There’s been a story going around about two prominent YouTubers being charged under Britain’s gambling act for soliciting minors to buy coins from gambling sites for Electronic Arts’ FIFA games.
According to the BBC, Craig “Nepenthez” Douglas and Dylan Rigby have been taken to court by the British Gambling Commission under the Magistrate’s Court.
The drama was quick to garner the attention of other YouTubers like Scarce and Honor The Call, the latter of which broke the original story about Trevor “TmarTN” Martin and Tom “ProSyndicate” Cassell being involved with a Counter-Strike Global Offensive gambling ring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxYF3cRcpsU
After the CS:GO Lotto scandal broke involving the two prominent YouTubers – who owned the site but pretended in their videos that they just happened to come across said sites and promoted it to their mostly under-18 audience – a string of other YouTubers were also caught in the crosshairs as well, which eventually managed to find its way in front of the Federal Trade Commission.
In the case of Craig Douglas, he runs a channel with more than 1 million subscribers, and Gamasutra is saying that the case may set precedent.
The British Gambling Commission has been recently eying the video game industry for unsanctioned promotion of gambling activities, and Douglas and Rigby ended up on the wrong side of their investigation. The case, according to the BBC, is adjourned until October 14th next month. Depending on how things play out in the U.K., could determine how publishers and developers approach introducing content into games that could be construed as gambling.
This will also be interesting to see if it plays any role in how lawyers approach the civil suits against YouTubers who promoted the gambling sites for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Valve was quick to wash their hands of the matter by sending cease and desist letters to gambling sites using the Steam API, but now it’s a question of whether or not that could be enough to absolve them of the impending court cases?
