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Every account scam is a variation of eight schemes. Each one catalogued: how it looks from the buyer's side, the red flags, and the exact mechanism that breaks it. Numbered so you can reference them.
ARC Raiders sells three things under one name: fresh accounts with the game at level one, played accounts priced by level and coins, and purchase offers that put the game onto your own account at a regional price. Here is the level ladder, what the coins add, the Deluxe premium, and how to tell the three apart before you compare a price. Every figure is read from the live shelf.
Blood Strike listings come in two headers that never state each other's numbers: the coin header of a fresh Steam account — coins and reputation — and the rarity header of a skin account — limited, ultra, legendary. In the skin product the ultra count is the ladder; in the coin product reputation is. Both are here, with why the server rows are composition. Every figure is read from the live shelf.
A DayZ account is a Steam account with the game in it, and the shelf prices it like one: the standard game is the base, Deluxe and the Frostline «Cool Edition» sit at about twice, and the other games sellers list beside DayZ add nothing — four games cost what one does. Here is the edition ladder, the flat library, and what AFK hours are for. Every figure is read from the live shelf.
Every game account scam we've seen — as a marketplace, on forums, in dispute threads — is a variation of eight schemes. This page catalogs them by number so a listing, a chat message, or a deal structure can be checked against a specific pattern, not a vague feeling. Link to a number when warning someone; "this is scheme #1" travels better than "sounds sketchy".
The catalog covers both directions. Four schemes target buyers, two target sellers, two target both.
The play. The seller delivers a real account, waits weeks or months, then files a support ticket with the publisher: original purchase receipts, the creation email, first device data. Publishers side with the original owner — that's what proof-of-ownership is for — and the account comes back to the seller. The buyer keeps nothing; the seller sells it again.
Red flags. Price notably under market for the locker; seller insists on a fast direct deal; "no email access" framed as normal (it isn't lightweight — the original email is the recovery lever); seller history full of the same high-value account "back in stock".
What breaks it. Time and custody. Full access with the original email transferred, every credential changed immediately after delivery, and a marketplace that holds the seller's money until the buyer confirms — escrow doesn't stop the recovery attempt, but it makes the scam unprofitable on the platform where it's tried: hold periods outlast the "wait then recover" window for casual scammers.
The play. The deal starts on a marketplace, then: "let's finish in Discord/Telegram, you save the fee." Off the platform there is no escrow, no dispute, no trace. Money goes first; nothing comes back.
Red flags. Any move away from where the listing lives. Fee-saving as the stated reason. Urgency ("someone else is asking").
What breaks it. Refusing the move — that's the entire defense. The fee you'd save is the price of the only mechanism that can reverse the deal. A seller with a real account loses nothing by staying on-platform; only the scheme needs the exit.
The play. A "trusted middleman" — sometimes impersonating a real community guarantor, complete with cloned profile — offers to hold the account and the money. Both sides send; the middleman was the counterparty's alt all along.
Red flags. The middleman is proposed by the other side and "verified" by screenshots; the profile is days old or has a near-identical handle to a known one; contact happens through DMs rather than the guarantor's public channel.
What breaks it. Structural escrow instead of personal trust. A marketplace escrow is not a person who can be impersonated — it's the platform holding funds. If a deal genuinely needs a human guarantor, the real ones list their exact handles publicly and confirm through their public channel, never through a DM started by someone else.
The play. The buyer pays, receives the account, then disputes the charge with their bank or PayPal: "digital goods not received". Card networks lean toward cardholders on digital goods; the seller loses the account and the money.
Red flags. Buyer pushes for a payment rail with easy consumer disputes; refuses platform checkout; wants delivery before payment settles.
What breaks it. Delivery evidence and rails that respect it — and a marketplace that eats the dispute process instead of the seller. Our answer is the escrow + hold structure: the platform is the merchant of record, the dispute lands on us, and delivery is logged (credentials handed over, timestamps, confirmation click) so the "never received" story has to argue with a record.
The play. The listing's screenshots are edited, borrowed from another account, or show items that left the account before sale. You buy a locker that doesn't exist.
Red flags. Screenshots instead of named items; watermarks cropped; refusal to show a fresh screenshot with a piece of paper / your nickname; "rare OG skins" with no item names — an unnamed rarity claim is the absence of a claim.
What breaks it. Structured listings. A card that names every notable item is a set of falsifiable claims — and on delivery you check the account against the list before confirming. That check is the whole reason confirmation-gated escrow works.
The play. Before or after the deal, a message arrives: the marketplace / publisher / payment provider "needs to verify the account" — a login page that harvests exactly what the deal is about. Variant for sellers: a fake "buyer protection" form asking for the account credentials "to hold in escrow".
Red flags. Any request for credentials outside the platform's own delivery flow. Links that almost match the real domain. Urgency plus threat ("deal cancelled in 30 minutes").
What breaks it. One rule: credentials move exactly once, through the platform's delivery mechanism, at delivery time. No marketplace verifies accounts by asking for logins in chat — a message that does is the scheme, every time.
The play. A site that looks like a known marketplace — same layout, similar domain, sometimes paid ads above the real result. Payment goes through; the "order" never ships; support doesn't exist.
Red flags. Domain doesn't match the name you know; prices uniformly ~30% under everyone; checkout jumps to an unrelated payment page; no company details anywhere (comparison of real marketplaces — every legitimate one shows an operating entity).
What breaks it. Typing the domain yourself, checking the entity in the footer against the payment descriptor, and paying with rails that can dispute. Bookmarks beat search ads.
The play. Accounts obtained with stolen payment methods or credited through carding get sold cheap and fast — before the publisher claws them back. The buyer's account dies in the next ban wave through no action of their own. Not always a deliberate scam by the listing seller; always the buyer's loss.
Red flags. Freshly created accounts with high-value currency balances at throwaway prices; sellers with high volume and no history; "bought V-Bucks included" at prices that don't survive arithmetic.
What breaks it. Sourcing and accountability. Why bought accounts get banned walks the ban reasons; the short version is that the account's history travels with it. A marketplace that pays sellers only after confirmation — and can claw back within the hold window — makes dump-and-run sourcing unprofitable on it.
Before paying anywhere (including here): name the scheme a suspicious detail belongs to. If it maps to #1–#8, you know the exact counter. If a deal structure makes any of the eight counters impossible — no escrow, no confirmation gate, credentials outside delivery, an unverifiable middleman — the structure is the warning, whatever the listing says.
The safety hub collects the deep dives this catalog links to, and the publisher-by-publisher enforcement table lives there too.
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