Steam: Best Place for Scammers?

re add him? give him negative

I believe that's a result of the user contacting support, telling them to cancel the gifted game. Apparently, many scammers have been known to do that, and the people who get scammed receive a similar notification :/

Probably should add "been" to "I have scammed recently". Otherwise Steam support is a Steaming pile of **** just like always. First you spend 10 messages getting automatic responses that try to match some part of rules to keywords you used. Then you might finally get a real person or not after couple weeks or months.

Steam support is a bunch of overworked and underpaid people sitting gods-know where. Apparently, 700 million dollars in profit is not enough for Valve to hire more, they need all that money. For what, nobody knows.

Although to reflect on the topic title: Steam is not the best place for scammers. Any social media, chiefly facebook, is a much better ground.

yeah, but, steam doesn't want to encourage trading outside of steam.
Steam can't/won't restore items because steam would be on the hook for loss caused by scamming
Steam has already required two-factor authentication for trading. They won't put a warning up because they don't want to have to police trading. Users will be very pissed off if that warning pops up for no reason, and having to come up with hard rules as to when/how the warning comes up will be a mess.

The only one I can't argue with is chat history. I'd like that to be longer too.

Steam Support is infamous for being almost the worst support on the planet. It can be, that in the past, they had some reputation, but nowadays, they are worthless. Once a scam bot added me, but didn't send me any message. Then, a few days later, it posted me account names and passwords (I posted the message here, and good people of SG identified them as usernames and passwords),. I closed the thread, and sent a message to Steam Support. I got an automated reply, what should I do in case my account got hijacked. I replied that it wasn't my account, which was hijacked, but take a look at my freaking message. A few weeks later, I forgot about the whole thing already, I got a reply: " We are happy that the issue was resolved, so now we are closing your ticket". That's it. I guess they didn't even read my message, but of course if I would have used the accounts, they probably would have banned my only account (this one).

They don't care about anything. Remember, when a developer tried to get in contact with Steam to notify them about an abusable bug with the announcements? The one, which led to a Harlem Shake youtube video? Well that guy got banned for 3-4 weeks, but I guess if it wouldn't have gotten media coverage, Valve would have perma-banned him. So you can't notify Valve about a bug, but if you try to show it to them, they will ban you.

As for scammers, they are everywhere, and there is no way to stop them, other than common sense. Profile rep worth nothing, because it's easily fake-able. You should check for SteamGifts rep, because it's harder to fake. You should install Enhanced Steam (a browser addon), because it's a handy extension to determine if a user is legit or not. Its most useful feature is that if you open someone's Steam profile in your browser, a lot of other links will pop up, for example SteamGifts profile link (if he doesn't have one, you will land on the main page of SG) and steamrep link. It's almost a necessity to have that extension nowadays.

Example:
Impersonator is trying to trade with you via Steam chat. He gives you a SteamGifts feedback link of a really high repped guy, which he is impersonating. You click "Visit Steam Profile" on the given link. You get redirected to the real guy's Steam profile, and you suddenly realize, that you are not friends with them. You go back to the chat with the Impersonator, and open his Steam Community profile in your browser. You click on his SteamGifts profile link, and see that he either doesn't even have a SG profile, or he has al ot of negative feedback. Now you go back to his Steam Community profile again, and click on SteamRep, and see that he has 4 unconfirmed reports, or already banned by SR.

Steam Support won't care, and won't give any information, because they fear, that if they give you info about what happened, you will try to do bad things with that information.

I can't get the user information myself

Didn't you use the Steamgift's Trade Feedback system? That would give you a point of reference.. That aside, really consider using Barter.vg, even for SG trades: Its records system is invaluable for keeping track of old trades, for both negative and positive reasons.

As far as the rest... well, saying "Valve don't care" is like saying "Sun is hot". It's just a well enough known thing. I never really get why people support Steam over Origin or GOG.

Trades are not supported by steam in any way. You should have known that before risking your money

Never seen as many scammers in one place as I have on Steam. Can't think of anywhere that comes remotely close even. That could certainly indicate that it's a good place for them.

As for your situation, well I think they're wrong to delete your trade history or not to to tell you who you traded with so you can follow up with the person.

I don't believe they should let you keep your game as there's no proof you actually gave this person anything. They could implement a sort of key-checker that showed you did give them something, but then that could later get revoked too and as the key was likely bought at a 3rd party site that could cause allsorts of complications. Such a system would also encourage more people to buy from stores other than the Steam store which of course is something Valve don't want. If it was gift for gift I think they'd have given you the game you traded away back, but key for gift they can't do anything. Outside of scrapping the very existence of keys I'm not sure what they could do.

I follow simple rules when i trade :

• Always check directly rep on sites like SG,TF2OUTPOST never on steam profile (scammers love to buy fake rep)
• Trade only with decent traders not people with 5-10 games on account and lvl 3
• Try to avoid payapl , webmoney trade only with HIGH REP cash traders if you must do cashout or sell/buy something through webmoney.
• If you buying copy or bulk copies better to pay more for games or bulk amount of copies for example 28 keys for 10 copies CSGO or 29 for 10 better pick more expensive for 29 if guy who is selling is more trusted in community or somebody recommended you this trader by saying he done some past trades with this guy and everything goes great.
• If price is to good to be true its 99% scam or CC fraud.

Try to follow this rules and everything will be ok in future.Good Luck in trades!

It really sucks you had to go through this. The only non-dead end step to take now is to move on.

I'm sorry but if you were scammed its mostly solely your fault. Caveat vendor and all that stuff, not to mention that you were knowingly breaking several arcticles for the terms of service.

Just learn from it, move on, and own up to your mistakes.

98 % of the time you won't need them but take screenshots of everything when you are trading.
I also recommend saving the negotiations as a word file as well and adding important information like Steam Profile Permalink.

It took 8 month to return 500usd in items to my friend... so take your time :)

Unfortunately, you gave a key. If it was a steam gift, steam would have reversed the trade and given your item back. As it is, there's nothing they can do.

It is a risk you have to accept when trading keys, paypal or whatever.

Free advice here, video record all your trades from now on.