If you’ve been trading in Grow a Garden recently, there’s a chance you could be carrying a duped item in your inventory — and the worst part is, you might not even know it. The game’s moderation system is cracking down hard, and as of now, players with duped items are getting locked out of trading entirely.
Whether you’re an active trader or a casual player, it’s important to understand how this works, what causes the issue, and what you can do to fix it. Here’s everything you need to know.
Duping and Trading Bans: What’s Happening?
Duping has become one of the biggest problems in Grow a Garden. It’s so widespread that nearly every active player has likely held a duped item at some point — whether through trades, purchases, or giveaways.
To combat this, Grow a Garden developers have added an automatic system that disables your trading if you’re found to have a duped item. You’ll see an alert like: “Duped item detected. Your trading is disabled. Please contact support.”
Types of Duping
There are two main types of duping in the game:
- In-Game Raccoon Duping (Safe) This is a dev-approved feature using raccoons to duplicate plants across accounts. It’s part of the game mechanics and won’t get you banned.
- Exploit-Based Duping (Unsafe) This involves using external exploits or scripts (often found on YouTube or shady websites). These are not allowed and can get you banned from trading or worse — have your account compromised with malware or trojans.
Why You Might Already Be Affected
Even if you haven’t used exploits, trading with someone who has can get you duped items unknowingly. The system currently doesn’t warn you about this during a trade, so you may have accepted a bad item without realizing it. The biggest red flags:
- Items purchased from third-party sites like eBay
- Receiving pets in giveaways or trades with strangers
- Having random duplicates of rare or event-exclusive pets
Once a duped item enters your inventory, your trading access might be blocked without any warning.
How to Avoid Getting Banned from Trading
Unfortunately, there’s no in-game way to check if an item is duped. But you can lower your risk by:
- Trading only with trusted players. Stick to friends or players you’ve dealt with before.
- Avoiding real-money trades. Buying pets or seeds from sites like eBay violates Roblox’s terms and can get your account banned.
- Staying away from third-party tools or scripts. Exploits often contain malware, keyloggers, or crypto miners. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
How to Fix Trading Ban from Duped Items
If your account is flagged and you can’t trade, here’s what you can try:
- Sell or delete suspected duped items. The system might automatically restore your trading access if you remove the problematic item from your inventory.
- Report through Discord. While there’s no dedicated support channel, you can try using the bug report or suggestions channel to get noticed.
- Request Better Tools The community has been asking for a tagging system to identify duped items (even a simple red icon would help). You can help push this by submitting feedback in the Discord.
Grow a Garden’s trading scene is evolving fast, and while duping has caused major issues, the devs are taking it seriously. Until a clearer support system is in place, your best defense is caution — avoid risky trades, stay away from exploits, and never buy items with real money. And if you’re already affected, try removing any suspicious items and wait to see if your access returns. Stay safe out there, gardeners — and double-check that next trade before hitting confirm.