Steam restricting accounts which have not spent money

[snekadid]

Hell, I'd like a setting that keeps "private" accounts from sending me messages too. That way when the scammers start making 5 dollar accounts, they'll have to stop hiding to message me, and then I report them > Mwahahahaha.

 

[Fox12]

So steam officially has a paywall now.
What's next - premium subscription?

The only things being restricted are messaging and friend requests.

Incidentally, those are the features being abused by scammers.

 

[Glimmereyes]

I could have sworn this was already the case, and had been for several years.

The Wayback Machine has an entry from Valve's knowledgebase concerning Limited Accounts dating December 27 2009 [http://web.archive.org/web/20091227222432/https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3330-IAGK-7663]. So yes, Valve has been restricting account features longer than many of the people envisioning a mass exodus have had accounts.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

This could screw over younger users who are stuck with no money or credit card and just play F2P stuff like Smite. When I first signed up on Steam I don't think I even had a card for an ATM let alone online purchasing.

Most of the F2P stuff offers their own private friends lists that exist outside of steam friends list. Plus it only limits people sending friends requests, not accepting them.

To emphasize the problem, I just got another random friend request from a level 0 secret profile person, the 4th in 3 days. Nothing but scammers and dickbags, as far as the eye can see. This is a necessary evil.

Tell me about it.

Me and a few IRL friends qualify as what you'd maybe consider as Steam "whales", in that we have more than a hundred games in our respective libraries. Somehow, a lot of scammers or e-beggars tend to view these accounts as being fair game, as if me being able to budget sixty dollars every two months for the past nine years meant I'd be willing to purchase games for someone else.

Over the past six months, three people went with the "Look at your Games list, I'm sure you can afford to pay me Such-and-Such, right? You're practically rich!" opening line. They're always minors, always in corners of the world where the game they want is hard to import, and always in a posture where their supposed parents would freak out if they knew they had access to whatever game it is they want.

I mean, seriously. Riddle me this, Internet: how is it that me having grabbed a few Steam sales and Humble Bundles makes me look like Uncle Moneybags? I really can't affford to shower even my close and personal friends with gifted games, as it is!

 

[direkiller]

there is one major issue with this. Activating retail copies of games will not lift the restriction.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3330-IAGK-7663

 

[snekadid]

Tell me about it.

Me and a few IRL friends qualify as what you'd maybe consider as Steam "whales", in that we have more than a hundred games in our respective libraries. Somehow, a lot of scammers or e-beggars tend to view these accounts as being fair game, as if me being able to budget sixty dollars every two months for the past nine years meant I'd be willing to purchase games for someone else.

Over the past six months, three people went with the "Look at your Games list, I'm sure you can afford to pay me Such-and-Such, right? You're practically rich!" opening line. They're always minors, always in corners of the world where the game they want is hard to import, and always in a posture where their supposed parents would freak out if they knew they had access to whatever game it is they want.

I mean, seriously. Riddle me this, Internet: how is it that me having grabbed a few Steam sales and Humble Bundles makes me look like Uncle Moneybags? I really can't affford to shower even my close and personal friends with gifted games, as it is!

Heh, you think you have a problem with that, you should check out my steam account. If >100 makes you a Whale, I demand the title of kraken. ^_^

So many bundles.... unfortunately most of it goes into the "crap" category I set up in my library.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

This could screw over younger users who are stuck with no money or credit card and just play F2P stuff like Smite. When I first signed up on Steam I don't think I even had a card for an ATM let alone online purchasing.

I agree, add a timer function to this, say the accounts 6 months old and still hasn't spent 5$, now it can function as a normal account. Cuts down on spam. Then again maybe spammers are patient enough to wait that long.

Or maybe look at hours played with games.

 

[Strazdas]

Havent bought anything from steam store =/= does not pay anything. First ~20 games of mine were gained by recieving keys to activate. my steam account balance shown i have spent 0 at that time. yet im sure steam took a cut when i bought the key.
Also in business a customer is defined as [http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/customer.html] A party that receives or consumes products (goods or services) and has the ability to choose between different products and suppliers.

Payment is not required for customer to fit the definition.

You're a paying customer. Or at least, someone is a paying customer on your behalf. If it can be registered on steam, it has a designated financial value in the steam system. You're automatically assumed to have that account value, when a check like this is made.

If you were talking about how you throw non-steam executables into steam, to play other games and use the steam overlay UI to communicate with friends, it'd be one thing. But what you're doing is like saying you're not a customer of your local shops, because you use pre-paid gift cards to get what you need, and have never once made a transaction yourself with them.

Well, if im a paying costumer than you should probably tell that to steam, because the account information still shows at 0 transactions well not for my particular case anymore, but for people that bought outside of steam and were forced to activate via steam as a DRM.

You dont know how and if steam can add value from outside purchases, because if it can it sure as hell does not want to show us. And thats not me saying im not a costumer, thats steam.

Look for those of you who still think this is unfair, consider this: SOOOO many indi devs are going to see spikes in sales as scammers gobble up whatever the cheapest titles are so they can keep scamming! It's GOOD FOR DEVELOPERS!

Shitty developer[footnote]if the developer is not shitty he does not have to rely on scammer sales[/footnote] getting money because scammer needed paid account is good for noone.

I don't really like the idea, it will screw over younger kids who don't have any access to disposable income. I suppose Valve doesn't really have much incentive to help out non-paying Steam users, but on the other hand, those kids can become lucrative customers later in life, and perhaps they will be less likely to do so now. On the mutant third hand maybe other users will enjoy and spend more on Steam with less spammers around.

The incentive is very simple. If you spent your entire childhood on steam making friends, you wont be leaving steam when you grow up or you will have to rebuild your entire friend list. its a honeytrap tactic and they pretty much killed it now.

Seems like a potentially better solution would have been to give steam account users the ability to auto-ignore all requests of Steam Level X or lower. Since all spam invites are level 0 this would resolve that problem. Since the USER could set the base level it would make it challenging for a spammer to adjust and work the system.

But that would mean giving users a choice. and that goes against corporate thinking.

Ok, that is a bit shitty. Even gifts don't count. I assumed anything of value would count, as long as it was applied to the account. So gifting, as long as they applied it and didn't drop it into their inventory to be traded later.

Seems they could have loosened the rules, or come up with better ones. I still stand by my original point though, Steam is kinda worthless if you're not buying at least one of those $5 sales at some point. The amount of legitimate customers this will affect will be unfortunate, but negligible.

The way steams system work is everything coming from outside of steam itself counts as retail and is valued at 0. The only way for them to count the value of code activations is to entirely rework their account system.

Actually, for example Amazon has better sales and more often than steam itself. i know steam sales is famous, but its no longer the cheapest option anymore. of course it takes the extra effort of looking through many websites and activating keys, sometimes for as little as 40 cents off.

Me and a few IRL friends qualify as what you'd maybe consider as Steam "whales", in that we have more than a hundred games in our respective libraries. Somehow, a lot of scammers or e-beggars tend to view these accounts as being fair game, as if me being able to budget sixty dollars every two months for the past nine years meant I'd be willing to purchase games for someone else.

Over the past six months, three people went with the "Look at your Games list, I'm sure you can afford to pay me Such-and-Such, right? You're practically rich!" opening line. They're always minors, always in corners of the world where the game they want is hard to import, and always in a posture where their supposed parents would freak out if they knew they had access to whatever game it is they want.

Really? i have been having 100+ games for years, my profile is public and i do play multiplayer and i have never had anyone ask me to buy a game for them. i had games gifted to me without being asked, but thats as close as it gets.

Also i think a good reply to those people would be "im rich because i dont buy games for other people". i would be interested to see their reply

 

[Vlado]

I don't like this. There's gotta be a saner way to do this, why not base it on playtime instead of purchases? Or playtime plus purchases - either, or.

 

[DoPo]

playtime instead of purchases?

Because it's easy to spoof. Steam would need to beef up the security on that one feature and that's a really bad design because the feature is not that important.

 

[MonsterCrit]

This could screw over younger users who are stuck with no money or credit card and just play F2P stuff like Smite. When I first signed up on Steam I don't think I even had a card for an ATM let alone online purchasing.

Then they just won't be able to send friend invites. Nothing however stops them from receiving friend invites.. Keep in mind a steam card (purchaseable in many retail outlets) is enough. THis will put it's valued amount into your steam wallet. You don't have to actually buy anything so much as just put it in your steam wallet. And let's face it.. if you're on steam sooner or later you will spend $5 whether it be on a hat, a skin or during the infamous sales. May the 4th is coming up after all.

The $5 amount is actually likely because that is the smallest amount in USD you can add to your Steam Wallet via card or paypal or such.

 

[Signa]

Ok, that is a bit shitty. Even gifts don't count. I assumed anything of value would count, as long as it was applied to the account. So gifting, as long as they applied it and didn't drop it into their inventory to be traded later.

Seems they could have loosened the rules, or come up with better ones. I still stand by my original point though, Steam is kinda worthless if you're not buying at least one of those $5 sales at some point. The amount of legitimate customers this will affect will be unfortunate, but negligible.

The way steams system work is everything coming from outside of steam itself counts as retail and is valued at 0. The only way for them to count the value of code activations is to entirely rework their account system.

I would hope they could at least get gifts to work correctly. If I spend $5 on a game and gifted it to my little cousin, his account should be worth $5 because $5 went into Steam, and they should know it. I can understand not letting retail keys work, especially with things like the Humble Bundle being an easy workaround for the scammers. If I was a scammer, and my cousin was a dummy account, I'd still have to be spending $5 traceable dollars on the dummy account to make it valid. It would completely defeat it as a workaround.

 

[Strazdas]

Ok, that is a bit shitty. Even gifts don't count. I assumed anything of value would count, as long as it was applied to the account. So gifting, as long as they applied it and didn't drop it into their inventory to be traded later.

Seems they could have loosened the rules, or come up with better ones. I still stand by my original point though, Steam is kinda worthless if you're not buying at least one of those $5 sales at some point. The amount of legitimate customers this will affect will be unfortunate, but negligible.

The way steams system work is everything coming from outside of steam itself counts as retail and is valued at 0. The only way for them to count the value of code activations is to entirely rework their account system.

I would hope they could at least get gifts to work correctly. If I spend $5 on a game and gifted it to my little cousin, his account should be worth $5 because $5 went into Steam, and they should know it. I can understand not letting retail keys work, especially with things like the Humble Bundle being an easy workaround for the scammers. If I was a scammer, and my cousin was a dummy account, I'd still have to be spending $5 traceable dollars on the dummy account to make it valid. It would completely defeat it as a workaround.

That would be a start, yes, but we have no information that they would be making such changes to their system.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Well, now I can't make that smurf account for Dota 2. I can't say this update is particularly problematic otherwise though.

 

[Quiet Stranger]

It sounds like a bad idea but if I stop getting spam friend invites then good I'm so sick of them, I get so many

 

[likalaruku]

I've seen a video saying what stuff gets restricted...nothing I use. I only use Steam for mods.

I'm not against this though & think they should probably bump it up from $5. What's $5 anymore? Enough to buy a gumball. If it reduces bogus ratings on Greenlight games, then it's good.

 

[Smooth Operator]

So instead of spending some time doing a proper spam filters which would solve the problem effectively for all time, they decided on a money filter... so the spam guy only spends 5 bucks and spams away again.

That is without a doubt the worst possible solution I have seen on any website for 20 years, but it is one tick up from nothing at all.

 

[DoPo]

So instead of spending some time doing a proper spam filters which would solve the problem effectively for all time

How would that spam filter work? Surely, if it was that simple to do it would have existed already. I don't think it does.