To Stop Money Laundering, CS:GO Keys Can't Be Re-Sold Anymore

For the longest time now, one of the ways Valve made money was with keys. You’d unlock loot chests in games like Team Fortress 2 or, more pertinently for this article, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and then you buy keys with real-world money that could be used to crack them open. It’s been a system that’s worked pretty well for Valve, players, and of course, criminals.

Because as it turns out, the ability to re-sell the keys you buy was being used in money laundering schemes. This is why Valve, in a surprise announcement just today, revealed that they plan to stop that from happening by removing the resale-ability of these keys.

From their website:
 

“In the past, most key trades we observed were between legitimate customers. However, worldwide fraud networks have recently shifted to using CS:GO keys to liquidate their gains. At this point, nearly all key purchases that end up being traded or sold on the marketplace are believed to be fraud-sourced. As a result, we have decided that newly purchased keys will not be tradable or marketable.

Unfortunately this change will impact some legitimate users, but combating fraud is something we continue to prioritize across Steam and our products.”

This won’t be the first time CS:GO has found itself in the center of a possible criminal empire. CS:GO loot gambling became a big deal around three years ago, when a bunch of sites were taking people’s real-world money in order to give them a chance at winning rare CS:GO loot – and several ‘entrepreneurs’ decided that selling their websites to minors would be an easy way to make a quick buck.

Anyway, if you have a huge problem with this, the CS:GO team suggests you email them with the subject line “Key Restriction”. You probably won’t change anything but it’s a free country.