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Valve's 2025 sponsor ban: skin sites off CS2 jerseys and broadcasts

How Valve's December 2025 licence change pushed case-opening and skin-trading sites off CS2 jerseys and broadcasts, and what it still allows.

Fact-checked 1 November 2026 · 8 sources

On 8 December 2025, between the third stage and the playoffs of the Budapest Major, Valve told every Counter-Strike 2 tournament operator to keep case-opening and skin-trading sites off team jerseys and broadcasts. The clause behind the rule also bars organisers from taking sponsors whose business relies on Valve's game economies. This is what the rule says, how it came about, what it leaves out and how the big events caught up.

What changed on 8 December 2025

Valve keeps its rules for CS2 events, the Tournament Operation Requirements (TOR), in a public repository on GitHub. Anyone running a Counter-Strike tournament needs a licence from Valve, and for many events that is the Limited Game Tournament License published on Steam.

At 23:03 UTC on 8 December, Valve added one sentence to the TOR: whether an event is ranked or unranked, its operator "must abide by 2.4.e" of the licence, the section on "displaying content that violates Valve IP or the Steam Subscriber Agreement". A ranked event is one whose results feed the Valve Regional Standings, the monthly ranking Valve uses as the basis for invitations. An unranked event's results don't count towards it.

In Budapest it was already 00:03 on 9 December, the date some reports give. Dust2.us, which broke the story on 10 December, reported that Valve had amended the licence at the same time. The Major's third stage had ended at the MTK Sportpark on 7 December, and its playoffs started at the MVM Dome on 11 December.

Dust2.us also reported that a number of teams had already left their skin sponsors' logos off their Major jerseys, a sign that some had been warned. Several top teams had such sponsors at the time.

The warning in October

The licence already had an "IP Protection" clause before December. In October 2025 Mnmzzz, the journalist who later wrote the Dust2.us story, reported that Valve had stepped up its enforcement and was "more willing than ever" to sanction events that promoted skin-betting, skin-trading or case-opening sites, up to taking away their ranked status. He also reported that an unnamed organiser had been told by email, around its grand final in early October, to remove all its skin-site adverts.

Outlook Respawn, which relayed the reports, described a clause that "forbids tournament organisers from promoting any third-party sites involved in skin betting, trading, or case openings". The TOR already required every operator, ranked or unranked, to comply with the licence. The December sentence singled out one clause of it, and Dust2.us called the change "already partially in place".

What the clause says now

Section 2.4.e of the licence, headed IP Protection, does three things:

  • It bars organisers from showing anything that violates Valve's intellectual property (IP) or the Steam Subscriber Agreement, "including on team jerseys" or in anything else visible during the broadcast. Its examples are case-opening sites and skin-trading sites.
  • It tells them not to let such content, logos on player jerseys included, appear in any broadcast of the tournament.
  • It bars them from accepting sponsors that break Valve's agreements or local law, or that "rely on Valve's game economies".

The last part names two kinds of business: "key resellers" and companies that "interact with players' Valve game inventories", such as the skin-trading, case-opening and skin gambling sites that take or move players' items. The licence also lets Valve ask an organiser for its revenue and funding sources, and for any business ties it has with the teams taking part.

What it leaves out

The rule isn't a ban on gambling sponsors in general. Section 2.4.d still allows sponsorship messages from betting operators, as long as each is officially licensed in the territories the tournament targets, or permitted there under a foreign licence. A territory counts as targeted when it gets an officially licensed video feed in its official language and the stream isn't geo-blocked there.

It doesn't bind teams directly either. The licence is an agreement between Valve and the organiser, so its limits apply to the organiser's broadcasts and sponsors: a team can keep a skin-site sponsor, but not on screen at a licensed event. Betting by insiders sits in another part of the licence, which makes organisers bar their staff from betting on the event and players from betting on any match in a tournament their team plays in; the iBUYPOWER match-fixing scandal shows why such rules exist.

Not every event came under the new sentence at once. The TOR applies whichever version was current at an event's Additional Information deadline, the date by which the organiser must publish its invitation and qualifier details. For Tier 1 events, the top tier, that deadline falls at least 10 months before the main event.

Why Valve calls it IP protection

The clause treats skin sites as a breach of Valve's intellectual property and the Steam Subscriber Agreement, a position Valve has held for years. In July 2016 it said that gambling sites built on Steam's trading system broke its API terms and user agreements, and that it would send them notices; Valve's 2016 crackdown covers what followed. In March 2026 it described years of work to shut down accounts found "using Valve game items on gambling sites in violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement".

The same statement, Valve's answer to New York's lawsuit over the cases and other mystery boxes in its games, put the sponsor rule more broadly: "we forbid any gambling-related business to participate in or sponsor tournaments for our games." The licence's own words are narrower, since section 2.4.d still allows licensed betting sponsors. The history of CS:GO gambling sets out Valve's other moves against skin gambling.

How the big events caught up

On 7 July 2026, about seven months after the change and ahead of the second season of its 2026 Pro Tour, ESL updated its sponsor rules "to align with Valve sponsor restriction updates". Its rulebook now bans sponsors that violate Valve's IP, "including companies that interact with players' Valve game inventories".

ESL also dealt with workarounds. Teams may not rebrand using a sponsor's logo or look unless that sponsor is the team's official name, and a team whose branding includes a banned sponsor must provide an alternative version for the event. Extra team staff allowed into the tournament area may not wear clothing that shows banned sponsors.

DateWhat happened
October 2025Mnmzzz reports that Valve is enforcing the IP Protection clause harder
8 December 2025Valve adds the 2.4.e sentence to the TOR and amends the licence
10 December 2025Dust2.us breaks the story during the Budapest Major
11 December 2025The Major's playoffs start at the MVM Dome
11 March 2026Valve says it forbids gambling-related businesses to sponsor its tournaments
7 July 2026ESL aligns its sponsor rules with Valve's

What it means for you

The rule changes what you see on a broadcast, not what the sites are. A skin site's logo on a jersey was never proof that the site was licensed or fair, and its absence proves nothing now: the clause is about Valve's intellectual property and agreements, not about vetting operators. How to check a CS2 gambling site lists what to look at yourself, from who runs a site to its licence and withdrawal terms.

Gambling costs money on average, whoever sponsors the stream. cs2.casino is for adults 18+ and isn't affiliated with Valve; every game there shows its house edge, the share of each bet the house keeps on average, and its bet limits, and over time the house wins. Account limits let you cap deposits, losses and wagers over a day, a week or a month.

Sources

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