Ask a SteamRep admin

[Julia Gillard the Honest]

despite not meeting the evidence requirements.

 

Hello,

 

I'd just like to respectfully disagree with this statement due to no fewer than thirty-five reasons (I don't know the exact number of hats that he's moved since then). I lost my faith in SteamRep when I realised that LK could fence dozens of hijacked hats (that were stolen from dozens of victims), without full punishment, but was only worthy of the official label after fencing an item of some particular, sufficient value ( http://www.tf2outpost.com/item/440,2822544562,30313,5). To this day, I still feel a strong, moral objection to ignoring the dozens of earlier victims for reasons such as having less-valuable items.

 

Thank you for reading.

[Woifi The Viking]

About the recent Burning KE Scam/Shark:

 

http://backpack.tf/u/76561198094114508

 

What is SR's stance on this high profile/value case?

[polar]

About the recent Burning KE Scam/Shark:

 

http://backpack.tf/u/76561198094114508

 

What is SR's stance on this high profile/value case?

 

More specifically, there are two components here of note

 

(1) Trade Agreement Scam: The buyer of the burning KE says the following:

 

Victim: wait you actually added muselk??

Buyer: I did add him, my friend knows him why do you ask?

Victim: that kinda changes it a bit since i do like muselk

Buyer: Yeah I like him too, mate this is the exact same items muselk has.

Buyer: If you do make the deal with me I'll make him add you too.

Buyer: If that changes anything

Buyer: Wouldn't you want that?

Buyer: You'd have a famous youtuber, you could follow him into servers

 

Obviously after the trade was complete Muselk, the youtuber, did not add the victim. It's only after I banned the buyer that he made an effort to do so. Would you consider this a trade agreement scam?

 

(2) The actual "shark" attempt. My definition of "sharking" is probably different from what gets tossed around. Value doesn't matter to me at all. Deceptive trading tactics do. I have outlined what I believe to be a long con in my ban reason that Woifilicious has linked above.

 

I understand that you don't take "shark" reports. What is your definition of "sharking?" Why don't you take those reports? And if you wouldn't consider this report, what would be your rationale for not looking at it?

[BankingBot]

http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/sharking-tag.2657/page-5

[Lava]

About the recent Burning KE Scam/Shark:

 

http://backpack.tf/u/76561198094114508

 

What is SR's stance on this high profile/value case?

 

I didn't see it reported in our forums, but SteamRep does not investigate sharking cases. It's very rare for someone to get marked for sharking, but it might have happened a couple times with partner tags. There are a lot of nasty traders out there who aren't tagged because they didn't "scam" by our definition, even if various trade communities collectively banned them. From what I've seen, we wouldn't necessarily have a problem with sharing one or a couple blatant and notorious sharking cases in a friend/partner board, so other community admins will see the offense when searching the id64 and can decide whether that type of person is allowed in their community, but a scammer tag probably won't be issued.

 

As for my or SteamRep's opinion on the case as a whole, you're more than welcome to ban him yourself along with the reason. SteamRep does not intervene in other communities bans. You can ban anyone from your own site/servers for any reason, or no reason. If you're banning sharks, then more power to you for it. I can't imagine the community at large would object to it, but SteamRep has strict standards for tags. Either way, SteamRep will not intervene in his ban here, or on any other site. Personally, if you intend to try and clean up some of the shit in this community, I'm all for it.

 

We actually have a pretty simple definition of a scam, in that there must be (with few exceptions) a broken trade agreement. See our evidence requirements for details on what the moderator or admin looks for, but it can be failure to send PayPal payment for a trade, running with brokered items, switching item out for similar-looking but different quality variant, or other cases of broken trade agreement. If you promise some amount of money or some specific type of item, and the other side carries out their end of the agreement but you don't, then you have scammed. If you make a really uneven trade and the other trader wants their items back, then it's not a scam no matter what the price difference is. Some examples for comparison:

• If a trader has an agreement for a roboactive team captain for whatever price but gets burning by mistake, then the two traders must correct the trade unless they decide to agree on burning instead. Failure to repair the trade by either side (even if the burning recipient is the unhappy one, price doesn't matter) is considered a scam by whomever doesn't correct it. This sometimes happens by honest mistakes, but the deciding factor in a case like this is whether the accused trader attempts to correct the situation.
• If that trader paid well above or well below market price, but on their own agreed to said price and requested a trade-back, it's neither a scam nor shark, but buyer's remorse.
• If the item was misrepresented, such as by renaming/describing a unique item to say "unusual" and "effect: burning flames", then it's item misrepresentation and it can earn a scammer tag. Item misrepresentation cases can be grey though, and I actually granted several appeals where it was fairly evident the person marked was themselves a victim who didn't know the item was fake.
• In cases of deception, such as lying about prices, it's not a scam but can be considered a shark. Some communities in the past, including MCT and Harpoon Gaming, have accepted reports for sharking but since stopped because they were overwhelmed with what amounted to price policing reports. Definitions vary but generally the following (from MCT's guidelines when they took shark reports) must be true to consider something sharking:
  • The shark must have entered the trade with full intention to prey on someone less knowledgeable about prices/trading/economy. If perpetrator didn't know, it's not sharking.
  • There must be explicit deception and undue pressure/manipulation of victim. Typically lying about price/value.
  • Trade must cause unreasonable injury to victim. 10 keys from a $5k backpack is not a shark no matter how even, because the "victim" should have known better, but 4 keys from someone who had nothing else would qualify.
  • Victim must not have acknowledged or otherwise been aware of the uneven deal. If at any point the victim expressed knowledge of the price, or was told, but still agreed, it's buyers' remorse.

 

More specifically, there are two components here of note

 

(1) Trade Agreement Scam: The buyer of the burning KE says the following:

 

Victim: wait you actually added muselk??

Buyer: I did add him, my friend knows him why do you ask?

Victim: that kinda changes it a bit since i do like muselk

Buyer: Yeah I like him too, mate this is the exact same items muselk has.

Buyer: If you do make the deal with me I'll make him add you too.

Buyer: If that changes anything

Buyer: Wouldn't you want that?

Buyer: You'd have a famous youtuber, you could follow him into servers

 

Obviously after the trade was complete Muselk, the youtuber, did not add the victim. It's only after I banned the buyer that he made an effort to do so. Would you consider this a trade agreement scam?

 

(2) The actual "shark" attempt. My definition of "sharking" is probably different from what gets tossed around. Value doesn't matter to me at all. Deceptive trading tactics do. I have outlined what I believe to be a long con in my ban reason that Woifilicious has linked above.

 

I understand that you don't take "shark" reports. What is your definition of "sharking?" Why don't you take those reports? And if you wouldn't consider this report, what would be your rationale for not looking at it?

 

See above about how sharking is defined and how SteamRep treats it. You could probably make a good case for sharking if SteamRep or another community investigated it. SteamRep does not accept shark reports because it's not our place to decide on the price of items. Sharking is a lot more difficult to prove, and 19/20 reports you get for sharking will end up being buyers' remorse. That's why MCT stopped accepting reports for it, and I'm not sure Harpoon Gaming accepts such reports anymore either. General behavior and intention is pretty hard to gauge objectively, and cases of blatant deception (e.g. item misrepresentation) tend to fall into a distinct type of scam we investigate anyway.

 

I have seen and heard of relatively rare "trust scammer" cases, but not since joining staff and I haven't myself handled a report for one. I'd need to get another opinion on the confidence trick thing to be sure, but it's probably going in the direction of sharking since IIRC the ones we accept usually involve manipulating the victim into trusting you to go first, then breaking a trade agreement. The additional promise to have Muselk add the victim would probably fall outside our investigative policy; no way to enforce it, no specific length of time Muselk was to add, Muselk wasn't provably involved in or aware of agreement, etc.

[The Recluse]

how long has SR been temporarily offline, and when is it expected to come back?

[♠Derpeh♤]

I understand that CS:GO's community is far more vast than TF2's, and also filled with untamed, so to speak, scammers. I am not experienced nor have done any research on this, but I believe it would be very hard for SteamRep to just barge in on a gaming community with millions of players who have little to no relationship or knowledge about SteamRep. Aside from that, let's say SteamRep bans owners of certain CS:GO gambling sites. What difference does it make if no one else knows, or dare I say, gives a shit about what SteamRep has to say. And trying to deal with all of that on top of trying to deal with so many reports already, if SteamRep makes itself more well known and respected around the CS:GO community, how the hell are they going to handle the huge pile of dog shit that are CS:GO scammers with it's already UNDERSTAFFED team? SteamRep needs to step up, or step out. Stepping up implies hiring experienced people at a faster rate, making sure that the ENTIRE steamrep administration is ACTIVE. And pulling their DICKS out of their ASSES.

 

Try 9-10 times as many players as TF2 and a larger majority of them trade compared to tf2. Tf2 VS CS:GO

 

As it stands right not, if SR continually tries to forcefully enter into the CS:GO community I wouldnt be very surprised if all CS:GO communities drop using SR reasons being:

1) They are much more SCM orientated than tf2 which is an much more effective loop hole for them compared to tf2. In tf2 getting marked limits your options alot, in cs:go it just means basically nothing since they can just use SCM... Trading and scm over there are practically the same. Not sure how you would enforce SR rules on SCM without either pissing off steam or having the community dump SR in favour of SCM.

2) CS:GO players have a different mentality, they have dealt with scammers since the beginning without anyone holding their hand, if you get scammed/phished you're generally laughed at instead which inadvertently "forced" the community to quickly learn about responsibility of their own items/bp which is different from TF2 where most blame the scammer and run to SR/FOG...etc

3) No one cares about SR. To them SR is understandably restrictive, to them profit is profit they dont care where it came from nor how the seller acquired it. 

4) If SR implements the same TF2 rules into CS:GO you can guarantee that a large bulk of traders/notable members will be banned either from buying/selling to a scammer in the past or acquiring one from their much larger amount of services compared to tf2. Dont think cs:go communities would just randomly cut off a large part of their traders :L

5) Scammers on CS:GO are much more rampant and there are much more ways to "off load" their stolen goods, looking up histories is much more annoying i.e. good luck trying to track scammed items...

 

 

Tbh I dont see SR having any influence on the cs:go community. Their are too many problems most notably cs:go trading being synonymous with scm and SR trying to "control" scm is basically signing their deathwish.