Hello reddit's Dota 2 community. Recently, my account has been compromised by glorious Chinese hackers, who have taken the liberty of relieving my account of my precious cosmetic items. These included very sentimental items such as my immortals, earned through my years of support of the International tournament system. It also included, hilariously, unmarketable items such as my weather effects. Because of their unmarketable nature, these will be extremely challenging to return.
**My Story**
On October 3rd, my account was compromised by the aforementioned Chinese hackers. I wasn't aware of how terrible steam support was at the time, so, although I followed instructions, I was pretty silly with my [initial support ticket post](
http://i.imgur.com/T7qe4WS.png). I figured valve would get back to me in a s and set things right.
At first, I was nervous for my cosmetic items, but I looked up some stuff and learned that, in the event of an account password or email change, your account is locked from trading for a week. Plenty of time I thought.
Turns out, [a week](
http://i.imgur.com/uevUQL4.png) isn't nearly enough time for Valve to get back to you. Actually, Valve currently takes roughly a month to reply to a hijacked account support ticket. I remember the day I checked my steam inventory and saw it was all gone. I felt awful, especially for items that my friends had given me that I now lost. What sort of shitty friend lets gifts get stolen from him? Me, that's who.
So I waited, and Valve [got back to me](
http://i.imgur.com/LIAhBYS.png) in record time! After only 20 days of waiting, I had regained control of my account. Even better, they offered me something I hadn't even hoped, my cosmetics back. All I had to do was supply screenshots of my steam inventory, and all would be returned, I thought.
[These are the pictures I sent valve, with some identifying information removed](
http://imgur.com/a/hJotp). As you can see, they were all made on October 10th, the moment my account's trade lock was removed, and all to the same account. This was also the time I learned the hackers were Chinese, or at least routing their internet traffic through China, as steam let me know that the last IPs to log into my account were of Chinese origin.
Cool fact, you can see your entire trade history on steam. Didn't know that before.
With that sort of evidence, and my support representative telling me that the actions would be undone, I was pretty excited. However, my representative made a mistake. [Only some of my items were returned, and only the worst ones](
http://i.imgur.com/okLXy7A.png). After some investigating, I figured out exactly what happened. Three trades occurred on October 10th, and Tech Jace only restored items lost during trade 2 and 3. Trade 1, which included all of my most valuable items (immortals, weather effects, promotional items, gifts from friends) was not restored. Tech Jace [refuses to acknowledge this](
http://i.imgur.com/Us2Mmc2.png).
**Why it matters to you**
Right now, I would say steam support is fundamentally broken. Valve has implemented a 1 week trade ban when you make a major security change (email/password), but their support cannot act quick enough for this to be anything but an inconvienence to you. Then, their support offers "one time customer service gestures" that they do not even deliver on.
Losing control of my account is and was my fault. I should have been using steam guard on my phone. I shouldn't have downloaded whatever the hell it was that let them into my account. I shouldn't have bought cosmetics that I couldn't protect. I'm at fault. But steam support is something we ALL have to deal with, and we all know it could be better.
And come on, it's a dick move. Twenty days of waiting, after twenty days... they offer me my cosmetics back, and then it turns out to be a joke. The emotional ride for me sucked, and if you think it sucked too, help me out.
**TL;DR:**
I'm shamelessly using the community's support to get my cosmetic items back from Valve, who offered to return them but failed to deliver on their promise. Below is a complete screenshot of my support conversation which will give you an idea of what happened. Support sucks. I hope you'll agree and upvote me.
[Complete](
http://i.imgur.com/QfoiyrX.png)
