Today I discovered that there are tons of Keys with doubtful origin injecting into the market

I noticed this problem a long time ago and sent a proposal to Valve's forum, but it was just ignored.
Still I think that idea is worth a look:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2616817

I know what I am saying. When I said that just only 1 character sold more than 1000 Earbuds - you can trust these words.

Well, I wouldn't let it disapear without a note to the user, for then he'd get scammed without him knowing. A steam message should pop up that "due defraud the item was removed from one's backpack"

Also it removes the possibility thats there at the moment to regain traded items one gave for such purchased items.

oh, and hi Something Wrong.

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Great work collecting and analysing all theese data.It's pretty clear they use stolen CC's or use chargeback methods to get keys from store.Valve needs to take precautions,are we sure they are aware of this situation,especially this topic with great value of evidence? I wonder if a support ticket would help or not.

Also, the escapist found this thread:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...Fortress-2-Vendor-Activity-May-Indicate-Fraud

Oh joy, I need to remind myself to watch Escapist reviews more, bloody fantastic

I hope I didn't miss any.

Holy s✿✿✿ that news is in Japan and even Russia. *gives Base64 a big pat on the back*

Congratulations on your discovery!! Hopefully we could hear some feedback from Valve's staff about the subject.
It's extremely important to stop these guys, as it's basically a money making machine, who inject cash into the economy. As expected this creates inflation, devaluing the most common currency and inflating the "gold".

Does it really? Most key buyers use the keys anyway so they disappear as soon as they appear. At least when I sold back then almost all my buyers would use the keys. I'd watch them uncrate, fail, then buy some more, and fail again. I loved it. It's good for business!

How can you say that? There actual stolen credit cards & robbed people involved here.

Game ends when someone gets hurt.

Epic work Base64 for big news and creating attention on situation.Pretty sure valve will have to answer to that.

I think you've mistaken what fxu meant. He was relating his post to the idea of how key buyers tended to use the keys (disappearing as soon as the appear) instead of contributing to the trade supply, debunking the analogy of a "money making machine injecting cash into the economy". His buyers who tended to use keys to uncrate was good for business as they came back for more, that's why he loved it.

That is the spirit of his post I believe.

I do congratulate you on the coverage you got, but I feel ambivalent on it for coverage can cause such things to happen more instead of less. Answer by Valve will most probably be some that they are already fighting it. (for it costs them a lot of money and time). I do hope Valve sees this as a opportunity to have some changes that they think where not valid or being opposed by the community.

The 60 day time of having a "status" on it... I don't think that most keys survive a week or 2 once bought. (survive as in: not yet used on a crate)

Hi DataStorm, from taiga with love,

That idea I mentioned is enough flexible, rather than take the crates in view, I'd say that that the fraudulent purchases in most survive a week or two. At least while Valve is working I didn't see the carders who survive more than week. So Valve could set the risks period convenient to all, perhaps 14 days or so.

I mentioned also about marking the uncrated stuff if such marked key were used to fabricate it. This is controversial feature, so Valve could keep it in the cupboard for future in case that carders will exploit this hard.

In general it will return the peace to the market, even if they won't able to add the Purchaser's profile button. If they could, it would be just brilliant. As it is not so hard to understand whether the purchaser is a dirty dog who is going to sacrifice his Steam account and seal his home door in case of FBI just to scam for hundred of keys or it is a regular human.

Making such stories public is always the best policy for a myriad of reasons. One additional benefit is all this coverage can only help to make users aware of SR, and THAT my friends is a very good thing

They're keys that aren't normally supposed to be in the market. They move the economy, regardless. Some of those keys could result in unusuals that wouldn't be there otherwise, and extra stranges that are inserted into the market.
Also not all of them spend they keys either way, they get moved.

i dont know if its anything important but one of the profiles have this in comments


http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197981562167

Just awesome and impressive. Great job, base!

I spent some time finding the average lifespan of a Key.

Using the data from http://stats.tf2finance.com/#original_id

We can form a table of cumulative probability (Colum 2, Column 6).

Which can be represented in this chart:


Where

y-axis = Probability of Keys detroyed
x-axis = Time passed, represented by number of additional current_id occupied by the world (in millions)

By polynomial interpolation using Microsoft Excel or MATLAB,

a "trend line" representing the data can be found, assuming that people buy keys throughout the year.

The Cumulative Distribution Function / cdf / F(x) is approximately
F(x) =

which the coefficients can be written as fractions
F(x) =

To find the Probability Density Function / pdf / f(x), just use the relationship


Therefore,
f(x) =

which results in
f(x) =

To find at what time a Key will be certainly destroyed, solve the equation
P(0 < X < z) = 1
which is solving

Therefore,

Every key is always destroyed after the newest current_id elapsed 659,000,000 times, which is a few years.

Now that we know that the pdf / f(x) is valid on 0 < X < 659 because Probability cannot exceed 1.00

We now find the expected value of X, which is the average lifespan of a key (in terms of current_id elapsed)



which is



which yields the answer after definite integration


That means a Key on average has a lifespan of 80,000,000 elapsed current_id

As far as I know, current_id occupancy increases by 80,000,000 every 52 days.

Therefore, every circulating Key, on average, gets destroyed after 52 days / ˜7 weeks.

WOW