CS: GO case opening websites are a scam according to report
Apparently, Case-opening sites are deceiving their users through biased winrates, fake winners, and heavily-favored sponsors, according to a recent report.
A former coder for several case-opening sites has come forward with accusations about the sites. The coder told esports journalist Richard Lewis that he couldn’t deal with their “inherently dishonest and deceptive” business tactics. The source, who asked to stay anonymous, told Lewis that on many of these sites, gamblers’ chances of winning big can be set manually. That means that users’ winnings can be predetermined by “the house.” In some instances, the sites can toggle a special mode which preemptively gives the two cheapest skins from any case every time.
“On the front of the site it says you can win a knife, or an expensive item,” the source said. “Meanwhile the site has it set to zero so you literally can’t. Every site I’ve worked on does it this way and requests these features.”
The “recently won” display feed also presents a facade, ostensibly proving that a given website hands out more highly valued skins than its competitors, enticing users to stay and commit more money. “One site I worked on even had it coded so it manually removed all the lower items from the recent wins, so it appeared that it was only giving out premium items,” the source said.
Youtubers who sponsor and promote these websites are given favorable winrates based on their status and based on whatever value a back-end administrator deems appropriate, which is termed the “soak system.” In essence, promoters can set their own premium skin win percentages and the value of skins won, especially without a limit.
Neither Valve nor YouTube creators have responded to the report. But when they do, they’ll have serious implications for the future of case opening sites in CS:GO. We expect a similar situation to when Valve threatened legal action against betting sites in July 2016, forcing them to shut down almost entirely.
