CS:GO Betting Platform Banned in Australia
Australian investigators have confirmed that popular eSports betting platform CS:GO Roll will be banned, marking a drastic shift in the industry’s direction. The popular mechanism for gambling on eSports has been utilised as a workaround for players seeking real-money betting on CS:GO, instead of depositing fiat currency to bet with the players buy and stake in-game items, which can in turn be cashed out for fiat. This week’s announcement by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) concluded the practice to be in breach of Australia’s gambling law.
The ban of CS:GO Roll in Australia represents a turning point in the debate about in-game skins gambling. ©Timrael/Pixabay
The ACMA confirmed it has warned Feral Holdings Ltd. to cease and desist its operation hosted at the CS:GO Roll platform. Australia’s Interactive Gambling Act 2001 explicitly bans gambling types that operate under casino style logic on an online platform, specifically if the games are facilitating the staking of money, or anything else of value.
This decision draws attention to the loophole that so-called “skins gambling” has been working through in recent years. In an effort to evade the traditional ban on online gambling in Australia, gambling companies located off-shore have been trying to fly under the radar and operate within the grey area of legal ambiguity.
Until the technical implementation of a ban can be executed, the Belize-based CS:GO Roll has been compelled by the ACMA to begin blocking clients from Australian IPs. Whether or not this request will be adhered to is another question, but eventually Australian internet service providers will kick in to gear and block the traffic at source.
eSports Gambling Under the Microscope Again in Australia
The insurmountable evidence that Australian legislators will continue to ban eSports betting is going to be stagnant for a long-while to come has been reaffirmed with this latest case. Proponents of relaxing the stringent restrictions on eSports gambling had looked to in-game skins as the perfect vehicle to circumvent the laws. But this has been proven time and time again to not be the case.
Valve, a vide-game developer and the creator of CS:GO has taken a negative stance towards the gambling derivatives spawning from its game. The developer has issued cease and desist requests en masse in the past, and sought legal avenues to shut down platforms allowing CS:GO skins to be used as gambling chips.
In an effort to dis-incentivise the practice, the game studio has made efforts to ban players from the game that it believes were affiliated to the trading of skins for gambling means. Up until now this has not been the most effective deterrent as this case proves.
Australian Courts Add Another Operator to the Ban List
Serious breaches of Australian gambling law like those committed by Feral Holdings Ltd. rarely go unpunished. This was a case that had been on the forefront of regulators minds for many years, building the case was a time consuming process, but one that has resulted in the CS:GO Roll domain being blocked by Australian internet service providers following a court order.
The ACMA has been busy in this regard, policing the cyber-sphere of gambling operators targeting Australian customers. Under the current legislation Australians are only permitted to gamble in very particular types of sports betting and lottery, online casinos are prohibited and thus any off-shore platform seeking to build products and market them to Australian consumers will quickly find themselves blocked, and prosecuted if the courts can gain jurisdiction over the organisations behind it.
Since 2017, the ACMA has stepped up its efforts to combat an influx of off-shore gambling websites targeting growth in Australia. They now have over 700 off-shore betting sites on their blocklist. In their own words, these sites pose a major fraud risk to Australian consumers, as they’re unregulated and not held to any legal standards. As a result, many customers in the past have lost deposits on these platforms without any recourse.
