[Important] Job Practices / Avoiding Scammers
This announcement is to emphasize on good practices that should be carried out when dealing with developers for jobs and custom work that needs to be done.
Before Accepting A Job Applicant / Working On A Job
- Check their steam profile to see if they actually OWN garry's mod. If they don't own Garry's Mod, it's probably an alt of a banned user.
- Review their game time on Garry's Mod (if they do own it). Chances are, if the person only has somewhere around 50-100 hours or less, they aren't that experienced with Garry's Mod development.
- Look at their friends list. If they only have literally 1 or 2 friends on steam, it's more than likely a fresh account.
- If the user who accepts your job asks you to add their OTHER steam account, BE CAUTIOUS. There's a reason why they're asking you to add another steam account as a friend. We suggest you look for that steam account on gmodstore, and see if they have a profile BEFORE DOING ANYTHING. It will tell you directly at the top of the profile if they are banned, and why they are banned. If you are completely unsure, post a thread on the forums requesting a mod. We can see if they have alts. It's better to be safe than screwed.
- Look at reputation of an applicant. If they have none at all, ask why. Yes, their are going to be people that are starting out on gmodstore, but investigate further before accepting.
- Ask a potential developer for past work, don't just settle for them telling you stuff they've done, ask for PROOF. Anyone can say "I am the developer of DarkRP" or "I coded a complete weapons system". Ask them for actual proof of their accomplishment, and if they cannot provide any, run. Most developers who are serious about their work will ALWAYS have a portfolio, or some way to prove they've been successful in the past.
- SCREENSHOT, SCREENSHOT, SCREENSHOT your interactions with a person. If anything goes wrong, YOU will have to prove your case. We do not accept 'text-based logs'. They can be forged easily. We want actual screenshots of your conversations that take place on platforms such as Steam Messenger, Discord, etc. If you don't have proof, then don't complain when we say there's nothing we can do.
DO NOT DO THIS
- DO NOT start working on a job as a developer unless you've been accepted on the actual job itself. No excuses such as "I'll do it later" or "When we finish". If something goes wrong, we need to see that you were actually selected to do the job.
- DO NOT send money to a person, unless they've proven beyond a doubt that what you've requested is being worked on.
- DO NOT send items such as "CS:GO Skins", or "gifted games". You'll never be able to get those back if it turns bad, and there will be no proof as to who got the gifted item. We only accept PayPal as a method of payment.
The point of this post, is to get people to exercise caution before doing a job. RESEARCH people before you accept them and always ask questions. Once you pay a "developer" for work, and they screw you over, we cannot force them to give the money back. However, if you actually take a moment to research someone, prior to dealing with them on a business level, it may save you some time from being scammed.
Avoid At All Costs
Do not send money to a person by the name of David Juge.
MikeTheBig
This user was originally banned for scamming a customer in the job section. He likes to claim that he has no idea who the reporting person is, because the 'paypal address' doesn't have his real legal name in it. This is of course because he's known to have NUMEROUS paypal e-mails, that have absolutely nothing to do with his real name. On record, we found at least four, and it appears to be pretty easy for him to make new ones. He will accept anything from PayPal, to gifted games, and he'll somehow attempt to get you to pay without sending any work.
Known Accounts/Alts
Thyko (Alt caught on Sep. 15)
Me and Atlas are working on a website to help prevent users from being scammed.
http://gmodrep.com/
It has a similar concept to steamrep but it's appealing and appeals/reports aren't going to be handled on a forum.
We're about 60% done, asking for suggestions ( if you have any, join the discord https://discord.gg/XqT8svF ) and bug reports. So far we haven't beenable to exploit (xss & sql inject) our own site yet, we welcome others to try for now.
The pages that are currently done are: http://gmodrep.com/ http://gmodrep.com/databases http://gmodrep.com/u/76561198074425791 (profiles) http://gmodrep.com/about
Pages until completion:
Appeals, Reports & Admin CP
Once it's completed we'll create a whole new thread n' everything but for now if anyone is interested in helping contribute to it, you're more than welcome to, we want to really decrease the amount of scamming cunts on this site, and there hasn't really been any repository or anything that holds a complete list of them, which we see gmodrep doing.
This deserves a bootstrap notification.
Why is Owain marked as a scammer on GmodRep?
It is a place-filler for the developers at the moment. Nothing to be taken serious.
ByRager.usdat 13th of September 2017 18:40:41
Why is Owain marked as a scammer on GmodRep?
Cus I'm a bad bad boy.
But it's what Richard said, was just a place holder. It wasn't really an issue as the site was stilling being developed and what not, but as they are starting to build traffic, Luna changed it 
What happens when someone forges both steam and discord chat screenshots? Neither is very hard to do. There should be an official chat embedded in each job application, so that all 3 parties can see who said what without any doubt. Its what fiver does, they actively try to prevent any other communication and delivery method other then their job embedded messaging system. Sure still people get scamed here and there, but if you do this you wont need "gmodrep" or long lists of what to do and not to do it likely wont help much to prevent scaming it will just give you an excuse to point to when people do get scamed.
Point being, want to stop scams? Provide and enforce functionality to verify what was communicated within the job scope.
EDIT - altho i admit it might be difficult considering how easy it is to add people on steam but might work if you put a warning in red letters "dont add on steam" lol
neithque
Gmodstore v3 will have better functionality for handling this stuff, as for forged communication transcripts, we're pretty good at catching it and have done so in the past. Not the mention, we don't just look at a screenshot of conversation and say "ok, approved", I personally literally will go to the other party and discuss it with them as well. It's not a 5 minute process and there's numerous ways to catch a person in a lie.
luckly mikethebig was stopped, was scammed by him aswell :/ thank you sf team!
I did a job for Connor lol, didnt see this coming :D He paid me tho, that's weird
Not sure how long ago, but also, he has a habit of if he DOES pay, he'll wait a bit, and then charge-back / dispute. So keep an eye out.
Might be worth refunding now to avoid the chargeback later.
ByLunaversity.xyz 🌸at 13th of September 2017 06:07:54gmodrep stuff.
Could be a quite broad thing here, and don't know if the feature exists on new gmostore, but could we get a freelancer list on this website similar to https://www.fiverr.com/
Maybe it's just me, but I think it would be easier to list job interests (hud, full gamemodes.. etc) then having to search the jobs section and potentially being scammed, or wasting time.
ByNykezat 13th of September 2017 23:58:47
gmodrep stuff.Could be a quite broad thing here, and don't know if the feature exists on new gmostore, but could we get a freelancer list on this website similar to https://www.fiverr.com/Maybe it's just me, but I think it would be easier to list job interests (hud, full gamemodes.. etc) then having to search the jobs section and potentially being scammed, or wasting time.
Like this? Because it's a feature but no one really uses it. You kinda need to go out your way to set it up. 
ByNykezat 13th of September 2017 23:58:47
gmodrep stuff.Could be a quite broad thing here, and don't know if the feature exists on new gmostore, but could we get a freelancer list on this website similar to https://www.fiverr.com/Maybe it's just me, but I think it would be easier to list job interests (hud, full gamemodes.. etc) then having to search the jobs section and potentially being scammed, or wasting time.
gmodstore (actual release) will have a dedicated hire me section for freelancers basically just like this.
ByLunaversity.xyz 🌸at 14th of September 2017 00:23:44
gmodstore (actual release) will have a dedicated hire me section for freelancers basically just like this.
That can be easily abused to frame people as scammers.
And if scammers are using alts, it will be hard and too much work to put all of there steam names there.
Best way to avoid scammers is to see if they speak English lol, too many times have i come across russian scammers on this site in perticler.
With the copy pasta of: I have gmod dev, i have worked in garrys mod for 4 years and I am very experienced, i can get your job done no - problem however i need 50% upfront so i can do it better.
ByMurlockat 14th of September 2017 04:27:26
That can be easily abused to frame people as scammers.And if scammers are using alts, it will be hard and too much work to put all of there steam names there.Best way to avoid scammers is to see if they speak English lol, too many times have i come across russian scammers on this site in perticler.With the copy pasta of: I have gmod dev, i have worked in garrys mod for 4 years and I am very experienced, i can get your job done no - problem however i need 50% upfront so i can do it better.
What are you on about? It's going to be a dedicated area basically of the hire me board on the forums, moderated frequently and shit posts that don't have any work or anything taken down obviously. https://trello.com/c/5SDvM3B1/9-hire-me-section
Regardless gmodstore's new job system will fix a lot of these problems, if they pay outside of the system, it's their fault. The system will act like a middle man gmodstore holding both the money and the content until both parties requests are completed.
Is there anyway that gmodstore could possibly check upon signup if the user has bought Garry's Mod? Evidently if they don't own it would prompt them to buy it?
This could possibly solve individuals just signing up straight afterwards and furthermore 'look for jobs'.