TL;DR:
- All our steam accounts were trade banned.
- We tried to use Opskins ExpressTrade, it is also being banned.
- Steam does not want sites like ours around.
- We closed down operations.
CS:GO Blackjack ceased operations
As of June 09, 2018.Introductions
Growing up I was an avid CS 1.6 fan.
I had my own small community and server, I remember at the time a lot of people didn't had an official copy and we ran a non-steam server to attract more users.
32 slots, full during peak hours and always with some players on other periods. Through it we made friends, laught and socialized on teamspeak early versions.
Those were some cool times and I remember them fondly.
Being computer oriented, By age 16 I had my own GSP and was still running game servers and having fun with them.
And then, one day, I stopped playing.
You get older, you start a full-time job, you have more and more responsabilities and you just don't have the time or mindset to put the effort into it.
I became some kind of couch worm that gets off to work in the wee hours and comes back to just lie dead on the couch till the day reseted, until...
CS:GO Jackpot
On early January 2015 a guy that people got to know as Chris got refered to me by some developer friends because he was looking for some freelance developers.
Talking to him I discovered there was a new Counter-Strike, other than source, and that it was actually pretty cool (unlike source - on my opinion, 1.6 beats source every da** day).
He wanted to develop an item market, much like Opskins or Bitskins (which at the time didn't existed).
I thought it was a cool idea, quickly realized with little research it was possible and started working on getting him a quote.
Suddently I was getting to know skins: the cool weapon changes you could do on your client-side on 1.6 were now available game-wide.
I was impressed and started digging a lot into it, discovery more and eventually bought the game and gave it a try.
The idea
A few days later, I was at the shower and it hit me.
Apparently all the events of my life lead to this idea: My gaming background, the e-gold heads tails games I loved to play, my bitcoin experiences.
Everything was clear at the sudden and I could see CS:GO Jackpot on my head, which I would end up building exactly like originally visioned.
For me the concept was simple: You've a lot of repeated and cent items on your inventory, you put them in and one winner gets all the cent and repeated items back which he can then sell to buy a cool one or two dollar item - and it would be incredibly entretaining, like case openings but on a 50-player-at-once scale.
I remember jumping on the living room on my towel while trying to explain this amazing idea to my then-girlfriend, now wife, and she having no idea what was I was saying.
The rise
I started working on it the next day. I acquired the domain and off I went.
I contacted the guys that had offered me the gig to develop a market to join me on this and they were on.
After a few weeks of development we launched. A post on reddit and in seconds the site got the first depositor, and others followed.
I remember saying to the other guys on teamspeak before we launched "Wouldn't it be funny if we had to pull an all-nighter cause this all thing crashes from all the traffic?" - We were releasing the site close to midnight, we were all tired and little did I knew. And yes, we had to pull an all-nighter.
Soon I realized people were not interested in putting cent and repeat items in.
From there on you know the story, the bugs, the solves, the pots, the bans, the unbans...
CS:GO Blackjack
I left the CS:GO Jackpot team later when it was stable.
I was burnt down from slepping an hour or two per night, the stress and all the rest.
And that's when the csgoblackjack.com owner contacted me. He was trying to launch a site where people could play blackjack, and had missed quite a few scheduled public launch dates already cause he couldn't find someone to develop the website.
Blackjack was always a favorite so I quickly jumped on board and a few months afterwards, after a good rest, I developed the platform and soon enough, by Oct. 2015 we were opening.
The thrill of a launch is always amazing and we loved to see users playing at last.
This time we were prepared and endured through all traffic that came our way, Jackpot had teached me a lot.
Blackjack remained a relatively small website, I loved running CS:GO Jackpot so much that I ended up keeping Blackjack to keep a connection with the Steam community.
Ceasing Operations
On the last few weeks we started getting random account bans and today we had an massive ban accross all our accounts.
While we could simply roll-up more accounts and do it again and again and again the outcomes would always be the same.
While I believe people should be able to do anything they want with their skins we had no other choice at this time.
We still tried to implement Opskins ExpressTrade but they were banned as well so we had no way other than closing.
All user funds were paid (or are pending payment, which we'll do manually).
Final Notes
When I visioned CS:GO Jackpot I pictured it as a way for people to have fun and get more skins, however greed brought dark websites and operators to the scene and unfortunately it's not safe anymore for operators to run skin related services or for users to use them.
I've been connected to the steam skin scene since early 2015 but as I leave today I would to express my gratitude to everyone that helped me through out the years.
To all the players on any of the sites I build I would like to thank you for the trust to use my platforms, I believe I have been true and made all situations right to everyone, however, adapting another famous goodbye I can say that while I'm unconcious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors, I shall also carry with me the hope that my users will never cease to view them with indulgence.
I would also like to thank all friends I made, all my co-founders, all the streamers that showcased and played on my platforms and everyone that worked with me through out the years.