The entire skin gambling scene is a big reason why I don’t touch the game anymore. It seeps into everything around CS and now you can’t watch a professional match without seeing a sponsorship from a skin casino, can’t watch a YouTube video without a sponsorship.

This is also why I don’t like the way some gamers treat Valve as the only ethical company in the industry. CS skin gambling is like what if you take the lootbox mechanism and pave it over the game’s entire ecosystem.

It’s the kids who win big you need to worry about (anecdotal, not me, but a big win concurrent with a bad time during formative years can have a lasting impact on people who then ultimately become addicts).