By releasing their update on August 14th 2013, Valve, thanks to their experience on Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2, knew that the freshly integrated skins would create a strong interest for the competitive and amateur community. And they were right, the Counter-Strike players who are usually reluctant whenever there is a change, especially visual, got hooked pretty fast. By opening cases, farming idle servers and exchanging with others so that they could get many valuable skins, players built an impressive skin market which is even beyond Steam market.

A little time after this news, the website CSGOLounge.com opened its doors. This Counter-Strike version of a website already preexisting with success on Dota 2 (Dota2Lounge) kept the same principle as its big brother. Users can publish their offers while potential buyers can browse them, enter in contact and make a deal. So far, everything is alright. Everybody is free to do as they want without having any fear of being scammed, thanks to the good system of this website that goes through Steam.

Lounge rules them all

It’s the other part of the website that is actually a problem: the bets. Indeed, while other real money betting websites were growing pretty fast, players only had eyes for CSGOLounge and its unique bet system. The success was instant for the website, thanks to its experience on Dota 2, which was globaly already working well except minor problems about unavailable bots or overloaded servers struggling to support the massive amount of visitors.
Meanwhile, Valve obviously includes new skins, some of which gain value that some might call disproportionate but nothing new for the developers who, again, had the same economic trends on their MOBA.

All the skins that became more valuable automatically led to higher valued bets. That’s how, during the first day of the EMS One Cologne, tens of thousands gamblers bet more than one million dollars of skins. With an estimated $15 to $30 per bettors on average, we’re getting closer to what people actually bet on real money betting websites. Obviously, the frustration of losing a bet can lead to rage outbreak in the comments. But in the end, CSGOLounge isn’t responsible for this. If tomorrow CSGOLounge ceases operations, it’ll probably make the disappointed real money bettors go and cry on the players’ facebook pages. Who never tried to calm a friend who lost $50 on a soccer betting website only because an offside goal has been scored at the 91th minute ?

CSGOLounge can’t change human nature but it could try to not make it worse.During its first year of existence, CSGOLounge has been incredibly successful with this unique concept of its kind. The abundance of matches and the extraordinary global growth of the game are of course also responsible and there is on average around 40/50 000 bets performed on every game, every night. An average that keeps increasing due to a growing number of players every month. 

Up to ~ 100 000 bets on some evening

Another illustration of this success is that the CSGL bettors / CS players ratio is clearly above Dota’s one. Of course, knowing why a CSGO player bets more than a Dota 2 player is another story but it clearly shows how there is a true CSGOLounge culture on the FPS from Valve.

CSGOLounge claims 2 236 504 unique visitors in August 2014. It’s almost twice more than the CS:GO subreddit (1 352 605) and almost twenty  times more than VaKarM. If those numbers are true, it would make it the most visited CS:GO website in the world outside of Counter-Strike.net, appearing on the front page of the game at its launching.

This instant success, or simply the difficulty of creating such an infrastructure has somehow scared potential competitors. Thus CSGOLounge was and is in a complete situation of monopoly since its creation. Complete because in a year, no competing site has emerged. This dominant position has given huge power to CSGOLounge and its owners. They are now able to provide a massive potential base of viewers to any CS:GO game of any event. Proof of this is the famous tournament between bots organized by 99Dmg.de where it was possible to bet on the outcome of the fighting. That’s how 20,000 viewers have watched (or rather followed the score) of the meeting between ten bots. Although the originality of the tournament could bring curious, no need to say that the vast majority of viewers was there because of CSGOLounge.

VaKarM also recently surfed this wave during the “Killing Spree” where French subtop games have been added to CSGOLounge. It's simple, every time the game was available on CSGOLounge, the audience was at least tripled before dropping right at the end and despite the start of a new game that, this time, hasn’t been selected by the betting website.

GamingLive TV evening - Killing Spree – 06/29

---- : Curve representing the variation of simultaneous viewers on GamingLive TV
A : webSPELL vs. Katrina game with CSGOLounge (1st round ~ 8PM – 8:40PM)
B : Katrina vs. *aAa* game without CSGOLounge (2nd round ~8:50PM – 9:45PM)

In clear, by adding a match organized by nobodies, CSGOLounge can allow them to get as many viewers as a match from a famous competition would. You’re wondering, what’s wrong about boosting the viewer’s number of any stream? After all, isn’t that what we’re asking for? More visibility for our game ?

Yes, but it’s certainly not up to one actor, furthermore a betting website, to decide how many viewers a stream has. It’s simply economically unhealthy especially considering how fragile eSport is regarding this.

Example: If some people want to start a competition or a serie of regular showmatch, they can (and probably will) contact CSGOLounge admins and ask them to add some of their matches. If they accepts, the stream will make a great start in terms of audimat, far from the number of viewers it should have received under normal circumstances. Used to those nice numbers making them earn good money through advertising, they decide to invest a little more and increase the cashprize. What will happen if CSGOLounge refuses to display the next matches? Minus the huge “fake” viewers, their competition will become impossible to support.

On a less caricatured note, CSGOLounge recently decided to not display the games from the NA ESEA Invite  for various reasons during one week. It will be interesting to observe the very likely decreasing audimat of the stream from those games during the next seven days and no doubt that American casters are going to kick themselves. A dependency to only one website could be avoided by a plurality of the concept.

20 000 people watched the game. Impressive, isn’t it?

Every organizers are conscious about the power acquired by CSGOLounge and even have the tendency to pathetically race against each other to be THE relayed stream on the betting website. 

Some like FACEIT take the lead and decide to work together with the platform, ensuring a minimum of security in their relationship. Others are resisting the prerequisites established by CSGOLounge. Only one case has been recently revealed by The Daily Dot about Dreamhack Invitational who did not agree to meet the prerequisites for publicity purposes. CSGOLounge apparently asked the organisers to broadcast advertisements for the website for free in exchange for which they would display the matches. Given the refusal of the DH, CSGOLounge refused to provide its community for the matches of the competition that yet has a huge reputation.

Obviously, the Dreamhack is strong enough to withstand CSGOLounge and in the end, for such a competition, the share of viewers exclusively coming from skin betting was far from being a majority. But everybody isn’t Dreamhack and it is hard to not comply with the requirements (very strict and very convenient for the site of betting) imposed by the owners of CSGOLounge. Also, it clearly shows that the owners take advantage of their position for very doubtful purposes while adopting a provocative and revealing communication. All this because they can afford to disappoint their community without real disturbances on their traffic.
CSGOLounge has almost the power of life and death over a mid-tier organizer. Its choice of daily games impacts the audiences in such and such matches every evenings.

In addition to the current effects of this power, today, CSGOLounge could increase the percentage of their earnings and no one would be able to do anything about it as there is no alternative. The user can only try to complain publicly, hoping to be heard. It’s showed by all the drama that regularly arise and make a lot of noise. From security breaches to major skin theft suspicion, a simple search on reddit with the site name gives you hours of readings.

Finally the start of an alternative ?

On their throne, the owners are necessarily right even when they are wrong. A total monopoly which made the owners big headed as they use of a very aggressive communication, especially on Twitter. All this, without their interest being called into question except for some people who start to realize the danger of such a context.

CSGOLounge HAS to have competitors to be forced to try to not disappoint their users. People who aren’t feeling well with using CSGOLounge have to have the choice of a competitive website. The community is slowly beginning to understand it and the launch of CSGOLOOT.com is a very good thing and has to be supported, for the sake of it.

With their borderline behavior, the owners of CSGOLounge are challenging the CS:GO community. A challenge that would be necessary to take up.

Translation by Sephi