ALL THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT THE BUSINESS OF PC GAMES

News

Valve brings down hammer on CS:GO skin trading bots holding $2m in value

Valve brings down hammer on CS:GO skin trading bots holding $2m in value

Around $2m of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive items have been lost after Valve shut down trading bots used by OPSkins.

That's according to users on the r/GlobalOffensiveTrade - as spotted by PCGamesN - who have compiled a list of bots that have been banned, along with an estimate for how much value they were each holding.

The current count is 2,843 trading bots who were responsible for 1.5m items worth a massive $2m.

These bots were shut down on June 21st and follows a cease and desist order from Valve to OPSkins at the start of June. Said C&D appears to have been issued via Twitter which, um, seems unusual. 

All of this comes in the wake of OPSkins launching the Express Trade service. This free enterprise allows users to get around the current seven-day hold on trading CS:GO items which was launched in March.

OPSkins has reassured users that it is not going to be shutting down and that their money is safe. In a statement on its blog, the company said that this was an attempt by Valve to maximise sales on its own Steam Community Marketplace, and went on to highlight its burgenoning blockchain business - World Asset Exchange (WAX) - as well as highlighting the pros of its service.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.