Duped items

Chances are the item will just get removed from your inventory, sooner or later. 'course a quick Google search also brought up a few threads where people claim that their account got disabled, but who knows if they really speak the truth.

 

The duping bug was a long time ago, you can't do it anymore. To find out if an item is duped you look it up on TF2 Items, find it in your bp or whoevers if your trading for it and click on it to look at the owner history.

Valve will not removed duped items from your backpack, but AFAIK all accounts who were responsible for duping items were banned.

Take my Sunbeams Modest for example: http://www.tf2items.com/item/688349073

The most recent owner is listed as Sager, my name is further down the list with a note saying:

Which of course it does, because it is still in my Backpack.

Now generally duped items trade for less, because they are in effect "dirty". I have been told from what I consider a reliable source that if you own a duped item you can submit a Valve Support ticket and have the Item ID reset - so it will no longer show 2 possible owners like my modest does. On the downside the origin will say Support Granted instead of Traded for/unboxed.

But is my modest any less awesome because someone else owns one and they appear in the same item history? Is a max head any less good looking because it is duped? It's all down to your own perception and the value you hold on owning a "clean" item.

 

Support did that for a VERY short time, they haven't been doing that for a long time now.

as for duped items, there are 5 cases of possible causes of item duplication.
- Trade Glitch 1: 1 guy was trading for a buds, when he was on a server that crashed. As a result of this glitch, he recieved instead of 1 buds he got 36 buds, all with same original ID. As the trader couldn't possibly have done that on purpose, he got to keep them. The glitch has been fixed, there was only 1 such "dupe" so its not very known.
- Trade Glitch 2: People did in-game trade and steam trade the same items at the same time, and duplicated the recieving end for those items. It got "known" and quite a few people who "tested" this "extensively" got banned and wiped of those items. This was the reason for in-game trading being disabled for a while back then. Actions where trade bans, wiping of duped items etc.
- Trade Glitch 3: Specifics of this one are not known to me, or I don't remember. Vaguely I remember some disconnect trick or w/e. This one has also been resolved, same as above: copied got deleted, bans etc.
- Hijacked accounts: when accounts are hijacked, they can get their items back if it is considered a real hijack by valve support. They give the owner the account back, and give the items back that where on the account before the hijack, along with a SteamGuard reset (means 15 days no trading access). This is the only one where "duping" still happens. For accounts get hijacked every day.
- Carded items/games traded for items: if a carded (credit card fraud) account is found, the items that they "sold" or traded out are deleted. If one paid in items for those, you can get your traded items back, but not the paid content.
- If people can get really scammed via steam trading via some exploit or glitch, support will grant that as well. But this won't be easy to prove.