Game Gambling

The video game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a very popular game in the gaming community, but one I know little to nothing about. A tournament in Columbus, Ohio at the Nationwide arena held a sold-out crowd for the game, as well as, generating 71 million in online views. Showing the game is incredibly popular. However, it did not become popular until the game developers added “decorative virtual weapons or skins” to the game that could be bought and sold for real money. These decorative weapons could be sold up to $400 in some cases. With this added feature to the game the number of people playing CS:GO had grown 1,500 percent and you can find 380,000 people playing the game at any given time.

With the addition of the skins to CS:GO it has created a gambling market on the video game. People like to bet on pro CS:GO matches using these skins as a currency and can be converted back and forth with real money. “According to research firm, Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, more than 3 million people wagered $2.3 billion worth of skins on the outcomes of e-sports matches in 2015.” This absolutely blows me away and I think can show how addicting gambling can really be. People will go to extreme lengths in video games to have the best or coolest stuff as well. I’m not sure about the betting aspect but in sports games too, people will use a lot of their real money to have the best teams and players and that too gets addicting. Trying and hoping for a good player in a pack is the same thing.

Looking at this article, they say “I’m not really sure what happened but I’ve been playing DotA for the last week or two, and I made $100 selling these items that I got.” This makes me want to start this to make a little money. One of my best friends from home is very good at the EA Sports NHL games and he told me he recently sold his Hockey Ultimate Team on the game for $200, that absolutely blew me away.

I don’t think that people will ever stop buying these in game items for real money. The only thing that I can see happening is they put regulations on the online gambling for CS:GO, but aside from that there will continue to be a lot of money to be made from these games and buying and selling the items in the games.