I hope your problem will be eventually resolved but let me ask you this , Do you have in your country paysafe cards? You go to a store that they sell the prices are fixed 10- 25 - 50 or 100 they will instatly give you a code that you can go to your wallet straight forward go to add funds use the pay safe card option put in 50 and there you go, you dont have to deal with steam cards crap or banks or anything
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I feel sorry for you. But I am afraid that steam support is not the one to blame.
To operate in each country steam needs to work accordingly to each country's laws, and also they can't break the laws from copyright holder country. It means that they need big law department which makes sure that everything is in order.
But there are some laws which are mutually exclusive. For example software ban - some software technologies are forbidden to export them from USA and EU to high risk areas. So each time when you sell any software to this country - you need to check entire source code to make sure that it doesn't contain any of the forbidden technologies. It takes about 10-12 months, and about 750k $ in mid sized program to make sure that this is the case. (There is a way around this, but it is not available for US based company - I don't know all the details)
So steam would need to look at each game, check it, and then sell it. Now it costs about 750k $. Selling games for 50$ gives Steam about 15$. So they would need to sell about 50 000 copies of every game in their catalogue just to cover the costs of checking the code. (more for cheaper games) And each of them would be delayed by 10 months or more - and this will affect the sales
So I guess that this is your government, US government and all European Governments fault. Not steam's.
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Steam doesn't have to inspect source code for anything they sell. They just can't sell anything to residents of countries that are listed by the US Treasury Dept. as sanctioned and restrict software.
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Well, my informations might be outdated, or maybe it was a other sanction. The procedure I wrote about was in effect to few European countries in mid-90's, and it is in effect when you are exporting software from EU to some countries right now. I just assumed that US law's are similar.
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I'm not sure about EU laws but US laws changed in the early 2000s. It used to be illegal to export cryptographic software but after the PGP case it became legal. It is still illegal to share security software to sanctioned countries but the Internet laughs at that law.
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The US still has full sanctions against Syria, any software sold to Syria must comply with a lot of criteria. By definition, nothing that Valve sells does that.
You say that the Internet laughs at that law, but while that may hold true for individuals, a company will get fined large sums for breaking the sanctions and there are cases for even smaller violations every year. This means that most companies will have a 0 tolerance policy in that regard, they aren't allowed to deal with the country at all so they don't. Additionally, there have also been quite a few cases where an individual was brought to court for that kind of violation in the last 10 years.
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My reference to the Internet laughing was in regards to sanctioned countries obtaining the software through piracy.
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Ah, sorry, I misunderstood then. I thought you meant that you thought everything was freely sold (which of course wasn't the case).
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wow, its like talking to a robot. that is ugly & gross.
it shouldnt matter if they dont sell to your country, they should still have some sort of training on how to speak to people.
sorry to hear that.
if all else fails are you able to play on GoGs platform or was it b/c the Steam Wallet Cards are more easier to pay that way?
i hope things work out for you. i definitely do think that passing around those support ticket images are important & needs to be passed around so others can see this. Valve might support refunds but they still need to support netiquette among their employees.
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Man, this sucks. Sorry to hear that. And I also encountered the Steam support at some point and they mostly work with pre-written answers to cases they deem reasonable.
I had a case where I couldn't activate a key from a 10 year old Half-Life physical copy, because someone generated the key or got it from the internet and do you think they thought "Hey, this guy got an original copy of Half-Life, let's give him this 3 bucks game?"? Nope. I needed a receipt from a game I own for more than over 10 years.
They are not supportive towards gamers and won't do anything if it isn't GabeN approved.
Refunds are the first thing they did that actually is in favor of the customer.
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Yeah and I think I read somewhere that they only did this refund service because a law in UK stated so recently. If they didn't add this service, they'd be breaking the law. So they're basically only helping themselves.
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It was a standard throughout Europe before. Well, most of the time refunds are a favor the stores are doing but still it's a standard. By law you have a 6 months guarantee on everything you buy tho in Germany.
It was obvious that they did this because they got some pressure. Just like when they removed paid mods because people went nuts about it.
And then they said "We just wanted to make something YOU can profit from". Bullshit.
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This is why I use GOG lately. Steam is just going downhill.
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It's not Steam, it's US law (and many other countries have the same laws).
Companies aren't allowed to sell software to Syria unless it's for something like agriculture.
Not too sure about sanctions in Poland, but GOG wouldn't be allowed to do anything to help either, unless they want to give up large parts of their market.
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Pretty sure he means that GOG isn't as much of an asshole as steam is, and I agree.
If this situation would have happened on GOG, their support team would have handled it much better.
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Actually, assuming the standard EU sanction laws apply in Poland (they do for the majority of the EU countries), giving a refund in that case would be breaking the sanction...
Even going into a discussion about it could constitute a violation, as all business relations have to be broken once they find out someone is from a sanctioned country. Companies that are willing to take that risk are far and few in between, due to the high fines they would risk...
While Steam support in general is horrible unless you know who to address in your ticket, they don't even have any leeway for how they need to deal with the situation. As far as I know, GoG has the same limitations for this kind of situation due to EU sanction laws.
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That's not what I meant.
Maybe they wouldn't be able to solve the problem, I'm not entirely familiar with EU laws but they'd handle it much better as in, they won't be an ass and send a copy pasted reply.
I think someone wrote an example of how a support team should reply in a situation like this on the next page and that was a hell a lot better than what Steam did. They don't even pretend to care!
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The US and EU laws both enforce a minimal interaction policy, meaning that a standardized reply is the only thing they are allowed to give if one is available and if not, they have to make one (if they can reasonably expect people from a sanctioned country to try to buy things from them, at least). The law literally tells them not to act like they care.
The reasoning behind that is that people are "more likely to give in" when interacting on an emotional level.
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There are reasons, they want to block out any financial and technological help towards high risk areas that may have dangerous individuals. Those individuals may lie in order to get stuff they want... It's still not a nice law though, and it's a law without any trace of humanity in it...
For instance, there is a chance, however small, that this is an attempt to smuggle money into Syria. In that scenario, it could be like this: 1. Get Steam wallet money from outside of the country, 2. activate card, 3. get refund on Syrian bank account, 4. use money for IS.
While this is a very small chance, the law is designed to always assume this kind of scenario is the truth to avoid the chance that it accidentally happens for real...
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Could you ask your cousin to log onto your account and purchase the games with your wallet funds?
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Post this on /r/steam, when someone is complaining about the bullshits of Steam support, the thread usually hit the top and they'll magically solve the problem instantly.
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Ouch.Its bad enough that your country is,well...you know,but being unable to buy yourself some entertainment because of the service being a dick because of political bullshit?
In any case,I hope this thing gets resolved.Try using the ton of advice posted here.And good luck out there.
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I feel your pain, i have a even surreal experience that is preventing me from buying more games on the summer sale.
Quick story.
I use a system that my bank provides that allows me to create a credit card with a limited amount of funds for a one time only purchase. Its a virtual credit card so no actual credit is envolved and the funds are deducted directly from my bank account through that system. I use this system every time i make any purchase online, its a lot safer then providing a physical credit card number.
Because i made some of purchases in the store in the last few days now steam asks me to validate the card that i used to add funds to the wallet. This validation process works by deducting a small fee on the card and replacing it afterwards just to see if the credi tcard has funds but remember, this is a one time only card so it can't be validated by this process because after the first purchase ( when i added funds to the wallet ) it doesn't allow any more movement with that card. So what does steam do ? Blocks my market and the ability to use the wallet until the 22th of this month so i can't purchase anything else or sell/buy stuff on the market. (They say that on the 22th the funds are automatically validated )
Seems that throwing money at steam doesn't end well.
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I have the same case but it let's me buy from the Store. I just can't purchase from the market until 22th.
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Well... Steam support is bad and it's a well known fact. But in this case the problem is not in them. If they help you, they'll break US law and this can cost a lot of money and problems with US goverment... Also support must be very careful, becouse they don't know are you a real customer or tax agent that just try them. You can ask what is the point of such stupid law? Well... the idea is to make you unhappy that you live in your country with your current goverment... and it seems that this works very well...
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Third world people's first world problems. Not rustled.
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You need to be rewarded for trying to ACTUALLY buy games rather than pirating them in such a fucked up region. Kudos to you!
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maybe inform yourself before adding 50$ to a random website?
obviously steam won't sell in your country.
dont blame steam for not being able to sell software to your country, blame your goverment
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use www.steamtrades.com, contact with traders of unlocked regions, (for example, much EU countrys), and trade with theirs games using TF2 / CSGO keys (you can buy those keys on market)
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Valve is a disgusting greedy company!
Your situation and many others is why I don't like Steam, maybe even hate it. (That's a strong word...)
Have you tried to see if you can buy things from Steam Market with your wallet? If you can, you can buy TF2/CSGO keys and trade them for games!
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I don't understand why Valve is denying your request based on your region. I mean, even though Steam/Valve are American-based companies, the fact remains that it's an international company with multiple offices around the world and so should be able to serve any country in the world. I know that American companies aren't allowed to trade with Syria (and a few other countries) because I've seen messages like that in cell phone manuals saying "it is illegal to re-sell this product in Syria, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, etc." but since Valve has an office in Luxembourg, they should be able to easily get around such things.
Anyway, if Steam doesn't help you, you should consider sending in a message to some online gaming magazines in the hope that one of them will pick up your story, publish it, and publicly shame Steam for their completely unacceptable behavior. (In the past, Rock, Paper, Shotgun has published stories of gamers who've been screwed over by Valve. While your story is very different, the main problem is the same: Steam support is the absolute worst. The more people know how terrible it is, the likelier it is to change.)
Having said all this, I really sympathize with you and I hope you're able to get some games (and justice). If Steam is unwilling to help you, and the methods recommended by people here don't work, you could also try other online game distributors (e.g. GOG.com, a Poland-based company which is also having a summer sale right now). While you wouldn't be able to get your $50 back, you'd still be able to get some games at least.
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" but since Valve has an office in Luxembourg, they should be able to easily get around such things"
the only things any company is care about opening their office in Luxemburg is to reduce taxes and fees
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It doesn't matter if you have hundreds of offices worldwide. Valve is registered as a U.S. based company so they must follow U.S. trade laws. This problem would occur with any U.S. company and not just Valve. The OP just needs to face the fact that he tried to break a law and now it will cost him.
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its the worse support from any company ive dealt with, origin should take over the support side of it
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Steam and support are oxymorons... good luck man, hope that at least you get your money back, but that's wishful thinking.
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aww man your situation sucks balls :( i hope you don't get mad wit hwhat i'm about to say but isn't it maybe not steams fault? maybe it's something that's just not allowed on your country? tried putting muney on uplay or origin? why not getting games from 3rd party stores like kinguin,g2a or allkeyshop? once again i hope you don't get mad at me but being the devil's advocate here and saying maybe it's not their fault :(
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Steam is shit. They don't care about you, only about your money. Now you've given $50 to them anyway so why would they bother? I hate them for it. And yes, steam support is the worst.
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Sadly, Steam isn't available in every country, and not every country wants to play nice with businesses based in the US. There really isn't anything steam can do, and even they are limited to what can be done to resolve this.
The country isn't supported. It's sucks to no end, but it really is beyond steam's control.
All I can suggest, is that if what you are doing isn't supported in your country, don't try a workaround.
And I strongly caution you to NOT use a VPN. Most online services require IP logging, and they might see VPN usage as a hack attempt and lock the account flat out.
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**UPDATE: Lots of people are reaching out to me asking if there's anything new to my cause, will sadly there isn't...
The sales are ending, i'm gonna miss Ground Zeroes, Final Fantasy VII and Castle Crashers' sales :'/....oh well
In response to some popular opinions in the comments:
1- Yes, i 100% acknowledge that it was my fault...but the reason of this whole thread is that the support didn't even try to help nor is willing to transfer my funds to a friend
2- Yes, i've tried dozens of VPNs....still locked away from my money :') . It really sucks because like, i've took the risk at first because other people are activating and buying stuff in my region/area and they just get away with it... i still don't know why the hell is my luck this bad and that i can't buy even with the same proxy they're using....
3- No, i can't buy tf2 keys or market items because i have to wait for 30 days
Anyways, although i kinda feel the urge to ask the people for the three games i mentioned above...but i'm trying to damage control my urges because i don't usually ask for free games (on a giveaways site...oh the irony xD !) sooo yeah...
Thanx for your concern and see you around :). Maybe i'll update this once more if anything new happens
**
ORIGINAL POST: This is honestly unbelievable, the Steam support is the worse i've ever dealt with and The most unprofessional.....
http://i.imgur.com/NJkleKP.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/HlDzNpQ.jpg
My story is, well, you can find it in the support ticket image i uploaded above. Do you honestly think this is fair? How can I have 50$ of funds in my Steam wallet that i can't do shit with?
I just wanted to share this with you all, really felt like this should get some buzz. It's not that there's nothing that can be done to my issue, they can simply change the region of my account and nothing will explode or whatever and honestly this whole regions thing is becoming more and more stupid, this is 2015 and anyone with an Internet connection and a PC is a potential customer but what was done to me is a show in complete injustice and i wouldn't be surprised if that kind of response came from a personal hatred of sort
I really need a hug as well :| , gonna miss the Summer Sales
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