Responsible Gambling

The rules that come before any of this

You have to be 18, and 21 where that is the legal age. Stake only money you can lose without it changing your week. Gambling is entertainment you pay for, and the price is the money that does not come back.

A skin is money. So is every item you traded up to. Treating them as play tokens because they arrived through a trade window is the fastest way to lose more than you meant to.

Signs it has stopped being a game

Any one of these matters:

• Chasing losses, so you deposit again to win back what you just lost.
• Betting more than you planned, or more often, to feel the same thing.
• Lying about what you have staked, or hiding it from people who would ask.
• Gambling with money meant for rent, food, bills or someone else.
• Selling items you care about, borrowing, or opening a new payment method to keep playing.
• Feeling restless or short-tempered when you try to stop.
• Playing to escape stress or a bad mood rather than for fun.

If you recognise yourself in more than one of those, talk to one of the services below. They are free, and they are used to this conversation.

Limits to set before you play

Decide the numbers when you are calm, not mid-session:

• A deposit limit for the week, set on the site if it offers one and written down if it does not.
• A loss limit for a session, and a hard rule that you stop when you hit it rather than deposit again.
• A time limit, with an alarm outside the browser, because game rounds are designed to run together.
• No borrowing, ever. Not from a friend, a card or an overdraft.

Take the money out. A balance sitting on a gambling site is a balance you will play. Withdrawing what you win, rather than letting it ride, is the single habit that separates a night out from a hole.

Skin gambling sits outside most protections

This is the part people find out too late. Licensed casinos in regulated markets have obligations: age verification, deposit limits, self-exclusion registers, complaint routes, and a regulator that can fine them. A site that takes Team Fortress 2 items rather than currency often falls outside those rules entirely.

What that can mean in practice: no licence, no regulator, no ombudsman, no national self-exclusion scheme, no guarantee your balance is separate from the operator’s own money, and no route to appeal if a payout is refused or an account is closed. Valve’s terms also treat trading and gambling with in-game items as your risk, not theirs.

We have not researched the licensing or ownership of any site we review, and we say so on the how we test page. Our ratings measure whether a site paid us and what it publishes. They are not a safety rating, and none of them should be read as one.

If you want tools that do not depend on the operator, blocking software on your devices and a gambling block from your bank both work whether a site is licensed or not.

Where to get free help

None of these organisations is connected to this site, and none of them will try to sell you anything:

• BeGambleAware has free advice and a route into free treatment, aimed at Great Britain.
• GamCare runs free confidential support and counselling, and operates the National Gambling Helpline in Great Britain.
• Gambling Therapy offers free online support groups and forums, in several languages, wherever you are.
• Gamblers Anonymous runs peer support meetings, in person and online.

If you are in immediate crisis, contact your local emergency services or a crisis line in your country rather than waiting for a support forum.

If you are helping someone else

You do not need to know the numbers before you say something. GamCare and Gambling Therapy both support friends and family, not only the person gambling. Hiding items, paying off a debt or covering a loss usually buys time rather than fixing anything, and the services above will tell you what tends to help instead.