Important Question about Trading.

Hi, I have a question about the trading here on Steam, and I hope that you read my scenario carefully, as when I posted this on the steam discussions, people took it the wrong way. So let me begin.

I am a member of a forums/steamgroup for a community on the game "Garrys Mod". Basically it's sort of like Team Fortress 2, with trading items, however it is unrelated to Steam. You also earn virtual money in it, e.g to buy items.

On the forums, I thought I'd do some sort of raffle/giveaway. Since the steam sale was on, I had gotten what I had wanted, I thought I'd pick up some games to have as prizes. The Post I had made said there games to win, etc, and I said "if anyones interested, I might do a raffle, where players can pay xxx amount in game to enter". Now, the amount of in game money up for entering, was quite low.

Now, when a forum member had told me one of the rules was that you cannot use in game money or any items to purchase anything outside (e.g, TF2 items, or Steam games) I changed it. These rules are in to protect from scamming, and I do not wish to ever break the rules, so It was an innocent mistake when I was writing out my post.

So instead of having games to giveaway, I decided to just do an item giveaway on the server, which is 100% within its rules, and it is alot safer for me, and the players as It can be monitored by admins and moderators.

Now, please understand this (Nobody on the steam discussions read this part)

*Nobody entered the draw
*No items were traded
*Nobody has been scammed, nobody was intended to be scammed, nobody will be scammed

The only advice I found useful on the Steam discussions were that I should probably not do raffles, since it could end up bad with players reporting me if they didn't win etc.

So my question is, could my reputation have been hurt by proposing this raffle? I would never dream of scamming any player, I would never dream of putting my Steam account in jeopardy. The original post was a misunderstanding on my part, and since has been fixed.

I thank you for your time in reading this, I know its a bit lengthy.

Keyes.

the rules where forum/community specific.

Most tf2 communities require free raffles to be done by admins, by a simple means:
- Donator gives items to raffle to admin.
- Admin starts a raffle.
- ppl subscribe in one form or another to the raffle
- admin pulls a random number, often by some form of approved automated randomization.
- admin gives item(s) to winner.

Buy-in raffles are a bit more tricky. It requires a lot more trust, administration, and being able to tell that the randomization is truly random. It has been abused a lot. Some groups specialize in such. Never saw a really satisfactory form of it.

Well that was the reason I closed the raffle down, since it was against the servers own rules and as one person on the steam discussions said, players who lost could report me for scamming.

But since that I have changed it to just a giveway in game. I'm just wondering could someone report me and could my reputation get harmed by just putting up the idea of having a raffle?

Thanking you,
Keyes.

You wouldn't get your reputation harmed just for putting up the idea of the raffle.

there is no escape from WA's raffle system, they can run, but they can't hide.