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The Story of Charity.tf, the largest charity fail/scam in TF2 history


Utsoob

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Hi Reddit/members of bp.tf,

                I bet that no one will ever read this post, since I don't have a fancy SFM or teamfortress.tv airshot frag clip, but if you want to listen, I got a story for you. A story that will make you think about TF2 charities yet again. This is the story of Charity.tf, the largest charity failure/scam in TF2 history. How big are we talking? We are talking over 800 dollars in items, and a unknown amount (RIP puu.sh evidence you will be missed) in actual U.S. Currency, over 700 dollars more than the peak value of the Flares That Care bot.

                So what was charity.tf? This site/group was set up way back in 2013, by Alex From Security and Waylandwanderer (who goes by Korrasami now). The event was a huge deal, with various celebrities from TF2 signing cosmetics to have in the main raffle. In-fact, it was one of the first solely raffle-related charity drives in the TF2 Community, and frankly, the most expensive with 1000 dollars in both Mixed cash and paypal being donated within the first day. The best part was that it would all go to charity, and help out help out cancer research and the ASPCA (via donations gathered from  ). As the event went on, to quote Pixelated , (YouTube guy who made a video showcasing the event) "and as the hype built within a month the jackpot of prizes reached over $2000 and the money planned to be given directly to charities around $1000, this was all before the event had really begun."

 

                However, as the days leading up went on, some unknown trader (I could not find his/her name in my research) started to call out the event as the "Largest scam of 2013", which led to various groups, such as bazaar.tf and tf2warehouse, to withdraw their support. This also led to some sort of legal action, and the account was forced to go and refund the entire amount from the paypal accounts. This finally led to Wayland to put the drawing on hold, and work on a way to make a donation system for JustGiving.com, a fundraising site, which was to help ease the problems that people were claiming.

 

                Then, out of nowhere, it stopped. The updates for the development site stopped straight up. The main site, charity.tf hasn't been updated since 2013, and the main group's donation bot has kept the main raffle items since October of last year, with over  800 dollars in items locked away, lost in time. Alex has moved on from the event, and Wayland, according to Pixelated, has moved into the "George R.R. Martin" zone of persuading him the items/charity are still happening.  Which leads to right now. No items, no charity, no conclusions.

 

                These are the facts that I've found over the last few days. I’ve heard rumors of participants that were blown off, major amounts of events being buried under the rug, and a lot of general money related things. However, this is absolutely unacceptable for a head admin and developer of a trading site, and the fact that he hasn't given back the items, even when he (According to Pixelated ) has a fucking list of the people who gave items, from the bot yet is absolutely despicable in my eyes. Knowing that some guy or gal who wanted to help out a child with a rare cancer find a treatment maybe even a cure, or a dog being abused by a owner who doesn't give two shits for it, is being denied the ability to do so because some admin either got bored and/or bailed out from a scheme on awry makes my blood boil.

                  Thankfully, you can still help those two organizations, via these two links (American Cancer Society Donations) (APSCA Donations), which go directly into the organizations themselves, rather than a backpack forgotten in history. However,  we cannot forget the items lost in time. We need to find a way to get Korrasami to return the items, instead of just asking nicely and hoping for a response.  This is a time of action, and a time to either help people get their items back, or to help out a family/animal in need of more help than some rich blokes abandoned donation bot.     

                And Yeah, that's all I got. Thanks for reading.

 

TL;DR Version: Charity.tf was a large charity for the ASPCA and the American Cancer Society that raised over 3000 dollars in mixed items and paypal donations, that fell apart because it was "a scam" and/or developers lost interest, and they have over 800 dollars in items locked in a donation bot which hasn't been opened since 2014. However, you can still help the various organizations at these links (American Cancer Society Donations) (APSCA Donations).  

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 However,  we cannot forget the items lost in time. We need to find a way to get Korrasami to return the items, instead of just asking nicely and hoping for a response.  This is a time of action, and a time to either help people get their items back, or to help out a family/animal in need of more help than some rich blokes abandoned donation bot.     

 

Regardless of hate and 'omg stooped idea', the concept of valve going in and removing items from fence accounts rather than deleting them doesn't seem like such a bad idea anymore

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Scam is very bad wording, cuz the items are there untouched, the owner hasnt sold them for cash whch isnt exactly a scam. (EDIT: inactive?)

 

Imo owners just couldnt be fucked organising it anymore, he had good intentions but because the community can be a prick at times it just ended up with him hating it and not wanting anything to do with the anymore leaving the items there to gather dust. Tbh 800$ isnt alot of money...

 

Alexfromsecurity got phished and valve refused to restore his backpack multiple times even when he had proof of the thing happening he got fed up because of the large amount of time he spent trying to make the community a better place and ended up with nothing giving valve the middle finger and ditched.

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Scam is very bad wording, cuz the items are there untouched, the owner hasnt sold them for cash whch isnt exactly a scam.

 

Imo owners just couldnt be fucked organising it anymore, he had good intentions but because the community can be a prick at times it just ended up with him hating it and not wanting anything to do with the anymore. Tbh 800$ isnt alot of money...

I noticed that when I was finishing up. I just kinda made it into a and/or thing. People are going to call it one way or the other.

 

100 dollars also isn't a lot of money, but when they are taken from users, and simply sold on the market/transferred to a private account for god knows how long, it's a violation of what people wanted to do with the actual items (IE: donate to charity)

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Scam is very bad wording, cuz the items are there untouched, the owner hasnt sold them for cash whch isnt exactly a scam.

 

Imo owners just couldnt be fucked organising it anymore, he had good intentions but because the community can be a prick at times it just ended up with him hating it and not wanting anything to do with the anymore leaving the items there to gather dust. Tbh 800$ isnt alot of money...

 

Wait, what? It's not a scam because they kept the items in the backpack? Those items are stolen and they should have given them back when they cancelled the charity.

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Wait, what? It's not a scam because they kept the items in the backpack? Those items are stolen and they should have given them back when they cancelled the charity.

As in it doesnt exactly fit the definition of a scam, if it was a scam owner would had ran off with the items stealing everything or cashing it out. Inactive is a better description.

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I donated a bit to this and I contacted Alex about getting my items back. Iirc it WAS possible to get them back but because of assurances the right person got the right stuff back you needed to go through quite a bit of trouble. Considering I donated ~3 keys I decided it ultimately wasn't worth bothering about. This reminds me that I'm still in 2 steam groups for this event. And this is 2 years back? Feels like yesterday. Sigh I'm getting old

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As in it doesnt exactly fit the definition of a scam, if it was a scam owner would had ran off with the items stealing everything or cashing it out. Inactive is a better description.

 

They fucked up. They should have apologized and returned every single item. Also, bot's backpack is currently private so who the hell knows where those items are right now.

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If Steamrep threatened Waylaid with a mark I'd reckon he'd start returning those items - they could have been donated to the recent Ablegamers stream or just simply returned. Shouldn't take more than a few hours to send trade offers to the relevant people (i.e donators like me).

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If Steamrep threatened Waylaid with a mark I'd reckon he'd start returning those items - they could have been donated to the recent Ablegamers stream or just simply returned. Shouldn't take more than a few hours to send trade offers to the relevant people (i.e donators like me).

Preach it baby!

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I read all of what you typed up, having no games to play on this shotty backup laptop. It sounds to me like it started off with good intentions, charity events and such, and then out of nowhere one random user calls it a scam before it even gets the chance to prove itself/start and everyone starts backing out over one unknown, possibly troll, user's comment, then the owner pretty much got F*cked and this happened, with thousands of bucks in items lost in a long since unused account.

So am I right in saying this all happened because one asshole predicted it would be a scam?

Also, I'd love to see some good people on backpack.tf and some trading celebs try something like a charity. Ya know... since I think Sourcerep died...

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I read all of what you typed up, having no games to play on this shotty backup laptop. It sounds to me like it started off with good intentions, charity events and such, and then out of nowhere one random user calls it a scam before it even gets the chance to prove itself/start and everyone starts backing out over one unknown, possibly troll, user's comment, then the owner pretty much got F*cked and this happened, with thousands of bucks in items lost in a long since unused account.

 

So am I right in saying this all happened because one asshole predicted it would be a scam?

 

Also, I'd love to see some good people on backpack.tf and some trading celebs try something like a charity. Ya know... since I think Sourcerep died...

 

Trading celebrities?

 

What,

 

Mr Shark, Mr Douche and Mr Marked?

 

Scrap.tf has done this successfully and that's all that is needed, we don't need e-peens to run something a major website already does

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I read all of what you typed up, having no games to play on this shotty backup laptop. It sounds to me like it started off with good intentions, charity events and such, and then out of nowhere one random user calls it a scam before it even gets the chance to prove itself/start and everyone starts backing out over one unknown, possibly troll, user's comment, then the owner pretty much got F*cked and this happened, with thousands of bucks in items lost in a long since unused account.

So am I right in saying this all happened because one asshole predicted it would be a scam?

Also, I'd love to see some good people on backpack.tf and some trading celebs try something like a charity. Ya know... since I think Sourcerep died...

Majority of the userbase stuck by charity.tf even after the troll called it a "scam". The issue with PayPal donations was a serious thing.

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