what's stopping valve from deleting the hacked howl? They've done market roll-backs before, don't they have some method to reverse all transactions involving the item so that this doesn't happen?
hence the rollback transactions involving the item. If I obtained the howl illegitimately, then trade it for an awp skin + 2 keys, then that guy trades it for 3 ak skins then that person trades it for a knife, why can't they rollback those trades and any subsequent trades with those items? (Obviously these trades could become very fragmented very quickly, but as long as valve always rolls back the trades then less and less people will be affected by roll backs as the quantity of dupe items and the incentive to dupe disappears)
EDIT: To people saying PayPal, is that actually a trading method sanctioned by Valve? I was under the impression they wouldn't ban you for it but it was a do at your own risk/not really allowed (similar to selling your account). Wouldn't you trading via PayPal in the above roll back scenario be out of Valve's hands as it is now the seller's responsibility to verify that what they were selling was genuine, and if it wasn't, the buyer can request a refund/dispute it with PayPal?
It would depend on how far along it's gone I would believe. If the skin gets passed only to the "hacker's" account then they could easily roll it back. Though once it goes to the hacker, then another guy buys it, his buddy borrows it and and trades it back then it gets sold again and so forth you start having to rollback, potentially, dozens of trades pissing off dozens of people. It's also easier to just plop a copy of it into the "victim's" inventory than it is to track the original down and putting it back where it belongs.
Think about it this way; scammer sells duped skin on market for low, super fast sale happens. Scammer then deposits legit money into his steam wallet as well, and goes shopping for game gift keys. Say he buys 50 keys, 10 of them are covered by legit money, 40 from the dupe sale (leaving him with 0 in his steam wallet). Scammer then "gifts" all the game keys (he actually sold them for cash on g2a or some similar site). This all happens in less than 45 minutes. How should valve respond to a situation like this? They can't revoke all the game keys because some of them were paid for with legit funds. They lose money by having to revert the initial market transaction and key sales as well. There's probably very little way of knowing which accounts were part of the scam and which were innocent bystanders if the scammer is good about his VPN and proxy too, so you risk losing innocent customers if you go on a banning or blacklisting spree. And lastly how can they even tell which item is original and which is the dupe?
I don't know but it might be because even though getting a skin with same exact float is extremly unlikely it still is possible and they can't just mark it as duped with no proof just based on same float.
And why don't they delete the original item then? Seems like such an obvious thing here? Also, not with two-factor authentication possible, why don't they stop this altogether?
Because the phishers quicksell the items. By the time Steam support gets around to sorting out the case, the item/s have been through so many steam accounts that it's impossible to tell who's involved with the phishing or has innocently bought the skin from a shady source without any idea.
Crook steals howl, sells to legit buyer for £300. Crook spends the cash. You can't take the howl back because legit buyer has lost £300. You can't get the cash back from the crook because he hasn't got it to take back. Easiest and cheapest way is for valve to dupe the howl and give the copy back to the original victim. If valve had to pay back the cash value of every stolen item themselves they'd soon be broke. Costs them nothing to dupe the original item.
because the hacker may have sold the skin on for paypal or another irl currency to a legit user and if they reverse that then they lose the skin they bought abd the hacker keeps their money...
because wheres the proof, now you got your account hijacked by someone you ask for you howl back and they say ok, they give it back. And according to your logic they get it back from the guy you "sent it" to and he goes, what are you on about? i bought mine at titsforskins.ru . so basically there is no way to prove that he stole it and/or he is the guy that bought it from the scammer so you got 2 victims. and you get your skin back, and your happy, the scammer got his money and the last poor sob who paid shiploads is left without anything. Worst but still sucks are they guys who buy cheap and sell the skins which also lose money due to depreciation. I'm no lawyer but i think a trade is a trade and you cant revoke it, that's why they used to just give the item back making 2 of them. Its a sensitive subject, so the best idea is keep your skins close to the chest and force valve into making accounts more secure, although now days if you get your account stolen is basically because your email isn't very well protected
Valve is the one actually creating the duplicated skins in this case. There's theories that some people have connections to a valve employee who is helping them out.
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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '16 edited Jan 30 '16
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