Valve Will No Longer Reimburse Victims Of In-Game Item Scams

One of the perks of the Steam platform is that it allows gamers to trade items with each other, like in DotA 2 where you could sell/trade someone a costume that you might already own for something else. However as it is a marketplace, we suppose there is bound to be scams every now and then.

Previously Valve was generous enough to reimburse gamers who were scammed but it seems that they will no longer do so. Why is this? Could players have been abusing the system? Not really. It seems that the reason is because Valve believes that by this point in time, gamers should already be well-aware of potential scams and if they do fall for one, it’s really their fault.

In an update to their scamming FAQ, Valve writes, “We sympathize with people who fall victim to scams, but we provide enough information on our website and within our trading system to help users make good trading decisions. All trade scams can be avoided.” We suppose it is fair since Valve was never really under any obligation to provide reimbursements in the first place.

In any case if you are someone who plans to trade in the marketplace or who has already been trading, we suppose the risk now falls entirely on you, so perhaps re-reading the FAQ and looking up on how scams on Steam work might be a good idea to avoid any problems in the future.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gaming
Tags: Steam (Valve), Valve