It's possible, but it's also important to be aware of the business side of things.
Valve makes a significant amount of money from in-game transactions, and some of their practices around this are shady. Issues like kids using their parents' CCs, gambling industry built around in-game items, and the potentially addictive nature of colorful virtual items marketed towards kids are valid concerns.
So, while gaben might be nice, it's unlikely that this gets in the way of Valve's drive to maximize profits in every way they can legally get away with.
> supports a gigantic predatory underage gambling market
Last year Valve updated their code of conduct and effectively banned gambling.
They've also been known to send cease-and-desist orders to various CS:GO gambling sites.
So I wouldn't say that they support it, though for much time they weren't actively combating it either.
The above commenter was probably inspired by the recent investigative(!) video series by Coffeezilla (and decided not to mention it?). It was either in part 2 or 3, where C-z alleged/suspected Valve's legal actions to have been mostly about good PR and to send a signal to those ~websites~ businesses to keep them in check.
However it is indeed the case, that Valve has introduced greater and greater restrictions on inventory handling. The measures obviously go far beyond just counteracting possible scammers and phishing. Still, I am inclined to believe, they could've implemented all these features many years ago, if only they had wanted to. I highly recommend the videos. You can maybe skip the first one. It's mostly about casino owners' drama.
You could say “support a virtual market with insufficient controls” and be more truthful and engender a more productive discussion. They’ve come down pretty heavily on the gambling side, no?
> They’ve come down pretty heavily on the gambling side, no?
Not really. Back when this was a big story (around 2016-2017) they sent out some cease and desists to a number of the big CS:GO gambling websites but many did not comply and there was no follow-up. To this day many of those original sites are still around and have since grown. Essentially Valve (and the skin market as a whole) benefit so greatly from this grey-market that there is no incentive for them to stop it. This is covered in part 2 of Coffeezilla's latest series investigating CS:GO gambling [1]
