Scam patterns
How to spot a gaming marketplace scam
Scams in game trading are not creative. They repeat, which makes them easy to recognise.
5 min read · updated August 12, 2026
The off-platform payment
The single most common pattern: a seller offers a discount to pay directly by crypto, a payment app or a gift code. The discount is the bait, and the point is that there is no order and therefore nothing to review or reverse. There is no version of this that ends well.
Manufactured urgency
'Someone else is buying it', 'the price goes up in ten minutes', 'my account is closing tonight'. Urgency exists to stop you doing the checks. A real seller with real stock will still be there after you have read the listing properly.
The swapped listing
The screenshots and the description describe different things, or the description was edited after you agreed. Compare what you are about to receive against the listing attributes, and keep the conversation in the platform's own messages so there is a timestamped record of what was agreed.
The recovery follow-up
After a delivery, someone claims a mistake was made and asks for access back, or contacts you outside the platform claiming to be support. Support conversations happen in the platform. Nobody legitimate needs your password or a code sent to you.
- Support never asks for your password or a one-time code.
- Change what you can secure immediately after any delivery.
- Report the message instead of replying to it.
Frequently asked
- What is the biggest red flag in a game trade?
- Any request to pay or communicate outside the marketplace. It removes the order record that protection depends on, which is exactly why it is asked for.
- Someone claiming to be support asked for my password. Is that normal?
- No. Support will never ask for a password or a one-time code, and legitimate support conversations happen inside the platform rather than over an outside channel.