Steam Support Article update on • Permanent Bans and Gift Restrictions (new restrictions)

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I seriously don't understand the "traders" subculture in the Steam community. I mean, if you're spending money on games, why not just buy the ones you want for yourself rather than stuff to trade away?

I'm sincerely curious.

It'll hurt stockpile game-traders, but I don't think that was every really the intention of the marketplace to begin with. The fact Valve allowed such a thing to exist for so long is in itself a pretty cool thing.

This is an attempt to reduce the number of infinitely cycling cheaters. Valve are going to lose profits on copies that aren't going to be bought and fed into the trading machine, and let's be fair here, Steam is unique in it's marketplace. No other place has this, do they? The fact they allowed a legit profit-driven trading culture to exist for this long is a good thing, having the freedoms of that market worn down is a sad turn, but far from the insult people keep making the decisions out to be. All the woes that come when they try to tweak the paradigm aren't malicious, even if some of them are hamfisted. People have been complaining loudly about cheaters forever now, so trying a different approach to try reduce the sheer numbers isn't a bad thing. Whether or not their efforts turn out to be myopic or totally on-point remains to be seen. In the end, everyone is change resistant, and all too happy to have a new thing to grouch about and attribute to malice / stupidity.

I don't even disagree that gift bans are a bad idea on such a blanket scale, but the ongoing "Valve keeps insulting us!" thing makes me want to headdesk. All this said, they're aware of the trading culture they've allowed to flourish, so when they make a move to impose new rules and restrictions like these, it would be really cool if they could also come up with a grace period or 'cooldown system' so legit traders can adjust without running into issues. Profit-driven trade business was never the intention of the marketplace, but it happened anyway. Giving people a chance to reassess and withdraw would be a really cool gesture.

I can only imagine someone sitting on a hundred copies of CS:GO and needing to offload them before a single butthole ruins their entire stock. :P

Did you find out what happens if the gift is declined? Everyone is talking about trading & profits instead...

Thanks for the sincere answers, everyone. I appreciate it, and I learned a little something today.

Would be popular multiplayer games. Stuff like CSGO and other Valve multiplayer games, I think the Call of Duty series has bans as well, etc.

Not only vac protected games, probably almost every multiplayer.

Ayup. Also, you can't buy a gift during a sale to give later. You miss gifting during the sale, you now need to pay full price.

The joys of a monopoly.

Thanks for the Morphine reference. XD

That could be problematic for traders if I read this correctly:
" if an account has previously gifted a game to other players who have been VAC or permanently Game Banned, then that account will lose the ability to gift that game."

So if someone wins a VAC game giveaway of yours and he gets VAC banned you lose the ability to gift that game again?

Please reply to this, I want to verify if this is correct.

This does indeed make sense. Shitty for traders, but if it prevents people from cheating over and over again, I'm all for it. Besides, there are plenty of other games to trade anyway.

this is gonna become even worse , after years of such updates we'll trade accs... =d

I'm region locked to a single country. Would like it if Steam offered the option to buy more expensive ROW gifts.

It clearly states "who have been VAC or permanently Game Banned"
Plenty of devs use the game ban option nowadays though, so one might assume it affects most MP titles.

Gabe newell hasn't been in charge in a long time,that's obvious.

Well, in that case everyone can just go to the other online platforms that let you turn a bulk-profit off the backs of the host company.
Oh wait, there aren't any others that ever let you do that.

They're allowed to take steps to combat perpetual cheaters infesting the games seeded with their own anti-cheat, dude. You can still gift, just not mechanically stock and profit off certain titles, nor blind-gift strangers without repercussion if they feed into an ongoing cheater issue. If people are careful, the impact is probably going to be minimal.

Frankly, we shouldn't be able to keep gifts in our inventories at all. I don't see how this is a service problem and why should it be an excuse for software piracy.

Same.
It effectively shuts down trading and giving away of (most) multiplayer titles.

At the same time, "business cheaters" could easily just create dozens of "MM ready" accounts, as they did before, and sell those. -_-

I agree. My giveaways are Steam Gifts, so if I happened to gift a game and the person gets a VAN Ban on it, I'm screwed from being able to gift it to someone else? That's BS. I don't trade, so that aspect doesn't bother me. Me being punished for someone else's actions, does.

This is the real problem, for me.

You understood it correctly.

Buy all you GA gifts as codes from third party sites. Problem solved.

you got it right I think - what this says is valve is encouraging people to buy keys from resellers - as they don't want you buying from them - not that I would do that, but I think many now will - way to go valve !!!!!

Please clarify, as I cannot think of a single situation where revoking gifts would be the appropriate response to the new policy.

If gifted to others... mad at Valve, so trying to take back stuff you gave away to your friends/acquaintances/SG-ers? Not ok.
If gifted to alt accounts...mad at Valve, so trying to get extra copies back after using them? Not ok.
If sold/traded as a gift .... mad at Valve, so trying to get back stuff people legitimately purchased/traded for? Not ok.

Hopefully there's a fourth scenario I missed... but just sayin, asking to revoke gifts seems super-sketch.

Not just trading, gifting in general too. Since as repeatedly stated above, you can get locked out if anyone you ever gifted to does something stupid, at least for most multiplayer games where the bans are used.
This is Valve half-assing things again and not thinking about what collateral damage they cause.

"Valve is making Steam a shittier experience? What a shock!" -Sadly, same rarity

Why not create a system where a computer with a specific Perminate IP Address

Because IP adresses can be changed easily, and often even change automatically anyways.
But yeah, i had the same thought. Account selling is quite a thing on certain sites, and will probably flourish after this change.

Perma-IP bans doesn't really work, as most of the world has dynamic IP - one day you play, other day you learn you got cheater's IP and ban.
Creating bunch of accounts - if they catch one of accounts cheating, they can ban that payment method and no other account will be able to use those bought games (AFAIK that's what Overwatch is doing - Blizzard bans cheaters by their credit cards, beside other stuff).

But what about people that share a pc? They would have the same IP and MAC (and as stated, they can be changed easily), but different accounts.

Try CS:GO