Sweetstakes & Other sites risks?

Hey, just got me thinking, along with the other posts. Sites like Sweetstakes.tf, if they were to just shut down, they would be getting away with a lot with each bot priced at ~2,000-4,000 usd. Is there any way to prevent this or something? Just worried for all the peeps out there, I don't gamble personally.

You could try to get them for fraud I guess.

But would that work? With at least $10,000 of items, what would happen?

They could just all cash out and leave with all that money

difference is, owners of sweetstakes etc are way more known. Not level 0 accounts with "alts". Those members that have been around for YEARS in the community and starting such a site can be more easily trusted (and get their site more easily "known" around in the community). The risk with such is way lower then a wall of "alts" that are behind it.

Sure some aren't known for their friendliness etc. But if you get added daily with beggars and scammers like those higher profile users then the attitude can stick towards all.

Also, sizable sites like sweetstakes, outpost, have a bunch of bots, but its for Valve easy to find which are whose, and trace items. If they would do such, Valve would perm trade ban the whole lot, and they got nothing. Valve HAS tradebanned community bots of WH, scrap, etc etc in the past.

Imagine what would happen if such a sizable scam would be done and what the community would do:
- Steam support tickets, reporting all the bots people traded with of the site.
- Valve seeing all those tickets, tracing the whole, and all that where channeled thru those bots be banned if more sizable then x
- Community keeping a eye on where the items come up, reporting users with those items
- SR getting loads of reports vs those bots and fence accounts etc.

Then think of what the effects would be on those known traders/owners:
- Loss of respect. Versus owner, admins, mods etc.
- Any site they make in the future will be attacked ferociously.
- They will have to build "reputation" from zero on new accounts / build new sites.

Which delivers my issue:
why would anyone "invest" their items in a site where the owners aren't very known around?????

Don't get me wrong, most of those sites are build for profits, but look at a site like backpack.tf, they got ample servers etc, and are run by ads. Running such sites can in itself a profit alone. Being able to build multiple sites that run ads, interlink those for various services make it a "ad" delivery system towards their users.

Hell, I remember tf2price"cheat", a site that was hosted on a FREE website/host, holding nothing more then a (outdated) item price list, and having 6(!!!) ads on every page. They got money without even having "costs" (which that guy claimed to have).


In the other topic, I adviced to make steam support ticket regarding that site that went dark. Only valve can know which accounts where involved.

People should think more instead of "hey I can gamble: put in all my items".

Well I didn't get scammed by these sites, just worried by the loads of people inputting their stuff. Thanks for the speedy response!
P.S. When would it be able to get reports cleared up? I have quite an urgent case.

We get the question so much, that I now got tired of it, and just put the answer in my signature.

There have been a couple similar sites that have been shut down recently and the staff members banned by Valve. Keep that in mind.

Aslong as there aren't gonna be people exploding the forums because they lost then it's okay.

I don't trust any of those motherfudgin' sites.

Nothing is 100% safe.

They make more money staying legit than they would running with the items.

Thanks for necro'ing the thread

10 days and still on the front page isn't a necro.

lol