New trader scammed - Help Vote

No idea how Steamtrades works, but if the key can be activated everywhere, and he claims it couldn't be activated in his region, I feel like he's just telling on himself.

This is typical predatory behaviour from scammers: they target newcomers to the trading scene and extract what they can from them.
Unfortunately, once you've added your review on SteamTrades, there isn't much more you can do. Now that barter.vg isn't allowing trades anymore, there isn't a strong reliable human presence to combat fraud and reselling.

The same person attempted to scam me to but something felt off so I decided to pursue a deal with someone else. Sorry that you were unfortunately a victim...

Either person you tried to trade with could have scammed you. The first seems more likely, but the second could have easily activated the key on a separate account and then used it again on the one he was talking to you with which would give the 'already activated' message. There's no real way to know for sure.

Don't bother, I have like 5 -rep and not one is legit to have and not even one got removed when I did this vote thingy... So people there who vote are bots/idiots anyways, majority not all of course... (if by any chance someone looks at my -rep and think they aren't against rules of steamtrades then you are proving my point)

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Screenshot his argument that the key is "not available" in his region before he retracts it.
Link to https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/T2kmU/ with the info that this bundle contained no region locked keys.

All of that being said, it's absolutely pathetic to scam for a game that's roughly worth 1€ on the grey market. Like I pay more for a pack of ham at the grocery store :D

If you remember when the trade turned into scam, you can cross check with the time the key was activated. I believe Steam still provides the activation information (like the date and time) when it was activate, so you can narrow it down further to when it happened - if you ask Valve nicely.

Although I'm sad these scams can't be pursued into legal cases.

https://www.reddit.com/r/indiegameswap/new/ is a better trade venue if you want moderators to help with scams because unfortunately Steamtrades has none. It's a wild-west. It is more popular and easier to find trades you want there yes but the website owner refuses to install a mod in there so you only have bots and other people to judge your negative reviews and even if you have 500, you will still never be banned from the site because again no mods.

So sad to see high repped people outright scam newbies for something so little (and even if it's not little). It's so honorless.

First rule of Steam trades: never trade with anyone with -1 rep or 0+ rep and u will never get scammed. Always read their reviews before trading.
I am using ST for like 10 years now, not a single scam.

Scammed by a guy called Bambi, but that was outside of SteamTrades, just here, so, i did not report.

https://www.steamtrades.com/go/review/v4ybJ

Looks like you are not the only one...

If you zoom in on screenshot where he supposedly tried to activate the key you can see that it is edited - key is pasted on it from somewhere as you can see artifacts around it, picture isn't sharp like it's supposed to be. I'm no expert but it looks very suspicious.

image

I would report him on Lestrades in this thread.

Oh I remember seeing this via LesTrade. I hope you get it sorted out.