Is LootBear Legit?
With dozens of websites centered around CS2 skins, a lot of players found themselves at an impasse when deciding which one to use. While most platforms allow you to buy or sell skins, LootBear offers a unique experience of renting in-game cosmetics. Is LootBear a scam if it has such an unusual feature? Let’s find out.
LootBear Overview
While no exact date of founding is available to the public, we can deduce LootBear took its roots in mid-2018 and was launched as an Israel-based gamification startup. It was initially designed to become an all-in-one marketplace for gaming skins with the main focus on Counter-Strike, but also had plans for Dota 2, PUBG, and H1Z1. As of now, you won’t find any signs of these games on the website, but Lootbear’s Facebook page still mentions the plans to expand the platform.
Traditionally for the CS marketplaces, you can buy and sell skins on LootBear. However, their main feature here is a skins rent option, allowing players to take in-game items for some period, typically for a relatively small amount of cash. According to their latest video on YouTube (published in autumn 2023), a $15 monthly subscription allows you to use skins that cost up to $400.
Lootbear also offers a reverse option, so everyone who has some costly skins (more expensive than $40) can rent them out to receive regular payments. You can link your Steam account to LootBear, choose the skins you are ready to give for third-party temporary usage and receive a proportional fee. LootBear was among the pioneers of skin rent long before Valve tried to launch a similar feature in the Fire Sale update of 23.05.2024.
Is LootBear CS2 legit? As of late 2024, it’s hard to say whether the website is adequately supported. You can register and log in, but the “Get Started” button leads to the warning message that the system is updating. It could look like a routine maintenance process, but the latest public update by LootBear happened in October 2023. All in all, the platform surely functions, as customers still leave their comments and reviews on Trustpilot, but it’s hard to recommend the site with such a notable inactivity gap.
Is LootBear Legitimate?
There is no definite answer to the question, “Is LootBear legit?” Since Valve allows skin trade on third-party platforms but doesn’t provide licensing, buying or renting on LootBear doesn’t give you any protection from Steam.
The marketplace hasn't seen any public cooperation with popular CS2 teams or tournament organizers. Thus, LootBear’s legitimacy comes from the community—the number of skins they have for trade/rent and the number of clients. The latter is unknown, while the homepage says the total value of skins available on the platforms exceeds $1.5 million. An in-built counter of the money paid slowly nears the astonishing $5 million point, but it’s impossible to verify those numbers.
Is LootBear Safe?
The safety of such websites is often divided into two aspects: factual and technical. The first one stands for the set of measures that a website's support can take when something goes wrong. Unfortunately, LootBear didn't have live support even before the year-long lack of support, and the platform’s FAQ rubric isn’t big or informative enough. On the bright side, the lack of media activity hasn't made them a target for scammers as of now, so there is no increased risk of running into some fake offers.
The technical side, however, is still running strong. Lootbear has AML and KYC verification processing, which is a much-needed feature, even if it means that transactions will take a couple of hours to process. They also have an AI-driven risk evaluation mechanism, which analyzes the trade procedure by scanning suspicious money transactions.
User Reviews and Ratings
If we take a look at the Trustpilot evaluation of the LootBear, the question “Is LootBear safe?” becomes a bit more pressing. First of all, there is a huge difference between the real rating on Trustpilot and the one mentioned on the site.
Of course, it can be just an outdated screenshot, but it is a clear signal that the platform hasn’t been updated for some time.
Those leaving a review on Trustpilot often mention unfair prices and problems with getting their skins or money back as two major concerns. Also, some users accused the platform of cheating. Still, it’s impossible to know whether there’s any real issues here (all the СS trading platforms regularly receive their fare share of such accusations).
A clear problem is that LootBear admins have ignored all the comments for more than a year now. Companies use various approaches on how and when to communicate with unhappy clients, but it seems that LootBear is totally ignoring Trustpilot. As for the second part of 2024, there were only a few positive reviews, and it looks like people were simply lucky to receive what they expected.
Conclusion
It looks like LootBear has been a good website for some time since its launch in 2018, especially because of its skins rent feature. However, the company had either seriously cut the support and marketing budget or simply decided not to develop the project further after 2023. Unsurprisingly, the number of negative comments on Trustpilot has only increased since then. With no improvements in sight, we cannot recommend using LootBear as of the start of 2025.
