Has anyone ever been fleeced out of a valuable Steam item?

[Niyeaux]

Alright, so I'm writing a feature for a video games website on the internet. It's about Steam economy stuff and how weird it is, basically. One of the interviews I would like to do for this piece is talking to a person who has been scammed out of a fairly valuable TF2/DOTA item. I want them to tell me their story, how it came about, and what kind of crazy rare item they lost.

Do any Thumbs fit the bill? If so, please get in touch. Similarly, if you have friends who fit the bill, PM me, and I'll give you my email address for you to pass along. Thanks guys!

[Thrik]

I'm not really your candidate, but gather round for a story.

 

I had the Sam & Max developer items in TF2 which as I understood it literally couldn't be given away. I then had some guy email me a good while later asking me if I'd sell them, to which I said that I both couldn't and wouldn't. He negotiated with me for a while (pretty sad how much people are willing to pay) and eventually gave up.

 

I'm pretty sure it wasn't a coincidence that a few weeks later my Steam account was hijacked, all of my items robbed, all of my gift games given away, and all of my friends deleted.

 

Despite Valve refusing to admit anything, it seems very unlikely to me that they just guessed my password as it's a 13-character set of random characters completely unique to Steam. I also have no reason to believe my computer or email account have ever been compromised. But, Valve did have that security breach a month or two before this happened.

[Problem Machine]

I've given away moderately valuable items to people who probably would have tried to scam them out of me if I hadn't. At the time I figured they just wanted the item and it was for a game I didn't play (at the time), so I thought it was a good deed. Knowing what I know now about how scammers target accounts with low play time and valuable items, I would have hung onto it until an actual friend wanted it. Oh well.

It was a Bill's Cap btw. Not super valuable, but something. It's worth about $10 I think. Someone has since lent me another one, which is good because it looks fucking baller on spy.

[syntheticgerbil]

I'm not really your candidate, but gather round for a story.

 

I had the Sam & Max developer items in TF2 which as I understood it literally couldn't be given away. I then had some guy email me a good while later asking me if I'd sell them, to which I said that I both couldn't and wouldn't. He negotiated with me for a while (pretty sad how much people are willing to pay) and eventually gave up.

I had the same thing going on last year. I was trying to unload the stuff for $100 which seemed to be the going rate for Sam and Max items, but I wanted actual cash and not Steam cash/game trades. A lot of people messaged me after I posted on one of those TF2 boards that analyze what is in your inventory and seemed to be really obnoxious and wanting to screw me over (or at least I think that's what they wanted to do). One guy was trying to lure me by saying if I took screenshots of our Steam chat, then Paypal would not allow him to do a chargeback, which is apparently the major problem with real money trades. Having gone through more than enough Paypal disputes since I've had it, I know how little Paypal cares and tends to favor the buyer (and probably for good reason).

 

Eventually I just sold it to a friend for $100 because I could trust him and he wanted the stuff for whatever reason even though he hardly plays TF2 anymore. I told him to trade them for games or to have money in his Steam Wallet, but he didn't seem to care to do that. I kind of felt guilty like I pushed something on him, even though he insists I didn't. My reason for wanting to sell this stuff for real cash is I tend to not play games on Steam if I don't have to and I already own all the Steam games I want for now.

 

What sucks is originally mid-2012 I left a message on some deserted TF2 board offering to just sell the Steam code for the items so I wouldn't have to bother trading, but no one cared. Last week I had a guy e-mail offering to do a buy it now through eBay for the code to ensure protection but unfortunately he was almost two years too late. I totally would have done it that way though. That's my unhelpful rambling. I don't know if a scam is really possible when you aren't using real money if you don't accept the trade.

[Niyeaux]

It's looking like no dice, eh? Most unfortunate. I can't find anyone who qualifies amongst my twitter followers either...

 

I don't know if a scam is really possible when you aren't using real money if you don't accept the trade.

The scam is that they find people who have valuable items but don't know that they're valuable, and offer to trade them worthless items (perhaps ones for a game they actually play).

[Justin Leego]

How about that fellow that has sent in reader mail (reader (space) mail?) a couple of times in the last few episodes. He might be able to give you a couple of leads.

 

^^ edit: silly, silly suggestion ^^

[Niyeaux]

How about that fellow that has sent in reader mail (reader (space) mail?) a couple of times in the last few episodes. He might be able to give you a couple of leads.

I PM'd him and he didn't reply. No bueno.

[Patters]

I have not been scammed quite a few have tried over the years as I have a fair few valuable TF2 items from promotions and quite a few desirable Dota items. I've had the phishing attempted, friendly trades.

 

I once had a guy add me to say I like you inventory but I can't afford any of your bigger items, he only was after the vintage items. I've made one trade with a random as he had the Odachi for Jugg and I got away even with that.