Exposing an Exploiter who mass duplicated a bunch of Genuine Horaces and made over 6000$

[Relic]

https://imgur.com/a/Yj4yr6E

 

You can still get it by paying $7.99 on rps website. If this guy spent that much time creating accounts/transferring to his main to get that many horace's then wp.

[lewkree]

11 minutes ago, FLAIMBOT_ said:

 

Meh. If he found a way to abuse the system that has been in place for years.. power to him imo. If the demand is there for Horace's, and he filled it... awesome.

 

If someone is genuinely concerned about the economical repercussions of investing into a $12-15 TF2 item, they should be checking every statistic that's available, including the amount of Horace's that exist. My guess is that most of the people that bought a Horace from him want it because 1. It's a cute hat, or 2. They're an insta-trade bot that has already made hundreds or thousands of dollars upselling items on backpack.tf. Neither of those parties should be very devastated by the idea that maybe they bought a Horace that was created with a loophole of some sort.

 

Who decides what should and "shouldn't be in the game"?

 

Not saying this guy's completely innocent at all. Maybe he did maliciously abuse a bug. And if those reps he had were faked/left by alts, that's bad too.

But as far as flooding the market with newly created Horaces, I think it's fine honestly.

The economy is not quite that simple my friend, think about this, lets just say this guy was able to infinitely exploit horaces into the game. Guess what? He can use that as an infinite source of money on any tf2 gambling site to get items that he can't exploit. What if he loses? It doesn't matter because he can just make more. I believe the horace is craftable too. Do you understand why this is so dangerous?

[lewkree]

6 minutes ago, Relic said:

https://imgur.com/a/Yj4yr6E

 

You can still get it by paying $7.99 on rps website. If this guy spent that much time creating accounts/transferring to his main to get that many horace's then wp.

The fact that he got a bunch of alternate accounts to - rep me makes me think that this is an exploit. Besides, who would invest 4000$+ on separate accounts just to get a ton of one item in a game? Doesn't make much sense.

[Flaim]

2 minutes ago, lewkree said:

The fact that he got a bunch of alternate accounts to - rep me makes me think that this is an exploit. Besides, who would invest 4000$+ on separate accounts just to get a ton of one item in a game? Doesn't make much sense.

 

That's true.

 

Honestly I don't think this is a witch hunt thread at all. I think it's a good thread spreading information. I'm just personally not worried about those who have already purchased a Horace from him. They could totally be legit, and this guy might have a good ass reason for why it happened all at once. But you're right, if it continues and more people are able to create THOUSANDS of Horaces via an exploit, perhaps there could be an issue. All you can do is post a thread like this and hope that the backpack.tf staff or the Rock Paper Shotgun/TF2 devs offer a solution. (I doubt they care.. lol)

 

Still though, I think it's good that you've made a thread to spread awareness, but don't slander the guy too hard until you're sure he's really done something wrong. 

[Buddy]

sounds like you are just mad you didnt think of this first

[Foxy Grandpa]

I would bet dollars to donuts that he's hacking into accounts to generate the items. Which makes it wire fraud. Considering that this has happened with Max's too, valve probably vaguely has a problem here in that they're incentivising like 3 or 4 felonies. 

If I was rock paper shotgun, I certainly wouldn't want the accounts of my patrons to have a target on their backs. 

[Foxy Grandpa]

tbh no one should give a shit about the value of this one item, but it does give valve another reason to distance themselves from this game. 

[Offline]

1 hour ago, lewkree said:

The economy is not quite that simple my friend, think about this, lets just say this guy was able to infinitely exploit horaces into the game. Guess what? He can use that as an infinite source of money on any tf2 gambling site to get items that he can't exploit. What if he loses? It doesn't matter because he can just make more. I believe the horace is craftable too. Do you understand why this is so dangerous?

 

First you'd have to prove he's actually using an exploit - As previously discussed in this thread, it's possible he's just supporting the RPS game across several accounts with his money and then reselling the Horace that is rewarded for doing so. In this case, this isn't an exploit, he's just... doing exactly what I said, he's legitimately supporting the game and then selling the thank-you gift.

 

There would be a problem if he was doing it with something like a stolen credit card or something of that nature. But you would have to prove that. Or if he is duplicating them somehow, that would also be a problem that you would have to prove.

 

But until then, all he's doing is overflooding the market with an item he gained through a legitimate mean (until you can prove otherwise). 

 

Also it comes back around to this that you said:

 

1 hour ago, lewkree said:

lets just say this guy was able to infinitely exploit horaces into the game.

There's nothing wrong with overflooding the market, and you say the word exploit again. Until you can prove that he is exploiting, all he's doing is supporting RPS and reselling the Horace. He's paying for the RPS support with money, after all.

 

1 hour ago, lewkree said:

Guess what? He can use that as an infinite source of money on any tf2 gambling site to get items that he can't exploit. What if he loses? It doesn't matter because he can just make more.

The source of him buying/supplying Horaces is not infinite, and at some point, it would simply spell diminishing returns for the user to keep doing this. This is assuming that he is obtaining them legitimately by supporting RPS, which if he is not, would be a problem.

 

I'm not taking his side, but a proofless claim like this should be researched or thought about more.

[LaughingLollipop]

If you were to be some kindof hacker/exploiter/scammer/whatever who could generate thousand of dollars in items at will would you

 

Hide your inventory of obviously ill gotten hundreds of genuine items?

 

or

 

Make it public and register the histories all to you?

 

The idea that this thread still exists after 8 hours and zero proof presented is pretty sad

[lewkree]

1 hour ago, Offline said:

 

First you'd have to prove he's actually using an exploit - As previously discussed in this thread, it's possible he's just supporting the RPS game across several accounts with his money and then reselling the Horace that is rewarded for doing so. In this case, this isn't an exploit, he's just... doing exactly what I said, he's legitimately supporting the game and then selling the thank-you gift.

 

There would be a problem if he was doing it with something like a stolen credit card or something of that nature. But you would have to prove that. Or if he is duplicating them somehow, that would also be a problem that you would have to prove.

 

But until then, all he's doing is overflooding the market with an item he gained through a legitimate mean (until you can prove otherwise). 

 

Also it comes back around to this that you said:

 

There's nothing wrong with overflooding the market, and you say the word exploit again. Until you can prove that he is exploiting, all he's doing is supporting RPS and reselling the Horace. He's paying for the RPS support with money, after all.

 

The source of him buying/supplying Horaces is not infinite, and at some point, it would simply spell diminishing returns for the user to keep doing this. This is assuming that he is obtaining them legitimately by supporting RPS, which if he is not, would be a problem.

 

I'm not taking his side, but a proofless claim like this should be researched or thought about more.

I don't think you read to carefully into my posts if you really believe this guy isn't exploiting. He created at the very least around 400 horaces to his account, he would've had to pay roughly 3,200$ minimum to get that many hats while also making 400 separate accounts, now I ask the question, why the hell would anyone do that and how exactly was he able to redeem so many keys when their website states that the item is LIMITED through legitimate means? (NOTE: Before this influx, there were about 2180 of these in existence and now there are almost 2600).  If you don't believe me by the way, you can just check his inventory history. I have a comparison link in my rating for his profile, and you can literally just check the influx of horaces that have entered the market within a couple of days. The amount of energy just to get 400 of a hat that's just gonna get inflated makes absolutely no sense at all, so I really don't see this as a valid argument to his innocence, especially since after I reported him, he made fake accounts and gave me negative ratings on my profile (these have been waved by a moderator). 

 

You mention that overflooding the market is not an issue, this is a valid point given that he's doing this legitimately. But my point still stands, if this guy is exploiting (which is almost 100% guaranteed unless this guy is incredibly stupid and actually created over 300 accounts and paid over 3000$ if thats even possible), this can become apocalyptic as he would be able to make as many as he would want. (hopefully I don't have to explain this point to anyone again).

[FP jh34ghu43gu]

Everyone saying the price of RPS subscription to get horace can't read

Quote

How do I access the gifts that come with the RPS Supporter Program?

-snip-

If you're not yet a supporter, head here to find out more about the benefits and sign up. We currently offer two packages: a six month subscription for $25 and twelve month package for $40. Once you've purchased the package, you'll probably want to attach it to your Humble account for access to all your keys. -snip-

Literally just had to scroll down.

 

You get 7 keys including the horace, horace can be sold for ~$10-12 so if you can sell the other 6 keys for more than $15 you're making money. This is not proof he did this, this is a singular explanation.

 

2 minutes ago, lewkree said:

He created at the very least around 400 horaces to his account,

I see an increase on the graph of ~200, in premium search this account stops being the origin point on page 16 which checks out (15*15 = 225, some new ones created by other people in there).

[lewkree]

5 minutes ago, LaughingLollipop said:

If you were to be some kindof hacker/exploiter/scammer/whatever who could generate thousand of dollars in items at will would you

 

Hide your inventory of obviously ill gotten hundreds of genuine items?

 

or

 

Make it public and register the histories all to you?

 

The idea that this thread still exists after 8 hours and zero proof presented is pretty sad

You realize this guy was mainly selling his items on backpack.tf right? You really should connect the dots. Besides, majority of people wouldn't be suspicious of this because he did just enough so that he can stay under the radar while still being able to sell to bots on backpack.tf, just check sellers of the horace right now, 90% of them lead back to the same guy. The only reason why I got suspicious of this guy in the first place is because he was selling them for like a key below buy orders on firepowered and I looked into it.

[LaughingLollipop]

1 minute ago, lewkree said:

You realize this guy was mainly selling his items on backpack.tf right? You really should connect the dots. Besides, majority of people wouldn't be suspicious of this because he did just enough so that he can stay under the radar while still being able to sell to bots on backpack.tf, just check sellers of the horace right now, 90% of them lead back to the same guy. The only reason why I got suspicious of this guy in the first place is because he was selling them for like a key below buy orders on firepowered and I looked into it.

 

Would you like a detailed dot connected sequence? Sure I can connect 'em up

 

Lets say person x can make a horace by snapping their fingers

 

1) Person x makes 1 horace

2) Person x registers that horace on bp.tf

3) Person x makes their inventory private

4) Person x makes 1000 horaces

5) Person x lists the horace in their inv for cheap af, add them to trade

6a) Person x gets added by lots of people, sells the 1000 horaces they made

6b) Person x can also literally send any bot a trade offer of a horace for the bots price, bot will take

6c) None of these 1000 horaces has person x's inv tagged to them

7) Person x repeats steps 4, 5 and 6 until horace is worthless or they're richer than Bezos

 

[lewkree]

2 minutes ago, FP jh34ghu43gu said:

I see an increase on the graph of ~200, in premium search this account stops being the origin point on page 16 which checks out (15*15 = 225, some new ones created by other people in there).

The origin you made isn't where he started making the hats, it goes all the way back to early September when there were 2180 consistently since 2019. 

[Scott Bakula]

This is basically just extreme couponing, but with tf2 as the medium.

[Nickman]

2 hours ago, FP jh34ghu43gu said:

Everyone saying the price of RPS subscription to get horace can't read

Literally just had to scroll down.

 

You get 7 keys including the horace, horace can be sold for ~$10-12 so if you can sell the other 6 keys for more than $15 you're making money. This is not proof he did this, this is a singular explanation.

That article is about 3 years old at this point. If you look on their supporter page your options now are either a yearly subscription or a monthly subscription. The 6 month subscription no longer exists. So there's still a question as to whether or not you get the Horace from paying for one month of a monthly subscription or if you need multiple months/a 12 months subscription.

 

You raise a good point on the other CD keys possibly having value that would make it more worth while.

[Strife Hale]

Can we please stop making such forum posts that have NO evidence at all? You could just make a report on issues if you really have evidence but not a forum post. You think you've made a post to create an awareness or something but it just supports witch hunting him everywhere. You are using the word exploit on every post without any evidence. What if you were on this guys side and people start attacking you basically without any form of evidence? It's just so sad to see all the negativity on his steam profile and backpack. Respect them and their privacy please, thanks.

 

If you really have evidence, create an issue on the report section but not a witch hunting post. Mods please lock this topic and stop supporting this.

[FP jh34ghu43gu]

38 minutes ago, Nickman said:

That article is about 3 years old at this point. If you look on their supporter page your options now are either a yearly subscription or a monthly subscription. The 6 month subscription no longer exists. So there's still a question as to whether or not you get the Horace from paying for one month of a monthly subscription or if you need multiple months/a 12 months subscription.

 

You raise a good point on the other CD keys possibly having value that would make it more worth while.

Ok you are correct, I've edited the wiki to reflect it. Literally just purchased it for the $8 plan and also came with the 4 other games, it was literally free money to sell them to bots for 5+ keys, don't understand how this is a scandal of any type.

[lewkree]

1 hour ago, Strife Hale said:

Can we please stop making such forum posts that have NO evidence at all? You could just make a report on issues if you really have evidence but not a forum post. You think you've made a post to create an awareness or something but it just supports witch hunting him everywhere. Your using exploit on every post without any evidence. What if you were on this guys side and people start attacking you basically without any form of evidence? It's just so sad to see all the negativity on his steam profile and backpack. Respect them and their privacy please, thanks.

 

If you really have evidence, create an issue on the report section but not a witch hunting post. Mods please lock this topic and stop supporting this.

Jesus Christ you don't read, there is evidence, and actually when I made this thread, he actually flooded my bp.tf profile with "scammer" and "sharks kids" on my trust page because he wanted to make me seem less credible when I marked him on bp.tf. That alone is a bannable offense, and you are throwing the word witch hunting incorrectly like I'm trying to harass this guy. IM NOT! I made this thread to let people know that this guy is an exploiter and he has distributed all of his exploited items to people's backpacks, therefore putting their accounts at risk ESPECIALLY if this guy is a carder. Valve in the past used a pretty shitty method of dealing with these types of people, like when vintage max's and vintage buds got massively duplicated back in the day or when carders bought a shit ton of keys off of the steam community market, a massive ban wave occurred amongst a bunch of well known traders of the time that didn't know that the items were fraudulently acquired and unfortunately got caught up in the mess. Valve basically just started using a "ban now, ask later" method with people who had an item like 3rd hand that was fraudulently acquired and lots of people lost their accounts.

 

So I don't know why you and other people keep calling this thread a witch hunt, this is more to spread awareness. By the way, just because he bought premium today on bp.tf, that doesn't make him more credible.

 

After all this if you still believe it's a witch hunt, you can choose not to participate in this thread, but the reality of the situation is this guy either paid a ridiculous amount of money on MANY different accounts to legitimately achieve all of those horaces, paid a ridiculous amount of money as a carder on MANY different accounts, or he exploited them somehow. No other way around it.

 

I'd like to add that if he legitimately got all the horaces, he would've had to pay around 3,200$ give or take and make over 400 accounts within a matter of like 3 days. Where do I get this number? Well, he had around 400 in total in his backpack in the past couple days (could be less, could be more don't have the data to give a number). The cost to actually acquire the hat is 8$ on the RPS site, therefore 8*400 = 3200$ just in case people don't understand where I'm getting that number from.

[Nickman]

4 minutes ago, FP jh34ghu43gu said:

Ok you are correct, I've edited the wiki to reflect it. Literally just purchased it for the $8 plan and also came with the 4 other games, it was literally free money to sell them to bots for 5+ keys, don't understand how this is a scandal of any type.

Thanks for verifying this.

 

At this point it looks like this was likey just a big brain move on Horace man's part.

 

So long as there was not any sort of credit card fraud (which there is absolutely no indication of and no way for any of us to prove) the person in question very likely just took advantage of a forgotten, yet profitable promo.

 

His response might seem a little sketchy but, assuming all is legit, I can't blame him too much since he had his spot blown wide open.

[Offline]

7 hours ago, lewkree said:

I'd like to add that if he legitimately got all the horaces, he would've had to pay around 3,200$ give or take and make over 400 accounts within a matter of like 3 days. Where do I get this number? Well, he had around 400 in total in his backpack in the past couple days (could be less, could be more don't have the data to give a number). The cost to actually acquire the hat is 8$ on the RPS site, therefore 8*400 = 3200$ just in case people don't understand where I'm getting that number from.

10 hours ago, lewkree said:

But my point still stands, if this guy is exploiting (which is almost 100% guaranteed unless this guy is incredibly stupid and actually created over 300 accounts and paid over 3000$ if thats even possible)

 I don't see a problem with this, he made profit off of it and he knew he would, so $3200 is just an investment.

Supporting RPS costs about $8, Genuine Horaces were selling for 6 keys on backpack and other websites. To sell 6 keys to a Paypal buyer right now would net you about $9.60, so there is a real reason to invest $3200 into the game. Even when Genuine Horaces dropped to 5 keys, he could still break even on the leftovers after the profit wave. So from a financial standpoint, he can't make infinite of them by infinitely supporting RPS. This again boils down to if he's exploiting them or not.

 

And again, you really need to prove he's exploiting. Yeah, he might not be the most morally inclined person, shown by the negative trust alts and whatnot, but you don't need morals to trade legitimately.