CS:GO gambling history: from skin betting to CS2 and trade protection

Skin gambling exists because of one design decision: in 2013 Valve gave CS:GO cosmetic weapon finishes that players could trade and sell, which gave them a price. Within two years an unregulated betting economy had grown on top of Steam, and much of what has happened since, from Valve's 2016 crackdown to the trading rules that apply in CS2 today, has been a response to it. This is the short version, with links to the deep dives.

The timeline at a glance

2013: the Arms Deal update

On 14 August 2013 Valve shipped the Arms Deal update, which added more than 100 decorated weapons. Players could get them from timed drops while playing, by opening weapon cases with a key, or by trading through Steam, and could sell them on the Steam Community Market. A share of the key sales for one case, the eSports Weapon Case, went to tournament prize pools.

Keys cost money, and most cases produced items worth far less than the key, while the rarest finishes sold for thousands of dollars. Steam had allowed item trading since 2011, so from day one skins could move between accounts and, through third-party marketplaces, be turned into cash. That made them usable as stakes.

2014: betting skins on matches

The first big use was betting on professional matches. Sites posted odds on games, took skins as stakes and paid winners in skins, which pulled viewers into the growing esports scene. The biggest, CSGO Lounge, was where a teenager interviewed by ESPN began betting in early 2014, from a Steam account tied to his father's credit card.

Betting on matches soon raised the obvious problem. In August 2014 iBUYPOWER, one of North America's top teams, lost a league match to a weaker side while people close to the players collected the winnings on the upset; Valve banned seven people in January 2015. The iBUYPOWER match-fixing scandal covers the bets, the bans and their status today.

2015: jackpots, coinflips and roulette

By 2015 a second wave of sites offered casino games instead of match odds: jackpots, where players pile skins into a pot and one of them takes it all, coin flips between two players, roulette wheels, dice and slots. The action was faster, and many sites had virtually no age restrictions. The research firms Eilers & Krejcik Gaming and Narus Advisors later estimated that about $5 billion in skins was wagered in 2016, roughly 40% on esports and around $3 billion on casino-style games, according to ESPN.

Steam's own rules tightened that December, though for a different reason. Valve said about 77,000 accounts were being hijacked and emptied every month, so from 9 December 2015 items lost in a trade were held for up to three days unless the account had used the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator for at least seven days.

2016: the scandal and the crackdown

The year everything broke open began with a lawsuit against Valve in June. Days later two of YouTube's biggest gaming creators were revealed as the owners of CSGO Lotto, a site they had promoted as if they were ordinary players, and in 2017 the US Federal Trade Commission settled with them in its first case against individual influencers; the CSGO Lotto scandal has the details.

On 13 July 2016 Valve said publicly that gambling sites were breaking its API terms and user agreements, then sent cease-and-desist letters to 23 of them, and later said it had written to more than 40. Washington State's gambling regulator demanded in October that Valve stop skin gambling through Steam, and Valve refused to shut down trading. Valve's 2016 crackdown covers the statement, letters, lawsuits and the regulator's demand. CSGO Lounge stopped taking skin bets that August.

After 2016: what changed

The crackdown closed some sites but not the market. In January 2017 ESPN reported that about half of the sites Valve had targeted were still open, with new ones appearing outside the US.

Valve's next moves targeted trading itself:

• March 2018: CS:GO items received in a trade got the same seven-day cooldown as items bought in-game or on the Market. Valve said third-party services using automated accounts, which need to trade items constantly, had become "a vector for fraud or scams".
• October 2019: newly bought keys could no longer be traded or sold on the Market. Valve said "worldwide fraud networks" had started using keys to cash out, and that nearly all keys being traded or sold were believed to be bought with fraud.

Steam's conduct rules now list gambling among the commercial activities users may not carry out on Steam.

2023: Counter-Strike 2

On 27 September 2023 Counter-Strike 2 replaced CS:GO on Steam as a free upgrade, and every item from CS:GO carried over. For skins nothing reset: inventories, the Steam Community Market and trading all carried on in the new game.

2025–2026: trade protection and the latest rules

On 16 July 2025 Valve introduced trade protection for CS2. A traded item arrives immediately and can be used in game, but for 7 days it can't be traded on, consumed or modified. During that window the trades can be reversed from your trade history, a feature meant for accounts that have been hijacked or scammed. Reversing returns the items from all your protected trades to their previous owners and locks your own account out of trading and the Market for 30 days. Steam's support page now says CS2 items are not subject to trade holds at all, because trade protection covers them. Steam trade protection and skin deposits explains what the 7-day window means when skins are deposited to a site.

The legal pressure has moved from the gambling sites to Valve's own cases. On 25 February 2026 New York's attorney general sued Valve, alleging that paid cases in CS2, Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 are illegal gambling because their rare items can be sold for money. Valve answered publicly in March that its boxes are no different from packs of trading cards, that it has locked more than a million Steam accounts misused for gambling, fraud and theft, and that it bans gambling-related businesses from its tournaments. Valve has asked the court to dismiss the case, and no ruling had been made when this article was checked.

Sources

• 8/13 – The Arms Deal Update — Counter-Strike blog
• How Counter-Strike turned a teenager into a compulsive gambler — ESPN
• Security and Trading — Steam News
• Adjustments to maps and trade — Counter-Strike blog
• Key Change — Counter-Strike blog
• Counter-Strike 2 is out now — The Verge
• Trade Protected Items — Steam Support
• Attorney General James sues game developer for promoting illegal gambling through video games — New York Attorney General