Steam Dev Badge Scams ?

So been awhile since I´ve been around on these forums but lately I´ve seen a more and more common scam and method used to scam people that I thought I would bring up here since people apparently cannot be tagged by it as of yet or it is a grey area.

The last 2 years or so I´ve barely traded as I became a dev and started working for a gaming community however the last 3-6 months I´ve been added by people trying to buy the steamworks dev badge just so they could look cool/legit when trading and gain more trust.

In case you do not know what badge I´m refering to it is this - http://steamcommunity.com/id/zyddie/badges/12 -
Valve recently did nerf the value of the badge down from 500 xp to 0 xp to try and avoid people buying it yet as early as today. I heard about a guy who is now reselling the badge within the trading world


http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198160625473 - http://i.imgur.com/Ypt3riz.png

So how is this considered by SR ? as by general rule, if they are not a dev or work with a game they are imposters just by having the badge, yet some people seems to use it to get people to do insane trades, like the guy linked, he claims to have sold 40+ badges for 80 keys (CSGO) a piece (Cannot link topic since it is on a closed forum within steamworks)

So my question is, how is this not considered a scam in anyway to do so, to pretend to be a dev just to gain more trust and easier trades in the trading world ?

Thought i would post my thoughts and I´m looking forward to hearing a responds.

badges, profile levels and profile comments does not represent any form of reputation, and anyone can get that badge if he really wanted to, you're not trusted just because you worked on a game, and no, it's not a scam

I fully agree with you Nebras, however this is happening a lot across steam lately, wich is why I thought and still believe it is worth to have a open talk about.

Hey Clive.

Normally every company that has a game on steam recives access to the steamworks forums/partners sites and so on to be able to change appid´s, add patches and so on, this is normally granted by whoever is the valve contact to a producer who then has to give it out to those in the company that needs it.

On those pages you can grant the badge to other people, the company i work for we are 35 people and only a handfull of us have the badge as we are the people that works with or on steam like myself.

Now problem is that some people will do anything for money so if their game does badly or they make no money they seem to be selling this badge to random people who then resell it and so on.
According to Valves rules about the badge - " Valve Confidential This restricted access site and content provided by it (code, documentation, etc.) is Valve confidential information. You must have a non-disclosure and/or license agreement covering confidential information with Valve to use or access this site" -

So you would think that would stop people from doing so, but seems sadly not, so now people can in fact just buy it and lets face it considering the amount of invites I get daily from people believing I work for Valve or that I can help them with scam reports and so on, having that badge on a few "bad apples" can do a lot of harm as people automaticly think that they are trustworthy even tho basic trading rules says dont just go off a persons profile.

Hope that answered your question Clive.

The "trading" of the badges isn't some that we can or will be involved in. If some would abuse such or whatever, it would need a example case where such happened for us to be able to judge upon it.

It is indeed some for Valve to handle.

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I completely agree with this. You would think that they would just note this in their documentation that badges are not equal to trusted status, removing the XP does not really do much and the problem just continues and sadly people think the Steam Works Badge equals Valve Employee.