College Student X: "Hey, do you want to go to Vegas next weekend?"
High School Teenager Y:"No, I am not 21 yet."
[Scenario 2]
College Student X: "Hey, there's big CS:GO tournament going on and you should bet some weapon skins on your favorite team!"
High School Teenager Y: "Yes! I will ask my mom to add some cash to my Steam Wallet so I can buy some more good skinzzz for betting!!!"
Now, you must have questions after hearing these conversations. Well, let me start off by providing you with some more background in the second scenario.
Counter-Strike:Global Offensive (CS:GO) is Valve's online multiplayer First Person Shooter game that came out in August, 2012. Its predecessors, Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike:Source, made big appearances in the competitive gaming scene, also know as eSports. Being the much anticipated sequel, CS:GO gathered a pretty large player population right at the start and it continued to grow as more and more players start to form teams and compete in professional CS:GO tournaments.
One interesting feature Valve introduced is the weapon skins. Player can acquire skins in several different ways: random drops by the system at the end of a game, opening a weapon case for a random skin, and purchasing from or trading with other players online. Except the random drops given by the system, everything else involves real money of some sort! Opening a weapon case costs $2.49, which goes straight to Valve's bank; purchasing from a different player requires $ as well as there is no in game currency; and you probably need something worth money to trade with another player because free skins are not worth a nickel.
As an active CS:GO player, I have to say that the skins look really cool and I am pretty sure almost everyone in the game wants a good skin of some sort. You can tell people really want it by looking at some skins market price:
No, no, no... Your eyes are not blurry and those price tags are not modified. That's right, you can spend quite a bit of cash to buy a skin in CS:GO! In short, skins in CS:GO are worth real cash!
Are you thinking "so what?" Remember Scenario 2 mentioned at the beginning? Yes! Now we see some potential problems here, right? The biggest CS:GO skin betting website right now is probably http://csgolounge.com/, which also supports skin trading and selling. Any player can go on the website and put their skins on some upcoming matches to place bets. And I know for a fact that there's are a lot of players under the age of 21. There is no age restriction or parental control. Wow! What a brilliant idea! Everyone who plays CS:GO can wander into the realm of REAL MONEY GAMBLING! But wait a minute... Is it really gambling if no money is involved? What if I just want to invest my skins to get more awesome skins from a bet because my parents won't buy me more skins until next month? And another thing to consider is that, selling on Steam Market does not return cash into your bank. All the money are kept in your Steam Wallet, which only be spent purchasing more digital contents on Steam such as other games or more in game contents. So in that sense, the money on Steam are not real money but more of a virtual currency that you can buy with real money.
So can you convert CS:GO skins into real money that you can put in your bank account? Yes, but... really difficult and dangerous. There are people who are willing to pay money from outside of steam, meaning Paypal most of the time. But then there's no protection for the seller and the buyer because one party has to give the offer first, which leaves them completely vulnerable to a scam. That is why 99% of the time players don't take real money offers.
Well, the biggest winner in this whole thing is most certainly... Valve, of course. Each time a player sells a skin on Steam Market, Valve takes 15% of the sales price as their tax. In addition, a good number of players open weapon cases on a daily basis to get new skins. Keep in mind... each weapon case opened is $2.49 and the skins opened are worth less than that 90% of the time (maybe even more).
I think I have mumbled enough for now. I can't answer whether CS:GO betting is real gambling or not. And even if it is, how can it be regulated while the player population is a mix of people on both sides of the 21-year-old fence? As much as I respect the success of the virtual economy created by Valve in CS:GO, I'm really hoping they are aware of the grays and flaws and willing to address them in the near future.