Geel9's shady business.

I'm sure you guys are aware of this, but I'm wondering what action will be taken against this douche who severely violated the Steam TOS by making a program which used his Steam account to connect to Steam servers and then auto-crafted all his metal (in a gap of a few miliseconds) in an attempt to craft the #1 Tuxxy.
And yes, for those who're curious, he did succeed in crafting the #1 Tuxxy and a few Ham Shanks (< 100).

The bots on his website have no weapons, no hats, nothing. He crafted everything without even logging into team fortress 2. Anybody who violates the TOS this badly must be immediately taken care of.

Before this, he has been accused of running raffles and not distributing items even several months after the winners have been declared. Not that I give a s✿✿✿ about this, but it should be kept in mind.

If anyone can tell me how to inform Steam Support about this so that appropriate action can be taken against him, it will be very much appreciated.

https://support.steampowered.com/newticket.php



I have already reported him, personally. Though we will have to see what support does.

He is basically just digging his grave with all the s✿✿✿ he keeps pulling.
His affiliate application is full of s✿✿✿ that he has done, reddit/r/tf2 also has loads of threads there about the things he does.

If duping deserves a scammer tag, as it breaks ToS, why doesn't what he did deserve one?

That's another question I have.

It is not my place to comment on the substance of your post, as you are asking a question of SR.

I am wondering if you can expressly point to the particular clause in any "TOS" or subscriber agreement that "violates badly".

I am only able to find this "You may not use Cheats, automation software (bots), mods, hacks, or any other unauthorized third-party software, to modify or automate any Subscription Marketplace process." Now I am not a lawyer, but I would be confident that given the wording here, creating a script to do things which are perfectly legitimate functions of Steam would not fall within the scope or intent of the disclaimer mentioned here.

Perhaps you are referring to another clause, since I am sure you would not make a dramatic claim without clear foundation. Could you please indicate where any clear breach of TOS occurs?

He may have crafted maybe hundreds of hats in a few seconds without opening TF2.
Seems legit.

Please void this report http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/76561197996869097-geel9.30330/ that i wrote immediately after making my post above, if that's the case!

While there may be unknowns on the Valve/SR reactions to this, understandably so, as this isn't a widespread epidemic.

The ethical and moral implications are certainly apparent here. As in, almost everyone sees it as wrong, and if you do it, it can only hurt you and anything associated to you. While everyone is free to do what they want, players who hold certain positions of "authority" (I use this word lightly) such as admins, are often expected to meet and exceed the ethical and moral guidelines or norm.

Autocrafting isn't the best move for anyone, especially if you're already under fire.

As for whether it is truly something that can be classified as scamming, it a sense it does cheat people out of an opportunity, but it's borderline. Because he didn't assure with 100% certainty he'd get the item. He merely increased his chances substantially.

Even if it doesn't directly violate any terms of service, I think we can all agree its a bad move on anyone part to pull something like that. I can't imagine that valve would ignore it. That would basically open the door to anyone smart enough to create their own(maybe even sell their own) script, thus ruining the entirety of the craft number feature. I just wonder when geel will start to consider the consequences of his actions. But that's all i have to say about it, I would rather try to avoid getting caught up too seriously in anything like this.

What I am confused about is that why would he risk coming under so much more fire? He's been called out on different problems on his community application, it would be nuts if he thought that crafting the low craft numbers would somehow fix his reputation. Or maybe he was going to do the raffle to begin with?

He probably just wanted to brag about it, as clearly shown in this thread, created by him.

Doubt it. He most likely raffled it just so he could save his reputation that hasn't been tarnished due to this and other past situations. Sadly, people are actually forgiving him just for raffling it, saying that all his haters are "jealous" and that "he cheated once, let's all forget about it!" Now if this were some random guy that cheated to get the tuxxy, every single person would be attacking him. But since he works for a popular website, we should all forgive him.

Yeah now I remember that thread he made. He is "MASTER OF THE TUXXY" and also the master of attracting attention. He made the tuxxy without being in TF2, (which is possible how using a script?) all the while still under fire for the raffles, and the caution tag mess brought up on his banner application, even if he is the creator of a highly used site, why would he think that would allow him to get away with that?

The general topic in terms of "mass crafting scripts" and such is certainly interesting, and I have enjoyed hearing of people's opinions.

We should be careful not to enter into personal attacks however (although most posts mentioning Geel9 do not go too far), I say this because often posters go overboard and interesting threads get closed down too early.

As I said before, I am certain what was done here does not contravene TOS, although I am sure Valve did not intend for people take advantage of crafting in this manner and may perhaps want to do something about it. It seems to me this does not fall within the bailiwick of SR either, but from what people saying we all agree it is simply "not cricket" as we would say where I am.

* Oh I should point out, it does not matter one bit if someone is an Admin, a TF2 celebrity or The Lord God himself, no one is above the law, and from experience from all my dealings with my friends who work at SR, I know for a fact this is so.

Agreed, we should be wary of going too far with discussing this. But what sort of scripts actually go against the TOS?

Well certainly the major "phish" hack which exploited Steam Code did some time ago.

The thing to remember is that a script which merely replaces a manual command for some function which is a normal part of a games function, is well "normal". Something like the TUX script to fool Steam into thinking a user was logging on via Linux probably would not breech TOS in a court, but Valve certainly was aware of it, and frowned on it. At the other end of the scale, if I choose to automate my binds loading via autoexec, that is perfectly fine and dandy. Auto-crafting stuff would most likely be hard to enforce or consider an infringement to TOS, however much we all frown upon this kind of activity.

At the end of the day, Valve can choose to interpret its TOS how it chooses in practice, the TOS gives them plenty of scope to do so.