Getting your scammed items back...

[〈Supr3m3〉]

Well, I know steam is completely against giving items back as it means cloning the item, but they go on to say that the reason for so is due to it hurting the econemy, which I don't see how it can as the scammed items are locked up in a account that cannot be accessed unless by support staff. Obviously that only applies to the permanently banned accounts but don't youy think it would make sense and it would improve the community as it will end in happiness and joy instead of sobbing and crying. People have spent loads of money on skins for games and them getting scammed is heart breaking, but if the account gets perm banned then there shouldn't be an issue for the steam support staff cloning them as the originals aren't going anywhere, and if that isn't a good idea then why not force trade them back to the previous owner, force trading would not only stand for accounts that were banned permanently for scammed but also for temp bans as the force trade would remove the items from their inventories and move them into the previous inventory. This way the entire community is happy, apart from the scammer but they should learn from this.

[Radene]

Yeah, I never really bought the "economy" argument either, since scammed items are locked anyway, and restoring the original owner's items would simply restore the status quo.

I think the reason is different - if they went back to restoring items, people would get even more careless with their accounts, AKA "Oh and even if I get scammed I'll just have my items restored", clogging the support in the process.

But obviously they can't say that publicly, because it'd make people mad and say they're being patronizing.

[Gwarsbane]

The items are not locked up in an account, by the time Valve gets involved which can be hours or even a day or more later, the items have been traded dozens to hundreds of times though a lot of legit looking bot accounts and sold to some innocent person.

And no Valve can't tell which accounts are bot accounts and which ones are not because many of the bot accounts are old high jacked accounts that are used to look like "legit" accounts so almost nothing is done with them other than trading stuff.

[〈Supr3m3〉]

I mean I get that but in real life right, if you get scammed or lose and item you go to the police station to get it sorted and the try and locate the item and when they do the person gets charged which steam does by banning them and then in real life they get the item and give it back to them, they don't let the person keep the item and tell them that giving it back can hurt the econemy, they just hand it back to the orignal owner as that is person that rightfully owns the property.

[Gwarsbane]

Well real life is not like digital life. The 2 are very different.

But even with real life, you don't always get your items back. In many cases the items that are stolen are sold off within hours, or hidden somewhere.

IF they are lucky enough to find where they have been sold at, the MIGHT get them back, but in the digital world, an item can be traded hundreds of times in just hours, going in and out of innocent peoples control.

Most of the accounts that are used to scam stuff are throw away accounts and mean nothing to the scammers so banning them does nothing.



What Valve can do, and should do, is no matter what the item, once its traded, it gets a 10 to 15 day hold. It can not be traded, or gifted or used to do anything like craft badges or items.

This hold would happen with every single trade. It would slow down scammers quite a bit as they would not be able to get it into the hands on innocent people as easily or quickly and even after a month it would only be 2, maybe 3 accounts away from the original owner. But by that time the scam can be reported and Valve could look into it.


BUT there is also the issue with people falsely reporting scams. If you and I traded for say some CSGO knife you had that was 500 bucks. I give you the 500 dollars cash over paypal, though you send me the knife first.... then you use the money in paypal for something like buying something from someone else and report to steam that I scammed you out of the knife.

Valve returns the knife, I'm out of the 500 dollars unless paypal believes me that you scammed me on Steam....

Valve could go a bit further in that any returned items could be locked to that account for a year or forever. This way it can't be used to scam people with from that point on.


Basically the returning of items causes LOTS of headaches for Valve. I'd rather see people lose their items for good and learn a lesson about keeping all their trades in the trade window and not going outside of it and not gifting items to people they don't know.


I guess thats something else that Valve could do, is make it so that unless you have had the person on your account for over a year, you can not gift items to that person. You can only trade items that are of the same rough Value, maybe with in say 5% to 10% difference in range.

This would also help cut down on scamming.



The biggest issue with my suggestions is that it would very much tick off a lot of legit traders. But it would also be better then the alternative thats been kicked around, Valve removing trading all together.

[The Giving One]

Sadly, to add to what others have said, unless it was covered and I missed it, scammers can try to scam Valve using this also, and once upon a time, people even tried it.

All you would have to do is fake getting scammed, complain to Valve that you need the items back or duplicated, then get the other items that were fake scammed back, now having not one but two of the item(s).

Yes, it's pretty easy to fake that kind of thing, and people would do it if they could. Can you imagine the headache of having to go through all that, if you are a Steam Support person ?

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3415-WAFH-6433#noreturn

"Why doesn't Steam return scammed items?"

Our community assigns an item a value that is at least partially determined by that item's scarcity. If more copies of the item are added to the economy through inventory rollbacks, the value of every other instance of that item would be reduced.

We sympathize with people who fall victim to scams, but we provide enough information on our website and within our trading system to help users make good trading decisions. For more information on this, please see this post on our store blog.

[76561198407601200]

Originally posted by Supr3m3:

it would make sense and it would improve the community as it will end in happiness and joy instead of sobbing and crying.

Nope, this way the children learn to not trust everyone. Better they learn it here than in the streets.

[Yasahi]

Just remove trading and most of the problems with scamming and hijacking go away. No more "gifting" items, no more trades that happen outside Steam, no more moving items through multiple accounts.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Yasahi:

Just remove trading and most of the problems with scamming and hijacking go away. No more "gifting" items, no more trades that happen outside Steam, no more moving items through multiple accounts.

You underestimate the amount of creativity an idiot can employ when shooting off his own foot.

[76561198407601200]

Originally posted by Yasahi:

Just remove trading and most of the problems with scamming and hijacking go away. No more "gifting" items, no more trades that happen outside Steam, no more moving items through multiple accounts.

You must think dumber. "my friend wanted to share accounts, but now i can't log in", their friend being a person they may have known for a month tops.

[B l u e b e r r y P o p t a r t]

Sorry but that is not how it works and nor should it. The only real way to teach someone is for them to make a mistake and learn from it, people don't learn if they mess up and get stuff back for free, that just enables that person to get into the mindset that "oh, if this happens again I'll just get my stuff back".

If you are going to be dealing with real money and buy stuff that means you need to take the consequences of your actions.

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by Radene:

I think the reason is different - if they went back to restoring items, people would get even more careless with their accounts, AKA "Oh and even if I get scammed I'll just have my items restored", clogging the support in the process.

This and people claiming to be scammed when they actually had buyers remorse.

[Tito Shivan]

Returning back scammed items has a secondary effect not related with the economy and all that jazz which is also counterproductive:

"People don't learn the lesson"

It wasn't uncommon back then to have people scammed multiple times because they just could get their items back if it was a scam.
This made people more careless regards usafe trading practices (Doesn't matter If I get scammed because I can have my items back). Increasing the scam volume overall.

Or as I heard from a friend: "The best phone insurance against dropping it is to have paid for the phone yourself"

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by Supr3m3:

I mean I get that but in real life right, if you get scammed or lose and item you go to the police station to get it sorted and the try and locate the item and when they do the person gets charged which steam does by banning them and then in real life they get the item and give it back to them, they don't let the person keep the item and tell them that giving it back can hurt the econemy, they just hand it back to the orignal owner as that is person that rightfully owns the property.

Actually in real life you went into a store and bought something that is stolen the police would take it away from you and you'd lose the money you spent buying the stolen item. You don't get it back and innocent people got hurt.

Of course in real life there are clues the item was stolen, on steam there are no clues, so trying to compare Steam theft to real life theft doesn't work well.

[nullable]

Originally posted by Supr3m3:

I mean I get that but in real life right, if you get scammed or lose and item you go to the police station to get it sorted and the try and locate the item and when they do the person gets charged which steam does by banning them and then in real life they get the item and give it back to them, they don't let the person keep the item and tell them that giving it back can hurt the econemy, they just hand it back to the orignal owner as that is person that rightfully owns the property.

Which is why most scams involve you trading your items away. Discovering afterward that you made a mistake is doesn't change things. After all how is Steam to tell whether you have trading remorse and are fibbing about it or not?

No matter what you do, there's consequences for some party. And if there's a way to abuse it, people will abuse it to smithereens. Scammers themselves would abuse the restoration policy to dupe valuable items. You're nuts if you don't think they're that clever...

[JPMcMillen]

Originally posted by Supr3m3:

I mean I get that but in real life right, if you get scammed or lose and item you go to the police station to get it sorted and the try and locate the item and when they do the person gets charged which steam does by banning them and then in real life they get the item and give it back to them, they don't let the person keep the item and tell them that giving it back can hurt the econemy, they just hand it back to the orignal owner as that is person that rightfully owns the property.

One big difference here is that the items can be passed from person to person much faster than in real life. Some of the initial trades may be with bots, but eventually they start getting traded off to actual users, most (if not all) have no idea how the item they are trading for was acquired by the account they are trading with. Valve doesn't want to deal with upset users that lose something they bought/traded for just because some other user fell for an obvious scam.

Seriously, the trade confirmation window will tell you, in red letters, if the person is on your friends list. It does the same if the person recently changed their profile name. Both of those should be treated as red flags that something may be up and you'll want to check the contents of the trade and triple check who you are trading with.