The CEO of CSGOEmpire, who goes by the name “Monarch”, has published a public 10-page letter bringing accusations against CSGORoll. He asks the company to improve urgently in some aspects before coming back to the entire CS:GO skin trading community.
Both CSGORoll and CSGOEmpire are CS:GO skin trading sites in addition to basically being casinos. G2 Esports is the official partner of CSGORoll and recently stirred up controversy for using the then-underage m0NESY as a promotional face.
Monarch denounces CSGORoll’s practices
In the public letter, Monarch said, “CSGORoll, one of our largest competitors, has recently taken some extreme actions that we believe are predatory toward its customers.”
Hi @CSGORoll, now that we got your attention, how about you finally respond to this?
It has already been 13 days since we posted a document regarding many of your malicious activities, and so far you have completely ignored this, while hiding any comments about this in your chat…
— CSGOEmpire (@CSGOEmpire) May 23, 2023
The CEO wanted to protect ethical companies like his own and ensure the industry’s safety. Monarch said he wanted to address CSGORoll’s “predatory and exploitative practices” toward its customers. He also wanted to talk about regulation and the risk of illegal transactions.
How does CSGORoll exploit its users?
In his letter, Monarch claims that CSGORoll exploits and takes advantage of its customers. This happens mainly through restrictions on withdrawing winnings – the fewer money players can withdraw from the platform, the more profit CSGORoll makes because players continue to gamble and lose revenue back to the platform.
According to Monarch, CSGORoll has a problem with liquidity. This means that players who want to withdraw a large amount in skins are forced to wait for a long time because there are not enough skins listed. CSGORoll only allows withdrawals in skins and not crypto, for example.
CSGORoll has been issued with a formal warning for breaching Australian gambling laws.
As we have warned time and time again, illegal and predatory operations put the entire skins trading industry at risk of closure by attracting the ire of regulators. We need change right now. https://t.co/e5teMLaKDS
— Warren (@variancewarren) May 17, 2023
On CSGORoll, there is a withdrawal block for users who win more than 1,000 coins, which can only be lifted with manual approval from support. This takes a bit of time, sometimes up to several hours, and some players use the time to continue gambling. Monarch thinks that this was done on purpose by CSGO Roll.
Social media is full of examples of CSGORoll blocking withdrawals just like that, allegedly causing customers to lose money they would have otherwise withdrawn. There are also rumors that CSGORoll censors chat to ensure such complaints do not get out to the public.
Casinos disguised as skin trading sites?
According to Monarch, CSGORoll accepts clients from the US, even though unregulated casinos are banned in the US. However, this is a threat to the entire industry. CSGORoll says it “is not a gambling site,” which is false. However, CSGO gambling runs the risk of Valve possibly deciding to make skins no longer tradable.
If regulators catch wind of this, Valve may be forced to shut down the API that makes such platforms possible in the first place, which could spell the end of all skin trading platforms. Terms like “community skin trading” and “social gaming platform” only mask the fact that kids and teens hang out on a gambling platform, i.e., a casino.
We had a very interesting chat with an ex-CSGORoll employee where they went into very high level of detail about their insane working conditions & borderline slave-wages.
We at CSGOEmpire are currently hiring extremely aggressively, and we’re interested in adopting some…
— Monarch (@CSGOEmpireV2) May 19, 2023
Monarch also condemns G2, CSGORoll’s partners, in his letter. The organization is currently advertising with its youngest player, m0NESY, which has caused a lot of criticism – because gambling is illegal for children, and at the time of the advertising shoot m0NESY was still under 18.
Monarch also accuses CSGOROll of paying big streamers and influencers to advertise the site so that the site can “fake a solid reputation.” Finally, Monarch asks CSGORoll to let go of the suspicious practices and even provides them with a table of solutions. So far, CSGORoll is silent about it, as well as G2.
Cheating with CSGO skins and trading with underage players is unfortunately not an isolated case. Phantoml0rd, aka James Varga, had made thousands of dollars from players on his gambling site CSGOShuffle a few years ago, where he never announced that he was the owner. He promoted it through Twitch, which had no mercy and suspended his account after the scandal came to light.
Header: CSGO Empire | CS:GO Roll
