Steam, banning players for being generous?

[Starke]

I doubt it's technically illegal...

It actually would be (well, kind of). Since he's reselling them, not simply giving them away. It's a ToS violation. Now, as far as I know a ToS violation isn't actually illegal, but it does mean Valve can do just about whatever they want to him.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

If Valve were actually doing something wrong, don't you think the sharkpit of lawyers standing by for such a juicy company wouldn't tear themselves apart trying to get to them?

Or Blizzard for Battlenet, Microsod for Xbox Live, Sony for PSN, Nintendo for Wiistore?

 

[Verbage]

I have always found the pricing of steam games in Australia a little suspect, I would love to know how it is calculated, I wonder in the future will they be forced to show how they come up with the now abitrary (seeming) price. Maybe they should show a little list.

Your game costs - X
Your country taxes - Y
Misc - Z
Our cut is - Q

You therefore will pay - P



I dont know if this is a lagitimate part of this thread but please read so you can know wheter to be outraged at the prices of your games. (I also found a site doing this research that placed many other countries worse of than Australia, i feel for you columbia)

The Exampled Game

Call of Duty Black Ops.
according to this site http://www.steamprices.com/uk/app/42700/call-of-duty-black-ops
Costs
(I Did the money conversions with todays currencies.)

(US) 59.99
(UK) 39.99 = [US] 63.9920 (6% markup)
(Europe) 59.99 = [US] 81.2707 (39% markup)
(Australian) 89.99 = [US] 90.1700 (50% markup)

Now as an austrlian Sure i think this is bullshit. Furthermore i know it aint tax that they are marking it up for. We have a rather simple "Goods and Services Tax" of 10%, and it does not apply to importated "Goods and Services" that are under $1000. There has been a recent uproar by the department stores so we all learnt a bit about such things. So these games should not be being taxed more than 10% even if they were to be taxed which they wouldnt be....

What i can tell you is that the hard copies of the game, such as sold here by EB
http://www.ebgames.com.au/search?title=Call+of+Duty%3a+Black+Ops
are going for 98 australian bucks, (110 for XBOX, dont know what console games go for in america so cant compare)

(Australian Hard Copy) 98.00 = [US] 98.1960 (64% Markup!!)
(WOW our currancy is doing awesome atm btw... )

I think steam probably looks at all the other options that you have around you in your current location for buying the game... knocks a couple of bucks of that and sits back and watches the money roll in. I dont blame them, the Australian gaming consumer is violated by the retailer dickwolves everyday and doesnt do a thing about it. People complain about the markup, (50% wouldnt you?) but for us Aussies its actually a reasonable saving compared to the hard copy retailers [8%]. Consider again steam specials and australians are saving alot of money thanks to steam compared to retail prices. If it keeps consumers away from buying hard copies of games which are just creations emissions in transport and plastic cases and being sold to 2nd hand stores who are just dickwolves to the developers I am all for steam.

To the matter of this guy buying in america for eurpeans, i hope it happens more and that more people get banned, the more attention brought to the issue the better, if it forces steam to expaline themselves and these prices, will this issue not be completely solved?

But yea you may have noticed i just wanted to rant about the Aussie Markups...

 

[mrF00bar]

If your steam account gets banned do you lose access to all the games you bought for yourself?

No. You just lose access to Steam secured servers.

That's a VAC ban. I'm pretty sure this kind of ban disables all your games.

The conversion rate of not converting at all is extremely dickish on Valve's part.

VAC bans or Steam Account bans only locks you out of playing on Steam servers. You should still be able to play single player game and multiplayer server that are not Steam secured. I am pretty sure thats how it works.

 

[Mercsenary]

Hmm I'm pretty sure it wasnt right for the person to try to game the system. That said, valve is kind of in the right for trying to punish those who game the system.

Course it does seem to be a bit of a dick move to just outright ban him. A warning that this isnt correct would have sufficed I think as it wasnt really clear.


The thing about different pricing is more of conversion rates I think. Not because they can. Though that might e part of it too.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Ya the highly dodgy busies of downloadable games.
If you buy your games on Steam you never own them which by itself is very questionable legality, and they can always take what you bought away, even more questionable stuff...
You can ofcourse always go and sue them, but who do you think can aford better lawyers.

And the iffy issue of "import tax", that more or less equates to "you pay what we say tax" seeing how Australians pay double for all their games.

He was circumventing a money making system, so ofcourse they threw him out.

 

[DeadProxy]

It's really sad to see a company get so butthurt as to ban a person for causing steam to lose out on just a few hundred dollars when they make millions anually.

http://www.gamesbrief.com/2010/05/five-reasons-why-steam-will-destroy-the-pc-games-industry/

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Basically what this guy's doing is avoiding paying duty & VAT on the games he sells. If I import a game from America because it's cheaper there I STILL have to pay tax on it. That's the law, and how it works.

 

[Smooth Operator]

a good analogy is amazon/ebay. you look for item X in your local stores, local websites etc. and find that the cheapest price is $Y, you then look further afield and find that the object is $Z (Z<Y) in another country. why would you pay the extra money that it would cost to buy it at home?

people all over the world make money by buying stuff cheap in one place, shipping it to another location and selling it at a value that undercuts the higher local price. why should this case be different? even if he broke tax laws, that's an issue for the courts, not steam to rule on.

Ya but it's the same system Steam uses to make more money, if you circumvent it they get less, so you can imagine why they banned him.

These downloadable goods are a highly dodgy business to begin with, you buy a game but only they own it, and should they dislike you they can take away all of it... very iffy legal terms even before you get to the prices, and the question if the money really goes in the right pockets.

Bottom line is every business is playing one system or another, and Steam wont allow you to play theirs.

 

[Sgt Doom]

Has Steam said anything about why they're ripping us Europeans off in the first place?

 

[Daveman]

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/fk90z/steam_support_bans_my_account_for_gifting/

Can't help but pray and think it's a hoax but;

http://i.imgur.com/r6zVW.png

A little introduction. During the Christmas sales of 2010, I gifted many non-American users Steam games at the American prices (Steam prices in USD for most games is a lot cheaper than the EUR/GBP price). The non-US person Paypals me X USD (X = the price of the game in USD), and I gift them the game. I did with around 20 people or so. Everyone is happy; the non-US player saves money, and Valve/the publisher is still getting paid for the game. I guess Valve wasn't so happy, however...

Has this ever happened to anyone here who helped European gamers save some cash by gifting them the games for cheaper? I am mainly surprised since I see nothing about it in their ToS, etc. (though I may have missed it). Valve and the publishers are technically not losing anything. Based on my account being banned, do you think the prices are just raised for non-US "because they can"? If it was due to currency conversion, why would they ban me? Just some food for thought...

(Taken from the link)

Maybe you should read a little further. The guy was circumventing Steam. He was receiving money through PayPal (in USD) so he can use that money and purchase games for Europeans. He wasn't really gifting them anything. Buying a game, and gifting overseas is perfectly fine (The Steam TOS says so). What this user was doing is against the terms of service.

... how did Steam know that when they banned his account? Surely they don't have access to his PayPal account or Bank accounts to check? From their perspective all they see is him gifting games to people which you just said is fine. I'm not saying what he was doing was right I'm just saying that they don't know he's doing anything illegal.

 

[MassiveGeek]

The dude was selling products that weren't his to other people.

... End of story, it's illegal, congratulations for figuring it out, let's move on.

... At least that's how I got it, you can't sell other people's products if you don't have permission. This guy did not have permission. Because yeah, he was gifting them the products, but he got the cash for it, so, he was selling it, not actually giving it away. Therefore it's illegal. Right? I'm pretty sure it's illegal.

 

[Daveman]

The dude was selling products that weren't his to other people.

... End of story, it's illegal, congratulations for figuring it out, let's move on.

... At least that's how I got it, you can't sell other people's products if you don't have permission. This guy did not have permission. Because yeah, he was gifting them the products, but he got the cash for it, so, he was selling it, not actually giving it away. Therefore it's illegal. Right? I'm pretty sure it's illegal.

The thing is Steam still got paid, they just got the American price. It's like getting your friend to buy you something because he gets a discount at a store and you don't, then paying him back.

That said, they are dodging VAT effectively by doing that, but that's them, not him.

tbh I reckon he must have been doing it on a massive scale in order to get caught.

 

[MassiveGeek]

The dude was selling products that weren't his to other people.

... End of story, it's illegal, congratulations for figuring it out, let's move on.

... At least that's how I got it, you can't sell other people's products if you don't have permission. This guy did not have permission. Because yeah, he was gifting them the products, but he got the cash for it, so, he was selling it, not actually giving it away. Therefore it's illegal. Right? I'm pretty sure it's illegal.

The thing is Steam still got paid, they just got the American price. It's like getting your friend to buy you something because he gets a discount at a store and you don't, then paying him back.

That said, they are dodging VAT effectively by doing that, but that's them, not him.

tbh I reckon he must have been doing it on a massive scale in order to get caught.

Yeah? He still did something that was illegal which was selling their product without their permission, that's the whole illegal part of the thing, it doesn't matter if they got paid for it(of course they did, he bought their product).
Just because they got money, but less money mind you, doesn't mean it makes it less illegal, you know.

 

[StormShaun]

steam banned for no reason once......worst player service ever....but apart from that pretty good...

 

[veloper]

Tax evasion
Breaking the TOS
=
BAN
No suprises there. Good for him.

 

[Daveman]

The dude was selling products that weren't his to other people.

... End of story, it's illegal, congratulations for figuring it out, let's move on.

... At least that's how I got it, you can't sell other people's products if you don't have permission. This guy did not have permission. Because yeah, he was gifting them the products, but he got the cash for it, so, he was selling it, not actually giving it away. Therefore it's illegal. Right? I'm pretty sure it's illegal.

The thing is Steam still got paid, they just got the American price. It's like getting your friend to buy you something because he gets a discount at a store and you don't, then paying him back.

That said, they are dodging VAT effectively by doing that, but that's them, not him.

tbh I reckon he must have been doing it on a massive scale in order to get caught.

Yeah? He still did something that was illegal which was selling their product without their permission, that's the whole illegal part of the thing, it doesn't matter if they got paid for it(of course they did, he bought their product).
Just because they got money, but less money mind you, doesn't mean it makes it less illegal, you know.

Well I'd have thought that as what he owns is the license to that bit of software, he's allowed to do what he wants with that. If I buy a game at a shop I think it's reasonable for me to sell it without asking for permission, so why can't he do it with a Steam game? Basically, I'm saying that paying for something grants you ownership of it and you can do what you want with it (except copy it and then distribute that, cause that's piracy).

 

[Simriel]

Not so much "being generous" as deliberately trying to cheat the system. Valve and the publisher may still be making money off of it, but that's like jacking someone's car, but leaving them $10.

What the fuck are you talking about? Valve was cheating the system in the first place by not adjusting the currency. They were essentially cheating European customers and when an American one decides to help them out Valve bans him.

It seems Valve isn't the paragon of virtue everyone though it was.

All video games are more expensive in Europe you idiot, and if fact for the most part Steam is CHEAPER than retailers. Steam are only keeping their prices in line with (and usually lower than) European games retailers.

 

[Something Amyss]

If Valve were actually doing something wrong, don't you think the sharkpit of lawyers standing by for such a juicy company wouldn't tear themselves apart trying to get to them?

Or Blizzard for Battlenet, Microsod for Xbox Live, Sony for PSN, Nintendo for Wiistore?

That's rather specious, isn't it? The real world is rife with instances of corporate entities who have done wrong without suit or have done it for years before any such suit comes up.

 

[Caliostro]

I'd better do this:

Link [https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=4044-QDHJ-5691]

Your account may still be used to play single-player games and multiplayer games on unsecured servers

Your account may still be used to play single-player games or to connect to non-secure game servers and for games played over a LAN. To find non-secure servers, please change your filter settings in the server browser list to show servers which are not VAC-secured (from the Steam main menu go to the View option, select Servers and then select "Not secure" in the Anti-Cheat drop-down).
NOTE: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 does not have non-secure server

That's a VAC ban not an account ban genius. You get VAC banned for cheating in VAC protected servers. Has nothing to do with Steam bans. A Steam ban bans you from Steam itself, and is applied for breaking Steam rules.