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My opinion on the crate-depression bans


Bonzane

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            Recently, some friends of mine have had their accounts permanently suspended from backpack.tf features as a result of trading crate depression unusuals to trading bots in exchange for their previous value in keys. The ban is accompanied the the following message: 

Quote

Abusing pre-glitch buy orders to offload cheap items for significantly more than they were worth. How you think that this is in any way ethical is entirely beyond me. You are taking advantage of other users, and that is completely contrary to what we encourage in this community.

Many of these bans were handed out before valve had even announced a decision of what they were going to do with the unusuals. This line can be quite frustrating because it seems as if the ban was not truly given for the reason it states. 

In retrospect, it is true that this could have been quite unethical, because it was causing a loss of profit for many traders. However, I don't believe that this can logically be viewed as a question of ethics. It wouldn't be unfair to say that the vast majority of people would have done the same, and when the glitch was discovered many people were too excited by the thought of unboxing unusuals, a once in a lifetime occurance for many, to consider the consequences, and became panicked by the thought of losing them. Simply, there was not enough time for anyone to have considered the full range of consequences. The people who "abused" these buy orders aren't bad people, and it would require an incredibly cynical mindset to believe this. 

The ban reason also fails to mention that these unusuals were sold to trading bots, which are highly discouraged by valve. Bypassing the mobile authenticator for personal gain in order to have the upper hand on other users looking to trade isn't exactly ethical, but many people do it which makes for a very harmonic antithesis to the people who sold the unusuals. There is a reason valve doesn't allow you to easily access your shared secrets, so when you do upload them it is a risk you are very aware of and must be willing to take. (Other site-provided bots don't require you to do this in order to bypass the mobile authenticator, but having any form of instant-accept will always comes with this risk). 

As I see it, the manner in which these bans were given is unfair and unprofessional. It seems as if the attached message is directed as a hate or spite-motivated (I won't say jealousy because I don't know the admin/mod who made this ban, and they are probably a reasonable and overall great person in real life [I truly believe that about most people it's not just because I'm trying to appeal to them]) insult to this group of individuals rather than a well evaluated reason for these accounts to be banned. Personally, I do agree that these people should have some form of suspension. After all, there were a very small amount of people who were on at the time, had the money to get the unusuals, and still didn't, proving that there was a more ethical mindset, but a permanent ban with this message is ridiculous to me. Again, these people are not bad people. They had no way of knowing these unusuals were going to be made non-tradable. I don't know why this individual admin or moderator is siding with the rich traders who lost barely anything and already have the upper hand by having bots (which apparently is what they encourage in this community?) rather than the every-day TF2 player who was at risk of losing all of their keys, but I truly believe it needs to stop. Valve already explained that people "did nothing wrong" by unboxing these crates, but maybe a little bit of wrong was done by trading them. It's still not worth a permanent ban though, because nobody could have predicted the severity of this glitch. 

To conclude, the fact that some of my personal friends were banned because of this makes me very upset. Take it from me, a stranger on the internet, if they were bad people then I wouldn't be their friend. It is not a question of ethics, but rather an example of the effects of pressure, stress, panic, anxiety, tiredness and excitment; all of which were very high during that short period of time around 2 am for many users. I believe that the best course of action for backpack.tf would be to change the ban from a suspension with a duration lasting to the end of the month (or whatever is determined fit by backpack admins), as well as change the ban reason to one that explains the wrongness of these actions, helps the community grow as a whole, understands the nature of the ethics in this issue, and most importantly explains what exactly it is that is encouraged in this great community. 

Edit: (from reply) One thing that I forgot to mention in my original post is that refinding should be necessary. If they are unwilling to refund the bot owners that were sold untradable unusuals, then they do deserve to be banned.  I don't want to see like I'm defending people who refuse to confront the consequences of their actions.  

Thank you for reading my "essay". I would not have done this unless it was a topic I genuinely cared about, ask my English teachers :) . I highly encourage discussion on what the community believes the best solution to this issue is, and if you agree with the points that I made. 

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2 hours ago, Bonzane said:

It wouldn't be unfair to say that the vast majority of people would have done the same,

From what was reported, there were between 30,000-60,000 people playing at the time. Stating that even if half the majority of people would have done the same would equate to 15000-30000 people banned. Last I heard, it was less than a dozen that got banned. That doesn't mean only that dozen did it, but they were the ones that got caught.

 

2 hours ago, Bonzane said:

I don't know why this individual admin or moderator is siding with the rich traders who lost barely anything and already have the upper hand by having bots

The people here work off of reports. They side with no one. Big name/little name/well known names/nobodies....if the are caught breaking the rules, I have yet to hear of anyone being given special treatment.

 

2 hours ago, Bonzane said:

To conclude, the fact that some of my personal friends were banned because of this makes me very upset.

 

2 hours ago, Bonzane said:

Recently, some friends of mine

You've said this twice. I only see 1 person on your friends list that's banned...... just saying.

 

 

2 hours ago, Bonzane said:

Simply, there was not enough time for anyone to have considered the full range of consequences.

There was plenty of time for those that were banned to see that not only was there a serious glitch, but that the prices of unusuals were dropping like rocks. Many were on the SCM for $4-$5...... so they KNEW this was a huge potential market crash so they dumped their glitched items as fast as they could so they could get the best prices for their glitched unusuals.

 

2 hours ago, Bonzane said:

but a permanent ban with this message is ridiculous to me.

Thats how things work here. For serious offenses you get a permanent ban. Then you get to make an appeal. If the appeal meets whatever certain criteria the Staff here deems is satisfactory, then the ban is appealed/lessened/upheld.

If your friend/friends have an issue with their ban, their avenue is to make an appeal.

 

The Staff here do not just toss out bans for the heck of it. They put a lot of time and effort making it as fair and safe for everyone.  Since I know quite of few of the people on Staff here, I take offense for the accusations you have made here. They work their butts off and dont deserve the type of criticism you have heaped unto them.

But let me finish my wall of text by saying......... be thankful people like me are NOT on Staff here because what your friend/friends/others did was more that unethical.  I think the Staff here went easy with the terminology they used as the ban reason.  At the end of the day, the people that exploited the glitch (but maybe not your friend because I dont know the circumstances)  cost real people real money which they will never get back.....and in my book that's not unethical.....its flat out WRONG

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its ok to buy stolen items directly from persons who make no effort to pretend they didn't steal them

 

its not ok to give a tradeable item to someone with a buy order if there has been a major market event

 

which of these two is true?

 

oh... wait... somehow both?!

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1 hour ago, Mrs TS said:

Thats how things work here. For serious offenses you get a permanent ban. Then you get to make an appeal. If the appeal meets whatever certain criteria the Staff here deems is satisfactory, then the ban is appealed/lessened/upheld.

If your friend/friends have an issue with their ban, their avenue is to make an appeal.

 

The Staff here do not just toss out bans for the heck of it. They put a lot of time and effort making it as fair and safe for everyone.  Since I know quite of few of the people on Staff here, I take offense for the accusations you have made here. They work their butts off and dont deserve the type of criticism you have heaped unto them.

But let me finish my wall of text by saying......... be thankful people like me are NOT on Staff here because what your friend/friends/others did was more that unethical.  I think the Staff here went easy with the terminology they used as the ban reason.  At the end of the day, the people that exploited the glitch (but maybe not your friend because I dont know the circumstances)  cost real people real money which they will never get back.....and in my book that's not unethical.....its flat out WRONG

I truly appreciate your reply. The original intent of my post was not to criticize the backpack.tf staff, but rather appeal more to logic as much as possible, because in an appeal to this issue the guilty parties don't see themselves as innocent. Although I disagree with the decision, that does not mean I don't respect the staff. I don't think I will be able to change your mind regarding the severity of the issue, but I would still like to bring into question how much would have been lost by the general public (excluding the several thousand-dollar backpack bot owners who ended up losing money) if they had not been able to refund, due to marketplace transactions and other non-SCM purchases.  Sure, it mathematically has to be much less than what was lost by the bot owners, but it's still something to consider. I have looked into coding a steam trading bot myself, but I don't consider it very ethical and there is a reason steam now viciously tries to prevent you from enabling auto accept onto your own account. 

One thing that I forgot to mention in my original post is that refinding should be necessary. If they are unwilling to refund the bot owners that were sold untradable unusuals, then they do deserve to be banned. I will edit my original post because I don't want to see like I'm defending people who refuse to confront the consequences of their actions.  

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1 hour ago, Mrs TS said:

From what was reported, there were between 30,000-60,000 people playing at the time. Stating that even if half the majority of people would have done the same would equate to 15000-30000 people banned. Last I heard, it was less than a dozen that got banned. That doesn't mean only that dozen did it, but they were the ones that got caught.

 

Not everyone playing necessarily participated. Some unboxed unusuals, and out of those only a small fraction were able to sell them on backpack due to how quickly backpack was able to respond and the limited supply of buy orders. I ran into 2 seperate instances of accounts being banned for this so I assumed that the figure was much higher, that's entirely a mistake on my part, I'm sorry. 

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5 hours ago, Bonzane said:

The people who "abused" these buy orders aren't bad people, and it would require an incredibly cynical mindset to believe this. 

 

The same people who got banned also made price suggestions. Besides the joke that may get this comment removed, the people who were doing this had to get tradeable keys and crates, so a large majority of these people who had these 2 items would of been doing it to make profit no doubt.  

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The bots got the unusuals they wanted at the price they were set at, it's the owners fault for relying on a fucking bot to do everything. I know people who sold lots of these unusuals to bots and aren't banned yet.

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Most of the people who were banned sold to cash buy orders on marketplace, not to bots. That is/was thousands of dollars out of the pockets of users just because they happened to be asleep when this occurred. Geel and Jesse very kindly refunded them all, but they didn't have to and it wasn't their responsibility to do so, not to mention they are then out of pocket to all those abusers. Everyone who sold to buy orders knew full well that they wouldn't uphold those buy orders if they had any choice,. There's no way that this was a reasonably forseeable risk that people making buy orders can be blamed for not accounting for. What these people did is exploit the situation. And I don't blame them for that if they unboxed. I don't really blame them for that if they sold to cashout sites, those sites can take the hit, they make a ton of money - and if people wanted to risk being banned by those sites, that's on them. Bit scummy but not for me to get involved. But exploiting other traders is not something I am okay with condoning, and I wanted to send a very clear message that we as a website and as a community do not support that kind of behaviour. 

 

To address a couple other things you've said:

 

- Repayment is already a requirement of appealing.

- We ban based only on reports, so the fact that you know people who did this and didn't get banned is irrelevant.

- I am the person who made the decision to ban these accounts, and you can accuse me of whatever you wish but the fact is I don't trade and I have no stake in any of this. I'm here to facilitate a positive community, nothing more.

 

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56 minutes ago, person said:

The bots got the unusuals they wanted at the price they were set at, it's the owners fault for relying on a fucking bot to do everything. I know people who sold lots of these unusuals to bots and aren't banned yet.

That might be a little harsh but I do agree. I don't get why backpack is defending using bots when there is a risk that backpack shouldn't be accountable for, and should rather be the sole liability of the bot owner. 

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2 minutes ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

Most of the people who were banned sold to cash buy orders on marketplace, not to bots. That is/was thousands of dollars out of the pockets of users just because they happened to be asleep when this occurred. Everyone who sold to them knew full well that they wouldn't uphold those buy orders if they had any choice,. There's no way that this was a reasonably forseeable risk that people making buy orders can be blamed for not accounting for. What these people did is exploit the situation. And I don't blame them for that if they unboxed. I don't really blame them for that if they sold to cashout sites, those sites can take the hit, they make a ton of money - and if people wanted to risk being banned by those sites, that's on them. But exploiting other traders is not something I am okay with condoning, and I wanted to send a very clear message that we as a website and as a community do not support that kind of behaviour. 

 

To address a couple other things you've said:

 

- Repayment is already a requirement of appealing.

- We ban based only on reports, so the fact that you know people who did this and didn't get banned is irrelevant.

- I am the person who made the decision to ban these accounts, and you can accuse me of whatever you wish but the fact is I don't trade and I have no stake in any of this. I'm here to facilitate a positive community, nothing more.

Thank you very much for replying! I didn't know that these bans could also be for marketplace transactions. I consider this to be significantly worse than exploiting backpack bots because the decision to not accept the trade would have existed for non-bot traders on backpack but not on marketplace, and bot traders can much more easily take the hit. I believe geel said on reddit that marketplace was offering refunds on all unusual trades. I don't believe the people who willingly refunded keys and didn't sell to marketplace buy orders should recieve the same level of scrutiny as those who simply ran with the cash. 

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Geel and Jesse are repaying out of their own pockets, yes. Which is incredibly kind of them, but does not absolve the people who chose to do this in the first place.

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6 minutes ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

Geel and Jesse are repaying out of their own pockets, yes. Which is incredibly kind of them, but does not absolve the people who chose to do this in the first place.

I completely agree. Thank you so much for reading my thread!

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8 hours ago, Pigeon said:

The same people who got banned also made price suggestions. Besides the joke that may get this comment removed, the people who were doing this had to get tradeable keys and crates, so a large majority of these people who had these 2 items would of been doing it to make profit no doubt.  

Think I saw one of the people you're talking about, had like 1k+ accepted price sugs and got banned. He sold the glitched unusuals for like a total of 600+ keys. Not to mention sales to cash buy orders

 

I think it's safe to say he wasn't the only one, and he knew what he was doing.

 

 

 

 

found the compare https://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198804015732#!/compare/1564012800/1564185600

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Tradeit.gg ran out of keys that night, from 6000 keys for trade to 0, as well as who knows how many items. Im also sure every other trading lost a lot of items, though to be fair though it was entirely valves fault, I would have done the same if I had tradable crates that day. There should have been a complete rollback of all inventories and market transactions as soon as possible to minimize affected persons, but valve decided they wanted to keep the money they made that day. 

 

Valve doesnt care about sites that let people sell their items for real world money though.

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It sucks that people lost money in this, it really does. But at the same time, it needs to be pointed out that the buyers of these unusuals in a lot of cases were aware of the glitch. One of my friends ended up receiving a ban for this, and the person that reported her was unboxing crates that night as well. He was aware of the glitch, and admitted himself that he didn't check the history of the unusual or anything before buying it.

In every trade i've made to bots on unusual listings, the bots have always had to await a special confirmation from the owner before accepting the trade. So if the owner had accepted that trade, that falls on their shoulders. A lot of people commenting for or against this are heavily biased and refuse to see a wrong being done on both parties rather than one. It's either "the seller was abusing" or "the buyer wasn't smart enough to check"

I think it needs to be made clear that both parties are ultimately responsible for the trades made, hence why mobile authenticator and confirmations exist in the first place. By using an autoaccept agent or a bot to handle their trades, they've decided to essentially say "fuck safety, give me your hats" and are now mad that their irresponsibility was taken advantage of. As well, not all (but most) of the people selling these unusuals to these autoaccept/bots knew exactly what they were doing when selling the hats to the bots. 

It's a two way street. And like I said from the start, yea it really sucks that real world money was lost. But there isn't an excuse that can be made here that justifies either party as right. You're irresponsible for letting a bot handle your trades, you're irresponsible for having autoaccept to get around the confirmation system that valve set up FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY. And if you're one of the people that mass sold these unusuals to those players, then you are also a problem and deserve your ban. I guess the point of my rant is nobody should be suprised they got banned for doing this, and at the same time the owners of the bots should take more responsibility and maybe decide that steam has the authenticator and confirmations for a reason. And by choosing to ignore that safety net, you've essentially decided that you don't care about the safety of your real world money and prefer to get rich quick.

 

Sorry not sorry if this hurts anybodies feelings. But it needs to be said.

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Personally I find the bans a little hypocritical, as they are essentially doing the same thing as sharking unusuals (relying on one parties ignorance of the true value of the item) so the fact that bans are not imposed on those who Shark repeatedly is frankly bizarre based on the "ethics" this site supposedly has. Laughing Lollipop has a great point about an even worse scenario that is supposedly "ethical". 

On 8/7/2019 at 3:10 PM, LaughingLollipop said:

its ok to buy stolen items directly from persons who make no effort to pretend they didn't steal them

 

its not ok to give a tradeable item to someone with a buy order if there has been a major market event

 

which of these two is true?

 

oh... wait... somehow both?!

 

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