Polymarket’s latest marketing push in Counter-Strike is causing trouble. A new report from Dust2 says the prediction market is paying professional Brazilian Counter-Strike players between $20 and $500 for each promotional post on X. Players are asked to mention Polymarket, share active bets, and comment on news events.
Polymarket already has 509 different Counter-Strike markets. Some of these markets have reached $1 million to $2 million in trading volume, so the platform clearly sees this as a valuable community. But the payment scale has rubbed people the wrong way. At the low end, $20 per post feels cheap. Some players have publicly complained, and others say the whole arrangement is hard to take seriously.
Backlash over AI-generated posts
The frustration came to a head after an official Polymarket Counter-Strike account posted something strange. It claimed that player Robin Kool was in Paris with a Porsche. That was not true. Kool responded by saying he would block anyone who promotes Polymarket with AI-generated posts. He called the account’s post a form of digital cancer, and he did not hold back about the people making sponsored AI slop posts. He said he would block that content immediately.
Other people in the community agreed. One description of the $20 tweet was that it was a way for players to completely debase themselves for a morally bankrupt gambling company. That might be harsh, but it shows how much trust has been lost.
Fake bets and growing restrictions
This is not the first time Polymarket’s promotions have come under scrutiny. Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal looked into influencer posts and found that many of them were fake. Some influencers were using a clone or fake version of the Polymarket website to create bets that never existed. One of those fake posts showed $900,000 in winnings, but the real bets would have lost about $160,000.
The Journal also found that so-called clippers, the people who edit and share clips of influencer content, were only paid if 60 percent of their audience was in the United States. That is interesting because Polymarket is not allowed to operate in the US. The company still seems eager to reach American users, even if that means relying on fake screenshots and questionable sponsorship deals.
Polymarket is now restricted in 39 countries. That is a long list, and it keeps growing. The company has not commented on the Dust2 report yet. Protos has reached out to Polymarket and will update this article if there is a response.
