Are trading bots legal?

[Smilex]

I heard something here and there about trading bots. One of the thing was that they're against some rules and your account can be banned. Is that true and where can I find this? :D

[bronze age pervert]

No, they are allowed.

[Sentient_Toaster]

...but not for the Steam Marketplace.

[Smilex]

Originally posted by Sentient_Toaster:

...but not for the Steam Marketplace.

How can you have a trading bot for the steam marketplace?

[Sentient_Toaster]

It was possible with some scripting. It's been done on a large scale and somebody was seriously banhammered for it, actually.

Confession by somebody who was hammered for doing so

By large scale:

Steam support has deleted all my TF2 items, worth aproximately $10,000, including: 2261 TF2 keys, 52 salvaged crates, 3 craft #1's, 3 earbuds, a Max head and an Unusual (worth ~3 buds), and a couple of vintage timebreakers and a Dragonclaw hook (Dota 2 items), as well as adding a 52 week community and trade ban on those accounts. However, I am allowed to buy and gift games from the steam store on those accounts, as well as activate cd keys, so its not a full account lock.

[Smilex]

Originally posted by Sentient_Toaster:

It was possible with some scripting. It's been done on a large scale and somebody was seriously banhammered for it, actually.

Confession by somebody who was hammered for doing so

By large scale:

Steam support has deleted all my TF2 items, worth aproximately $10,000, including: 2261 TF2 keys, 52 salvaged crates, 3 craft #1's, 3 earbuds, a Max head and an Unusual (worth ~3 buds), and a couple of vintage timebreakers and a Dragonclaw hook (Dota 2 items), as well as adding a 52 week community and trade ban on those accounts. However, I am allowed to buy and gift games from the steam store on those accounts, as well as activate cd keys, so its not a full account lock.

Oh damn, but my bot is just a simple trading bot that trades tf2 items. I don't think this has something to do with steam market :))

[Sentient_Toaster]

If your bot is using just the official, published Steam APIs and doesn't touch the marketplace, that should be fine. I'm under the impression that there aren't any published APIs for the marketplace and any bots interacting with it are basically functioning as web scrapers and the like. fetching pages and pretending to be normal human-driven web browsers.

[Driftkel]

It's not really illegal. Tremor Games has Bot Traders, in case you want to know.

[Smilex]

Originally posted by NCIS Agent:

not really

xD

[Smilex]

Originally posted by Sentient_Toaster:

If your bot is using just the official, published Steam APIs and doesn't touch the marketplace, that should be fine. I'm under the impression that there aren't any published APIs for the marketplace and any bots interacting with it are basically functioning as web scrapers and the like. fetching pages and pretending to be normal human-driven web browsers.

Those are some wise words :)

[Patõ]

Originally posted by Zero Zero:

No, they are allowed.

Are you sure?
http://steamcommunity.com/id/autotrade/