Alan Edwardes

Scam Warning

📅 26 November 2022, updated 9 June 2023 🔖 game-development ⏲️ 2 minutes to read

There are one or more users impersonating me on Discord and other platforms in order to scam people.

If your Steam account has been stolen:

1. Contact Steam Support directly at help.steampowered.com
2. If the scammer contacted you via Discord, report the account to Discord Trust and Safety

Here are some simple tips to help identify scammers:

• I will not communicate with you via Direct Messages on any platform
• I am alanedwardes (previously Alan Edwardes#3608) on Discord, and only communicate via discord.gg/estranged and the Steam forums for the Estranged games
• If you are added by a Discord profile with my name, it is an impersonator, and the account should be reported to Discord Trust and Safety via https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
• If you are added by a Steam profile with my name, it is an impersonator, and the account should be reported to Steam Support via https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4D07-D139-587C-2080
• I do not work for Valve (Steam), and will never ask for account passwords, or money (I will not send a direct message to you in the first place)
• See the contact page for a list of my official accounts.

I also posted similar messages to the Estranged: The Departure Steam Community, Estranged Discord and Twitter.

Here's a message from Liam Jones, a character from the Estranged series trying to explain what's going on:

1. Steam Support Phishing Thread
2. Fake Steam Support Certificate
3. Fake Discord Profiles
4. Conversations with the Scammer

Steam Support Phishing Thread

Here's a seemingly popular Steam Support phishing attack, used to trick Steam users into contacting my imposter via Discord (I have seen two of these with the same fake support ID HT-53YD-XVQ4-7JMP):

Fake Steam Support Certificate

This is an interesting one, a "certificate" of authenticity, signed by Gabe Newell and myself, certifying the scammer's Discord profile to speak on behalf of Valve:

Fake Discord Profiles

This is a scam Discord profile Alan Edwardes[Official]#2689, trying to make it look as if I am associated with Valve/Steam:

And another, Alan Edwardes[Official]#5332, with a bit less effort put in:

Conversations with the Scammer

An example of a Discord conversation reported to me via Twitter, where the scammer tries to obtain a 2FA code from a Steam user (tormenting scammers is good fun, but don't waste the effort - better to report them and move on with your life):

Another weird example conversation, "Are you still with me Steam user?" - and there's that "certificate" again:

🏷️ steam discord scam account estranged fake message profile certificate valve phishing platform help trust safety