One of the most brutal Hacks in Counter-Strike History
One of the saddest moments in the Counter-Strike 2 skin scene has just taken place: The famous collector Hawkeye337, who was holding a full Katowice 2014 Holo sticker collection, had his account compromised and blackmailed! Read all about it in this article.
What happened?
One of the saddest moments in the Counter-Strike 2 skin scene has just taken place: The famous collector Hawkeye337, who was holding a full Katowice 2014 Holo sticker collection, had his account compromised (most likely by a SIM card swap), and the culprit wanted to extort one bitcoin out of him! Read all about the story.
This all happened on the evening of the 13th November 2025. Hawkeye received a message on his phone from the Hacker wanting him to transfer one BTC to the hacker's wallet address. This also means that the Hacker had access to his phone number, highlighting that it could very well be a SIM swap hack. The original tweet: @MarkSpurlock33
This all happened on the evening of the 13th November 2025. Hawkeye received a message on his phone from the Hacker wanting him to transfer one BTC to the hacker's wallet address. This also means that the Hacker had access to his phone number, highlighting that it could very well be a SIM swap hack. The original tweet: @MarkSpurlock33
Valve and Steam Support
Hawkeye made a Valve support ticket and asked the Twitter / X community to help try to reach out.
Sadly, this story as of now does not have a happy ending. The hackers applied AND scraped all of his Kato 14 Holo stickers, amongst them the iBuypower and Titan holo, on default Negevs and scraped them to completion. This is a total loss of around 300.000€.
Sadly, this story as of now does not have a happy ending. The hackers applied AND scraped all of his Kato 14 Holo stickers, amongst them the iBuypower and Titan holo, on default Negevs and scraped them to completion. This is a total loss of around 300.000€.
Security issues
This situation is once again showing security risks that come with Steam and Counter-Strike inventories in general. With the Trade-Revert update, we are protected in some way against people scamming and trading items, but that case was a first, just involving a hacker/troll and brutally destroying someone’s assets without personal gain.
After two hours, his Steam account was Community Banned, but sadly this was already too late, as all of his rare and expensive Katowice 2014 Holo stickers had already been applied and scraped and thus destroyed and deleted from the game.
After two hours, his Steam account was Community Banned, but sadly this was already too late, as all of his rare and expensive Katowice 2014 Holo stickers had already been applied and scraped and thus destroyed and deleted from the game.
Breaking News!
During the night of the 14th of November, Hawkeye337 saw all of his stickers returned to him! He made a Post on Twitter claiming that a Steam Support Agent had made a mistake and accidentally gave his account to the wrong person. While we are glad he has gotten his items back, it is very concerning that the error of a single Employee can put you and your money into this situation.
Conclusion
We hope that Valve steps in in this situation- but technically, they do not need to, as a Sim swap would be out of Valve's control. We hope for the best for Hawkeye, as this whole situation is extremely sad, frustrating and infuriating. Especially since he held the elusive Katowice 2014 stickers for all these years.
Update: He has gotten all of his Stickers back and the vicious Attack reverted. This whole Hack has been due to a Steam Support Agent giving the wrong person access to the account. We hope that this is a wake-up call to Valve and that they will be more careful with situations like these.
