The slow, grinding gears of the legal system has finally yielded a verdict in the last of a series of CS:GO lawsuits from 2016. Valve was being sued by parents who alleged the company knowingly facilitated CS:GO skin gambling on third-party websites, but the judge hearing the case ultimately dismissed the complaint on January 7th, ruling that the plaintiffs in the case never actually used Steam or played the game in question.
“[Plaintiffs] never visited a Valve or Steam website, never used Steam, never played CS:GO, and never saw or read any representations from Valve about CS:GO, keys, or weapon cases. […] The court agrees with Valve that no reasonable factfinder could find that Plaintiffs’ decisions would have been affected by information to which they were never exposed.”
The dismissal was made with prejudice, which means that those involved in the lawsuit cannot appeal the decision.
As noted earlier, this ends a long-running series of fights against the multiplayer shooter’s skin trade, which has been the source of several headaches for Valve, including a lawsuit from a player, warnings from a state regulatory body that said the company was facilitating the practice (which Valve tacitly denied), and moves by Valve to blacklist, issue cease and desists, and speak out against CS:GO skin gambling sites. There are additional legal troubles spawned from the game as well; we’ve gathered them together in a roundup list below.
