an announcement that they've delayed the PC release by a year because Epic paid them to do so.
Aside from the mess surrounding Rocket League, where it was on Steam and then was pulled which obviously wouldn't be well-liked, I've never really seen anyone upset that games made by the owning studios aren't on the opposing platforms. What does upset them is getting excited by some game and then later learning that it'll be locked to EGS for a year. The broken expectations are worse than the actual exclusivity. Finding a game people are already excited about, sometimes even that already have Steam support via demos or early access, and paying them to rip out support for the superior platform doesn't sit well with a lot of people even if it's temporary.
That's all fair enough, and I agree that the actual program is pretty terrible. I usually just add icons to my start menu once I've installed a game, so I don't spend that much time interfacing with the launcher.
Having some DRM free games is the one positive thing that EGS has over Steam to me.
I tend to just download the DRM free copy and move it over to my SteamDeck though.
The store itself is kinda ass from my experience , I’m willing to put up with it but no way is it gonna replace Steam for me. Library aside, Steam never gave me issues and is more functional, while EGS seems to log me out after a while and put me once on a login loop.
That being said I haven’t bought a game on EGS yet, I tend to go for GOG if it is available in multiple stores, then Steam if it is cheaper due to regional pricing or availability, EGS is mainly when they have a free game that I’m interested in(or when I remember they give away free games).
early on a lot of the criticism could charitably be attributed to failings with the store itself -- even people who vocally welcomed anything to shake up the Steam monopoly were criticizing it for lacking basic features a store should have. But a lot of that carried on into what basically amounts to tribalism.
Aside from being the pretender to the throne, another issue people have with EGS is Tencent's investment in it. A couple years ago there was a lot of sinophobia and fearmongering over investment of Chinese corporations into American software and video game companies. I know adults who still believe, and refuse to use EGS, because they "know" it has Chinese spyware in it now. Meanwhile I know they don't use Antivirus or VPNs.
To add to this, many people have huge libraries of games. Part of this is because Steam has been around so long, they have such a large library/inventory, and they frequently have sales where you are picking up bundles of games for a buck a piece (not necessarily good games, but in a bundle with so many games, how can you resist?). So when it comes time to contemplate not using Steam, you look at your game library total count, and you've got 2000 titles in it? Feels pretty crappy to just lose those, since you can't carry them to another service or even save directly to your computer.
Edit: I suppose the counterpoint is that you can continue to use steam for what you have, and just start buying elsewhere.
Under capitalism almost every company will seek money over social perfection, but goodwill is capable of being valuable. There are a lot of reasons that people like them even though there is still plenty to criticize. They did do a decent job positioning many of their biggest criticisms to be things that are a bit harder to notice so can keep goodwill high despite them.
Some reasons they're liked:
And some criticisms:
While that isn't an exhaustive list of criticisms they are the ones I'm aware of right now. Notably they're all very easy to miss with most of them requiring some rather specific interactions to even notice.
This is utterly huge. Most other game stores, consoles included, tell you to pound sand.
I’ve used that quite a bit over the last couple of months. Paid for about 6 or 7 games that didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped, and refunded within 2 hours. It’s super useful.
EDIT: Leaving my comment below, but actually you can likely ignore it. I did forget how many of the Steam items for games like CS are the “loot boxes” and keys…which are straight up gambling IMO. Having the games drop the loot boxes for free, but then having to spend real money on keys is absolutely predatory. [Though by selling these freely-obtained cases through the Steam market, high school me was able to buy skins and other games that I wanted].
I did not watch the video, so not sure if this is addressed in it or not- but the clarifying point IMO, is that none of the gambling is directly “on steam”, it’s all on third party websites, though I believe on ones with steam inventory integrations or “log in with steam.”
But I do think Steam should be cracking down harder on making gambling with Steam items against TOS, and making it harder to do so. (Though I’m not sure how well they could enforce it, because they can’t easily directly punish a third-party site hosting gambling without catching other things in the crossfire.)
No. I think the reason for that is that Steam offers a pretty reliable customer-friendly service that - so far - has been free from shareholder-driven enshittification, and most people are simply glad that they exist. Additionally the gambling is not really a part of using Steam unless you seek it out. I'd guess most people are not aware that it's even a thing.
And there aren't really any good alternatives. The EpicGameStore has basically no features at all, and Epic isn't any better when it comes to ethical behaviour, e.g. they had to pay more than 500 million dollars just to settle a lawsuit for tricking kids into making unwanted charges. And I'd argue that Fortnite is basically designed to attract kids/teens and collect billions of dollars in microtransactions from them.
Other stores (GOG, itch.io, Ubisoft and EA stores) are mostly specialized with much smaller catalogues. Or the Microsoft store, but AFAIK the user experience there is pretty awful. It's just not comparable to what Steam does, which also has social functions, forums, family sharing and all that stuff .
So, if someone is interested in PC Gaming, then Steam is the most obvious, rational choice to use, it's a good experience, and that makes it easy to turn a blind eye to its gambling problem (especially when so many other companies on the market have questionable ethics too).
We really need legislation to fight gambling in the gaming markets. Otherwise this won't stop.
e: english hard
I agree with the conclusion of the video, however, it bothers me how absolutely petty the people involved are. Nobody wants to look in the mirror. Everyone (including the victims) points back at Valve for enabling their acts.
Whilst I agree gambling addiction is a huge issue, everyone involved is well into the acceptance which makes it even more bizarre of any of them to point fingers.
Children don't understand the psychology involved, but these grown ups do.
I think it's absolutely fair for people who began gambling as very young children to blame the companies that profited off their gambling -- and ultimately that very much includes Valve. I think it's much more hypocritical for those running the casinos and esports teams to blame Valve rather than accepting responsibility for what they've done, but I can understand why.
On the part of the casinos, obviously their very existence depends on the people that own and run them not giving a shit about the harms gambling causes. Expecting them to take responsibility is a spider and the frog situation. On the part of the esports teams, Coffeezilla makes a strong point (iirc mostly in the video preceding this one) that it's an arms race due to how much gambling money is in the industry -- the teams that don't take gambling sponsors are at a disadvantage. I don't respect the influencers who expose children to this gambling in the first place, but when you hear about the money they make, it's understandable that many are swayed. The interview with the guy who turned them down was very telling in that respect -- this is "your mom can retire" money. Money that can change your life. It takes a lot of principle to stand up against that.
Ultimately the big reason Valve deserves to have the finger pointed at it in this situation is that they have far more power over it than any other actor. No single influencer or esports team or even casino owner can stop the problem -- even if they refuse to participate further based on principle, there are plenty of competitors to pick up their slack. Valve, on the other hand, has the power to shut this down entirely. They could get rid of cosmetic skins in CS:GO in the next patch if they chose. They just won't, because they profit off it. They deserve an amount of blame proportionate to the amount of power they have to change things -- which is enormous.
This is not a problem unique to Valve (other than perhaps the scale of it), and in my opinion any platform that allows people to attach monetary value to virtual currencies should be banned or very heavily regulated.
When I used to play WoW maybe 8 years ago, some of my more hardcore guildies were betting on world first runs. Sure, they were using in-game gold for bets, which was not against ToS, but the in-game
coldgold can be turned into WoW tokens, which can then be used to purchase game subscription and other cash shop items, effectively giving it real world value.