steam has always been awful. sad to see that you had to learn about it the hard way :( hugs
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While I think that OP is somewhat wrong in attempting to circumvent blocking in Syria, Steam should still respond to OP humanely. There are people in Iran or Syria that wanted to play games in Steam, why should we treat them differently? While I know that the ban is in place in accordance to US government, Steam should not respond to OP like some mindless drone. A little bit of explanation would go a long way. Maybe lawfully Steam could not help the OP, but morally Steam should explain in clearly.
In management business this is called "service recovery" where the seller is unable to make a good service, thus have to do something else to "recover" the service. Steam, though a great platform, since the beginning of time have failed to create a well-working support system. I don't know Tim, but I hope he don't act like this on real life, because if he acts like this in real life I bet he have zero friends.
I am not a fluent English speaker, as English is not my first language, but Tim's letter could be reworded as such :
Hello, thanks for contacting support.
We are deeply concerned on what happens in Syria, and we hope that you and your family will be alright. Concerning your request to change your region, unfortunately we could not assist you in the issue. Steam's TOS forbids a change of region without a change of residence, thus if you don't change your residence to Saudi Arabia we can't change your region to Saudi Arabia. We understand your frustration that you attempt to refill your wallet using your cousin's personal info and connection, but it is against Steam's policy to attempt to circumvent the region lock.
We understand that you like to play games, and would like to help you. I will personally asks my superiors about your problem, and hopefully you will get the best result. I can't promise you anything, especially concerning the Steam Wallet, because you did attempting to circumvent the region restriction, but I will try my best to move your region to Saudi Arabia, or at least perform other actions that will enable you to buy games from Steam in the future. Again, I can't promise you anything, but I promise to do my best to bring the best conclusion to you. I hope that you and your family will be safe.
Take care.
Thank you for contacting Steam Support.
I am not an English speaker, but I think if Tim reworded his letter as my letter, the outcome will be different.
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This x1000 times, thank you so much for your effort on the long comment. it really is how i was hoping a professional support reply would be...I understand they get thousands of complains everyday but talking with a little bit of tolerance and perhaps sympathy would've been a much more acceptable manner and i wouldn't complain one bit, unlike the stupid ignorant bot comment that made me feel like all hope is lost and that i did a crime of sort
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You're doing it wrong in a ticket.
Those monkeys tl;dr 99% of the text, if it's any longer than my dick (that means your text must be really short).
Don't whine, don't screw around, kid, get your ticket up and running in few lines.
I don't really know what to suggest, but you can try change your region to supported one through support or buy tf2 keys and exchange them for game gifts from another people.
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I have a solution for the region locking thing as a whole, not for the op, so sad to hear that thought... They should let me buy the game without restrction, for the price that they consider to be the "Base" or "Average" or whatever you want to call it and get a region restricted copy... i dont care if i have to spend a little more (and i dont since i have the base prices and not the cheaper one that brazil has, i am not from brazil god dammit why do you treat me like if i was from there), i am unable to buy directly from steam to make giveaways... thats money they loose so
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That really sucks :/. I'm waiting on a support ticket now because I refunded a game, it's been almost 2 weeks, no funds have been refunded, and the game was taken out of my account. I keep getting automated messages back that completely ignore my question and concerns. Aggravating to say the least.
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Can't you send wallet funds through trades? Make a fake US account? Also... you lying about your address and stuff, that is probably why they won't help you? Try reaching out through twitter and FB. Worth a shot.
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Actually they didn't. Read again: he used another person's data, which is tantamount to impersonation.
If Steam is not supported in a country and someone uses untruthful information to get around such restrictions, throwing a tantrum when things blow up in their face is, well, a bit rich.
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They introduced additional restrictions recently, that's true, but there's still considerable freedom and it looks like he took advantage of whatever there was.
BTW it is my understanding that $50 is a lot of money in a lot of less fortunate places, and given the situation in Syria, he must be a very privileged person if he can take chances with that sum.
FWIW I live in the so called first world and would not.
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Steam's ToS:
You agree to comply with all applicable import/export laws and regulations. You agree not to export the Content and Services or allow use of your Account by individuals of any terrorist supporting countries to which encryption exports are at the time of exportation restricted by the U.S. Bureau of Export Administration. You represent and warrant that you are not located in, under the control of, or a national or resident of any such prohibited country.
They're not required to police their platform. The geolocating is mostly for region-restricted games and it isn't perfect. He knew he was in a sanctioned country so he took the responsibility and risk of losing access to his account and funds. They can't refund him because of sanctions as well.
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Uhhh.... Not to sound heartless or anything and I do believe that money should be accepted regardless of where you are from (Specially the digital kind), but this is your own fault mate....
Firstly you knew that there is no way for you to get money on to steam wallet through your own region, so you have used Saudi Arabia to add funds to a gift card and redeemed it to your own account.
Even if you were not able to redeem the gift card - You would've still lost the money as you already spent it on the gift card itself while not checking what the consequences are....
Secondly you probably did not read steams terms and conditions - Saying that this unacceptable is your opinion. To be honest, I have not read terms and conditions of steam myself either..... But I am pretty sure that they call this kind of act (Buying gift card in 1 country and redeeming it in another) currency abuse.
Thirdly - To the matter of why I believe it is not working is that you have redeemed the money without the VPN to begin with. If the gift card was from Saudi Arabia, you should've redeemed it and tried to purchase games while connected to a VPN (Which is a breach of their terms of conditions by the way)
In the end, even though I do feel for you as this is essentially lost money and I do agree that steams support could've been far better but at some point it is your own fault losing this money by trying to trick the system before thinking about the consequences
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to be honnest, i find it a bullshit reason to not allow it cause of "currency" abuse, it seems odd cause then we all could say the same about kingguin and g2a.
for example..
GTA Complete
Steam - 49,99$
G2A - 10,43$.
then that could be currency "abuse" as well or not? it kinda is exactly the same, i dont blame people for trying to get some things cheaper, like myself i always use g2a or kingguin cause its cheaper for me, i dont have a job, i can be happy if i can afford a 5 dollar game each month.
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G2A isn't an authorized reseller. They don't disclose where their keys are sourced from and the marketplace is even worse. You might get a key from a region that was cheaper or you might get one that was stolen. You would lose either if region-restrictions were added to the game retroactively or a chargeback was placed on the purchase later.
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Maybe, yeah, but i don't really care, i get my games cheaper and so far i had NO issues, i been a user from G2A For a year now and nothing went wrong so far. to be honest i would care more or less where the keys came from or if they where stolen, as long i get my games that i payd for. but for me this website is usefull
even with some steam games o nsale they are cheaper there lol. xD
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Count yourself between the lucky people, then. The GOG forums are full of people complaining because they bought their keys of The Witcher 3 in G2A, and now they can't play the game. Some of them even think that G2A is an authorized reseller.
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"G2A" isn't a person either, it's like eBay. The seller could be anyone.
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Look mate,
I am not saying that what you did is wrong or anything while trying to get a cheaper deal
That's what we all consumers are trying to do as frankly - Most of us gamers are not multi millioners that can splash money on anything
I do understand where you are coming from...
All I were saying is that you did not look out for all the possibilities by playing the system and got burned.
I am really sorry, but I can't feel sorry for you getting burned while playing the system. It is a lesson for next time to be wiser and wittier about it :) In the end it's just a lesson.
Next time - If you are already using Saudi Arabia gift card.... Make sure that you redeem it using a VPN as well as buy games using a VPN until you exhaust your funds
I do stand with you that steams customer service is a huge BS, and that banning people from using the service while globally delivering it is kind of crap.... But at the same time - I am pretty sure that if you went to some third party facility to exchange currency and got fake money - It would still be your fault to begin with
No point holding a grudge against steam for that or calling them the end of humanity. Lessons learned - You have shared your experience.... Now time to move on
I still feel bad for you as you're stuck in a country that is cut off of the majority of retailers that can legaly sell games... But at the same time >_> You might as well just pirate them if they don't give you other options
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Hope you solve the issue soon..
Being a Syrian gamer is hard :/
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don't know if someone has already said this but.
1.use a vpn
2.try buying games from a Browser (Firefox,Chrome,etc)
the vpn has to change your IP to a UAE one,so it has to have servers in UAE.i haven't seen a vpn with UAE servers myself but i'm sure if you look around you'll find some...
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You are in the wrong for circumventing a restriction and while you have the right to play games, you still ain't entitled to do what you please in-order to obtain one.
Also, Valve support have to go through so many tickets daily. Asking them to show 'human compassion and sympathy" is laughable. If everyone creates a sob story or try to reason or plea and valve concedes, then many would try to abuse it. Not to mention that you basically broke the ToS about region restrictions, something that Steam has warned many times and are currently cracking down on. Cases like this is what they want to stop so why should they give any "sympathy'?
If you are truly desperate, do what the others said and use a VPN. I hope your matter gets resolved soon.
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The reason you had to get your steam wallet from your friend in Saudi Arabia is precisely BECAUSE they don't sell them in Syria which is BECAUSE they do not offer service in Syria. They won't help you purchase games from Syria just because you impersonated someone else using your friend's info in order to circumvent the region restriction. You can keep trying to circumvent the restriction using VPN,..etc but realize that the situation is entirely your fault.
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The whole region-locking nonsense is broken beyond belief.
I'm in Korea, and we have some of the most idiotic region locking there is.
For example, I can't buy Football Manager 2015 on the Steam Store, but I can buy a Steam key for the Korean language version from an authorised reseller.
Amazing Spider-man 2, Homefront, are just some of the games that I can buy the dlc for (via the bundled packages) yet not receive the actual game itself.
Even this week, the Sonic Bundle - the only title included in the bundle was Sonic & Sega All-stars racing.
Region-locking is crazy, and hopefully before long the EU will kill it off.
There is zero justification for it, beyond gouging people in better off countries.
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The EU can't tell companies outside of the EU to remove region-locking. What would happen is the game companies will ban regions from purchasing their games, which in this case will be the EU until people demand the EU back off. The point of region-locking is to reduce piracy by allowing honest people in regions not wealthy to purchase a game at a fair price. Unless the EU has a magical solution to improve the economies of every nation on the planet and also eliminate piracy, region-locking will not go away. Generally if you can't buy a game on Steam it's because there's a distribution agreement for your region. In this case a Korean company has the rights for your region and Steam can't sell the game there.
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"The EU can't tell companies outside of the EU to remove region-locking."
They can.
The reason that they can, is that if the companies don't comply they'll ban them from operating in the EU and / or hit them with massive fines.
No chance Steam would risk having their service banned in the world's biggest single market.
But anyway, Steam do have offices in the EU, so you're wrong anyway,
"What would happen is the game companies will ban regions from purchasing their games, which in this case will be the EU until people demand the EU back off"
So European companies like Ubisoft would be prevented from selling products in their home market?
Don't be ridiculous.
Google is facing being broken up in the EU, it's not a European company either.
Amazon is facing huge fines, again it's not a European company.
FIFA is being prosecuted in the US, and they are based in Switzerland.
" In this case a Korean company has the rights for your region and Steam can't sell the game there."
Complete nonsense.
So what about the packages that only include the DLC and not the full game?
Or the packages that DO include the game, but the game cannot be purchased outside the bundle?
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EU can only place restrictions on companies doing business in their jurisdiction. Ubisoft as an EU-based company would have to comply with whatever the EU demands but they could leave the EU and not provide their games to EU countries (doesn't mean they will). The primary concern the EU had was members of their union were being treated differently from other members. When prices on games go up to what UK citizens pay do you think people in poorer nations will be happy to buy them? It would encourage piracy which will affect game companies and force them to come up with strategies to offset that loss, which is to switch to consoles or nasty DRM.
Members of FIFA are being prosecuted by the US because they do business here so have to comply with our laws. If they had no business ties within the US we wouldn't be able to prosecute them. Google, Amazon, FIFA all provide services to EU countries therefore have to comply with EU laws. Steam has an office in the EU primarily as a legal issue in regards to the digital property laws of the EU. Steam as a platform would only be required to not allow region-restricted games to be sold in the EU, which is in itself a region-restriction.
There are plenty of cases where games are pulled from Steam due to distribution conflicts. DOTA2 is a Valve game, but in China Perfect World is the licensed distributor and in Korea Nexon is the distributor, not Valve/Steam. If Steam allowed people in those countries to play DOTA2 then it would violate their contract. Sega has a Korean branch but for whatever reason they have chosen against distribution through Steam for Korea and I believe China.
Edit: Homefront is banned by the Korean government itself not Crytek. It appears the DLC for those games are just missing the region restriction flags according SteamDB. I can't say for certain but I doubt you can buy the DLC without the game anyway since that's how it's always been before. There's no region flag on Spiderman 2 so I'm not sure why Korea can't purchase it, but Square Enix has distribution rights for Japan which is why you can't see the store page there. http://store.steampowered.com/sub/35181/
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"EU can only place restrictions on companies doing business in their jurisdiction."
Yes, that's kind of the point.
But again, why would any company want to cut itself off from the most lucrative single market on the planet?
"The primary concern the EU had was members of their union were being treated differently from other members. "
Not at all, the primary concern the EU has, is that digital goods, whilst intangible, should not be treated differently from physical goods.
Hence, the EU has already ruled that customers have the right to resell digital products:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/03/eu-court-rules-its-legal-to-resell-digital-games-software/
Steam, etc may be dragging their feet by not establishing a system for the resale to take place, but all they are doing is putting more of their business under scrutiny.
It's also why unauthorised resellers continue to flourish (indeed, many are based in the EU), because as long as the key has been legally obtained in the first instance - Steam, Origin or the publisher can't do anything legally about the resale.
Luckily for Steam though, the EU takes forever to get things done.
"When prices on games go up to what UK citizens pay do you think people in poorer nations will be happy to buy them?"
To be frank, that's not people in the UK's problem - what you are arguing for is discrimination based solely on nationality.
By your logic, why should people in the 'wealthy' parts of the UK, pay the same as people from the 'poorer' parts of the UK? Why should people in in Slovakia, a relatively 'poor' country by EU standards, pay the same as people in Finland?
Within the EU itself, there are already pricing disparities - in what is legally considered a single market.
"Google, Amazon, FIFA all provide services to EU countries therefore have to comply with EU laws"
As does Steam, so I'm not sure what point you think you're making.
"There's no region flag on Spiderman 2 so I'm not sure why Korea can't purchase it, but Square Enix has distribution rights for Japan which is why you can't see the store page there. http://store.steampowered.com/sub/35181/"
Amazing Spider-man 2 cannot be purchased via the steam store in Korea, so by pointing that there shouldn't be any reason it can't be purchased, yet it still can't be, you've demonstrated how broken region-locking is.
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The potential law is in response to region-locking goods only within the EU. They don't have the authority to demand a company to remove region-locking outside of the EU. That's the point I'm trying to make. It would violate international laws.
European Steam users have an entirely different subscription agreement than the rest of the world only because of the digital goods law. That has nothing to do with this law though.
If people are willing to pay $50 for a game in the UK because they're a rich nation, but people in Greece can only afford $10 which do you think a business is going to choose if the EU passes their law? People in Greece will have to pirate the game or wait for a drastic discount a few years later. That's what regional pricing solves. In order to protect against people abusing the different pricing scales they have to region-lock the game. Regional pricing exists to protect goods from being pirated by allowing people to purchase at a price they can afford..regionally. It's Economics 101.
I gave you the link to Spider-man 2 for you to test if you could purchase it without the store page. I agree with you that the game should be sold there but whoever is in charge for your region made the choice not to. The reasons could vary but it generally has to do with not wanting to pay Steam a 30% cut. No government has the power to compel a company to do business with their citizens.
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"They don't have the authority to demand a company to remove region-locking outside of the EU. That's the point I'm trying to make. It would violate international laws."
That doesn't matter, because it would have a domino effect.
"If people are willing to pay $50 for a game in the UK because they're a rich nation, but people in Greece can only afford $10 which do you think a business is going to choose if the EU passes their law?"
I know you keep mentioning the UK, but Steam pricing is different in the UK and the Eurozone - even allowing for currency fluctuations.
I think you keep getting confused by the EU members who use the Euro, which share a 'region' and the non-Eurozone EU members who don't.
Multiple regions exist within the EU as a whole, with different pricing for each - the EU wants to do away with that.
The EU does not care in slightest whether this negatively impacts on consumers in one country over another - it's cares about the single market as a whole.
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The OPs problem has nothing to do with region locks. It's against the law for any U.S. company to do business with Syria. This is a political issue and nothing to do with Valve or their business practices or how bad their support is. The OP obviously knew this issue existed or he wouldn't have tried to work around it.
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"It's against the law for any U.S. company to do business with Syria."
Not true.
There are plenty of exceptions, and the sanctions are not blanket, they are targeted - in a similar way to the sanctions against Russia.
The US has a list of businesses and people that are sanctioned.
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You are at fault here, I agree with the Steam rep. You tried to game the system by buying Steam wallet funds from another reigions currency. That is no one's fault but your own. Fortunately you have learned a lesson I hope, and only add funds for your own region in the future.
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I never denied that it's my fault, i just wished for a more cooperative response that shows me possible solutions
I've recently been in contact with other websites' services and oh my aren't they tons better in the term of communication
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Why didn't you buy it from Syria or Lebanon instead?
VPN is the solution, lots of people had this problem and I think it worked.
And about the first pic, I think Valve couldn't respond to your request because if it did, every other Syrian gamer(including me) would be hording their support and asking for the same in order to have market access and that will create a lot of needless hassle for them.
And you shouldn't have contacted Valve to ask about such thing anyway... because after all, they aren't the people controlling the blocking.
Online banking services(Visa, Paypal,...) are all banned since ever, and what you're asking is nothing that they can help with.
Now, that doesn't mean that your credit is gone forever, but what you should do is just use a VPN and it should work as I said.
Lots of people activated Steam wallet cards here in Syria and used VPN to be able to access store/market, there're a couple of stores that sell Steam wallet cards in Damascus, there's only one though that can ship them to your province and that store might even help you with this whole situation.
Best of luck, and I hope those 50$ don't go to waste.
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I've not read the whole thread and I'm too lazy to search to see if my suggestion has already been made, but is it not possible to get someone to log into your Steam account somewhere outside of Syria, buy whatever games it is you're after, register them to your account, then log out so you can log back in?
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Already tried, didn't work because the account's region (the one in account details) is basically still the same
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This is practically every customer support i been in contact with, i had a free silver reward where they get you choose between games and you can pick up to 2, back when i bought my computer from parts on amazon but amazon wouldn't deliver me 2 pieces the motherboard and the case and by that time i couldn't get ahold my friend who has a computer and i tried going to the library to redeem the code but the page was locked so when i got my motherboard and case i completed the computer then i went to try and redeem the code it was expired i contacted amazon they said i should contact AMD, AMD said it was not them who had given me the code so i should contact amazon this went on back and forth for like 2 weeks i gave up then i contacted amazon one more time and they kept telling me we do not handle this kind of situation wait for a response from the right department who handles this waited for another week and they never contacted me to get this straighten up all they did was give me $10 discount on anything from it but $10 wasn't half of what i had to pay extra to get those parts delivered to me or the cost of any of those games i really wanted and is frustrating man :...
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**UPDATE: Lots of people are reaching out to me asking if there's anything new to my cause, will sadly there isn't...
The sales are ending, i'm gonna miss Ground Zeroes, Final Fantasy VII and Castle Crashers' sales :'/....oh well
In response to some popular opinions in the comments:
1- Yes, i 100% acknowledge that it was my fault...but the reason of this whole thread is that the support didn't even try to help nor is willing to transfer my funds to a friend
2- Yes, i've tried dozens of VPNs....still locked away from my money :') . It really sucks because like, i've took the risk at first because other people are activating and buying stuff in my region/area and they just get away with it... i still don't know why the hell is my luck this bad and that i can't buy even with the same proxy they're using....
3- No, i can't buy tf2 keys or market items because i have to wait for 30 days
Anyways, although i kinda feel the urge to ask the people for the three games i mentioned above...but i'm trying to damage control my urges because i don't usually ask for free games (on a giveaways site...oh the irony xD !) sooo yeah...
Thanx for your concern and see you around :). Maybe i'll update this once more if anything new happens
**
ORIGINAL POST: This is honestly unbelievable, the Steam support is the worse i've ever dealt with and The most unprofessional.....
http://i.imgur.com/NJkleKP.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/HlDzNpQ.jpg
My story is, well, you can find it in the support ticket image i uploaded above. Do you honestly think this is fair? How can I have 50$ 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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