Steam, banning players for being generous?

Jennacide

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Dec 6, 2007
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Chibz said:
Technically they ARE losing something. They can't rip off non-american gamers quite as easily if people do this. Part of why I won't have anything to do with Steam.
Because there totally isn't an exchange rate of currencies or anything.

Either way, he wouldn't of been banned for this unless he was advertising that he was doing it, flaunting it in Valve's face. One of my Euro friends gifts me games all the time, and I do the same to him. Valve doesn't care that I'm paying US prices for his games. Now if I outright said on forums "hey, I'm cheating the system to get him stuff cheaper than exchange rates would cost him" then they'd be pissed.
 

Zer_

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Feb 7, 2008
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Chibz said:
Zer_ said:
Isn't VAT included in the price? Any local taxes are obviously applied after the fact.
Nope, this is just the price before anything is applied. Regardless, the person did pay tax. To the applicable country (where it was bought), even if VAT did apply to such a product.
VAT is included in the listed price, I just checked. Any regional taxes are not.
 

Chibz

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Sep 12, 2008
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Zer_ said:
VAT is included in the listed price, I just checked. Any regional taxes are not.
Very good, then VAT was being paid to the correct country anyways.

Jennacide said:
Because there totally isn't an exchange rate of currencies or anything.
Was this directed to me? Exchange rates are what make it such a rip off...
 

Karma168

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Trolldor said:
Karma168 said:
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.
Yes, it is an issue for steam because if they refuse to take action they are complicit in the act.
wouldn't their involvement in the act end upon completion of the sale? never bought anything off steam so not sure how it works but i'm guessing they sell the product key for the game as well as allowing the customer to download the game. once they have sold that code the customer can do whatever he likes with it and steam would not be responsible for his actions.

say you buy a car and then use it to commit a crime, is the dealership that sold you the car complicit? once you drove the car out of the lot the dealership has effectively wiped their hands of it and cannot be held responsible for how you use it.
 

Starke

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Woodsey said:
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.
 
Feb 13, 2008
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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

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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

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Mar 17, 2009
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Outright Villainy said:
Gindil said:
Bobic said:
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

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Oct 19, 2008
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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

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Oct 5, 2010
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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

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Sep 15, 2010
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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

Unlucky for some
Dec 19, 2007
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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

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Oct 5, 2010
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Karma168 said:
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

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Jan 30, 2009
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Has Steam said anything about why they're ripping us Europeans off in the first place?
 

Daveman

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Jan 8, 2009
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Zer_ said:
Gather said:
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

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Jan 11, 2009
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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

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Jan 8, 2009
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MassiveGeek said:
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

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Jan 11, 2009
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Daveman said:
MassiveGeek said:
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.