Valve cracking down on Trade Scammers

There have been a few rogue scammers and frauds going after players precious wizard hats and shark guns, plundering Steam accounts. CS: GO guns and Dota 2 wizard hats can be worth actual money, as you know. Valve are doing something about it, as the company is sick of the issues this creates for their support department. So Valve is adding trade holds for a few days, unless both parties using the Steam app‘s Mobile Authenticator.

How this all happens, an invader gets control of an account, then immediately trades all the cosmetic items to a mule account. By a player regains control of their account, everything is gone and cannot get it back. Or it takes quite a while due to the slower Steam support systems.

The Trade Holds will go into effect on December 9th. As a the CS:GO blog explains, these trades will be held for three days by default, during which players can cancel all pending trades. Otherwise player can use the Steam Mobile Authenticator application to confirm the trade instantly.

This process helps Valve of course. Having more people using the Authenticator naturally means fewer scammed accounts, plus it makes life easier for Steam’s customer support. Valve are really putting an effort into reducing the number of potential problems.

Valve are also offering a 5-33% discount on items in the Steam Community Market until December 16th for folks using the Mobile Authenticator.