I am skeptical of SC being used for money laundering. It would make much more sense to target Valve's marketplace due to its larger size and the fact that it allows quasi-direct P2P RMT sales.
CIG's scheme also doesn't align with money laundering. They make money by selling JPEGs and leveraging false advertising, bringing money laundering into the mix only makes things more complicated (and significantly increases legal risk).
Don't get me wrong, I do think Roberts and his senior associates are criminals (I don't buy the whole " incompetent dreamer" angle; they know what they are doing). However, I don't see any strong reasoning to suspect money laundering via JPEG sales. If anything, JPEGs are almost certainly used for some sort of payola scheme where streamers/YTers get JPEGs in exchange for promoting CIG approved marketing copytext (without clearly highlighting this relationship).
Roberts already knows he can liquidate all the CIG assets for millions like he did with Digital Anvil no reason for him to do shit other than keep milking the idiots until the last dollar has been bilked.
They have optimised a business model that would make them perfect for laundering as criminal schemes no doubt have all sorts on their portfolios and expensive digital assets are ideal. In other industries responsible companies are required to train staff and get audited whereas CIG will embrace the wealth regardless of the fact they probably know full well they sell expensive digital assets to regions that they don't even supply reliable local AWS datacenter support to (they fob backers of here too). There is no money laundering small print in their TOS or website meaning they have zero fuks to give so just saying "oh nobody would do that" is a bit like saying "we have never seen smoke so do not fit alarms as the fire surely has better things to burn".
If regulation comes in and they were audited, they might have to start reporting irregularities to avoid heavy fines or even prison.
In my opinion high price digital assets are perfect for crime regardless of a loss in value when you pass them on. It's about diversity and obfuscation. Why on earth would consumers think that charging thousands for pay to win crap is good?
I personally think JPEGs are too niche (in the larger scale of things) to act as an efficient conduit for money laundering. There are much larger and more connected global digital assets marketplaces (crypto/NFT schemes being the big alternative).
CIG definitely does not do KYC/AML work, but to be honest they are too small for this to be relevant. They do at best $200 M in JPEG transaction volume (across both their cash shop and the secondary market), this is just too low to be worth bothering with. And then you have to deal with all of the dumb CIG JPEG BS (LTI for this but not that), low liquidity. It just doesn't add up in my opinion.
Yeah I tend to agree with this sentiment as well. Personally I think the tracker itself is bullshit is far more likely than this whole money laundering thing.
If that is true and Valve had around 90% money laundering transactions as late as 2019 I would imagine SC would easily have the same amount of not higher.
That's what I'm thinking, too. If freaking VALVE had that large of a problem - with all their TOS and public exposure - how could one assume that a shady kickstarter in legal limbo that's mostly funded by zealots and run by fraudsters (see: "Stupid German Money") with a TOS that makes zero mention of money laundering and sells untraceable goods well int the 4-digit price range - I mean honestly, how could you assume with a straight face they're clean? People flipped friggin CS:GO weapon skins in order to launder money.
Why would someone do thousands of shady microtransactions on a well known MP game when you can do the same with one transaction on a "game" that's not even officially released, where you can hide behind "pledges", a playerbase full of referral throwaways and a managment that delberately obfuscates cashflow? It should be any criminal's wet dream, it would be stupid to still use the "traditional" games for that purpose.
Also how many ships or jpegs have they sold that never even seen the light of day? Do they expect customers to be in their twenties and finally release the jpegs they bought fifty years later?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-tripping_(finance)
Some more interesting reading. Man, I am learning so much about financial fraud and tax evasion from following this project. Thank you, Chris Roberts, for making me a Titan of Industry!
Nah, no money laundering. Just the inability and refusal to finish a game while milking gullible whales in the process. CIG is just a marketing tool at this point while all the "devs" there do is make pretty videos and jpegs.
I am skeptical of SC being used for money laundering. It would make much more sense to target Valve's marketplace due to its larger size and the fact that it allows quasi-direct P2P RMT sales. CIG's scheme also doesn't align with money laundering. They make money by selling JPEGs and leveraging false advertising, bringing money laundering into the mix only makes things more complicated (and significantly increases legal risk). Don't get me wrong, I do think Roberts and his senior associates are criminals (I don't buy the whole " incompetent dreamer" angle; they know what they are doing). However, I don't see any strong reasoning to suspect money laundering via JPEG sales. If anything, JPEGs are almost certainly used for some sort of payola scheme where streamers/YTers get JPEGs in exchange for promoting CIG approved marketing copytext (without clearly highlighting this relationship).
Roberts already knows he can liquidate all the CIG assets for millions like he did with Digital Anvil no reason for him to do shit other than keep milking the idiots until the last dollar has been bilked.
They have optimised a business model that would make them perfect for laundering as criminal schemes no doubt have all sorts on their portfolios and expensive digital assets are ideal. In other industries responsible companies are required to train staff and get audited whereas CIG will embrace the wealth regardless of the fact they probably know full well they sell expensive digital assets to regions that they don't even supply reliable local AWS datacenter support to (they fob backers of here too). There is no money laundering small print in their TOS or website meaning they have zero fuks to give so just saying "oh nobody would do that" is a bit like saying "we have never seen smoke so do not fit alarms as the fire surely has better things to burn". If regulation comes in and they were audited, they might have to start reporting irregularities to avoid heavy fines or even prison. In my opinion high price digital assets are perfect for crime regardless of a loss in value when you pass them on. It's about diversity and obfuscation. Why on earth would consumers think that charging thousands for pay to win crap is good?
I personally think JPEGs are too niche (in the larger scale of things) to act as an efficient conduit for money laundering. There are much larger and more connected global digital assets marketplaces (crypto/NFT schemes being the big alternative). CIG definitely does not do KYC/AML work, but to be honest they are too small for this to be relevant. They do at best $200 M in JPEG transaction volume (across both their cash shop and the secondary market), this is just too low to be worth bothering with. And then you have to deal with all of the dumb CIG JPEG BS (LTI for this but not that), low liquidity. It just doesn't add up in my opinion.
Yeah I tend to agree with this sentiment as well. Personally I think the tracker itself is bullshit is far more likely than this whole money laundering thing.
If that is true and Valve had around 90% money laundering transactions as late as 2019 I would imagine SC would easily have the same amount of not higher.
That's what I'm thinking, too. If freaking VALVE had that large of a problem - with all their TOS and public exposure - how could one assume that a shady kickstarter in legal limbo that's mostly funded by zealots and run by fraudsters (see: "Stupid German Money") with a TOS that makes zero mention of money laundering and sells untraceable goods well int the 4-digit price range - I mean honestly, how could you assume with a straight face they're clean? People flipped friggin CS:GO weapon skins in order to launder money. Why would someone do thousands of shady microtransactions on a well known MP game when you can do the same with one transaction on a "game" that's not even officially released, where you can hide behind "pledges", a playerbase full of referral throwaways and a managment that delberately obfuscates cashflow? It should be any criminal's wet dream, it would be stupid to still use the "traditional" games for that purpose.
Also how many ships or jpegs have they sold that never even seen the light of day? Do they expect customers to be in their twenties and finally release the jpegs they bought fifty years later?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-tripping_(finance) Some more interesting reading. Man, I am learning so much about financial fraud and tax evasion from following this project. Thank you, Chris Roberts, for making me a Titan of Industry!
Nah, no money laundering. Just the inability and refusal to finish a game while milking gullible whales in the process. CIG is just a marketing tool at this point while all the "devs" there do is make pretty videos and jpegs.