There were a bunch of people who had this a couple months ago, my understanding is that basically your account cannot use steam wallet for buying gifts anymore.
They are trying to stop people using steam marketplace for money laundering or using steam items as a form of currency (e.g. trade 3 CSGO items for this game from my list). And then selling those CSGO items for Wallet and selling games (as a steam gift) on sites like G2A as a way to turn the wallet into cash. I guess somehow your account must have triggered their detection algorithm.
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I understand all this but it doesn't make sense.
TWO gifts total 2€ is a laundry now?!
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1) What does "unusual gifting activity" means?
As I said, two 1€ games during the last month!
Since it's Valve we're talking about, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Or, in other words, heck if I know, if even they themselves don't.
2) "We will not be lifting this restriction for you."
Does this mean that whoever got money in his Steam wallet and too many games and he wants to gift some is suspicious now?
Having a lot of money in your Steam Wallet and using it externally is usually associated with trading, scamming, money laundering...
Doesn't matter if it's actually true in your case or not, you just happened to be caught by their detection method of choice.
3) "Using your Steam account for commercial purpose"
Are they for real now? I have spent 10.000s here for games and I finally realized that I won't play most of them so I stopped buying most games from the store, just bundles. Am I punished for not being a good customer anymore?
Once again, since it's Valve, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Or, in other words, heck if I know what constitutes "commercial purpose", if they don't either.
Though it's probably just "spending money on everything that's not your account".
4) "If you'd like to continue purchasing gifts on this account you'll need to do so using an alternative payment method"
So my Steam wallet is not good, but my paypal IS?! They are robbing everybody with their fees and then they don't accept my Steam wallet for GIFTING?!
Once again, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But they're making it clear that money is always welcome, if you're willing to find another way to spend it.
5) "You won't be receiving any further replies regarding this issue"
Best support EVER?!
That means = "fuck if we're wasting time investigating your case, too busy making profits by coding useless shit nobody wants. Sucks to be you, deal with it".
As for what constitutes suspicious activity, sorry for being repetitive, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I mean, there's a reason why they're called "button-pushing monkeys".
They literally just copy-paste preset answers to not waste time.
Kinda like just clicking next -> next -> next when installing games to skip EULAs (please don't).
Oh, and don't think about sending more tickets hoping for someone better, as you might as well get banned.
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I agree completely. It's not that it's a real problem but it feels very unfair.
When I was spending hundreds of € every sale I was good but now I am suspicious?
Oh well, back to real life problems :)
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Real anti-money laundering would require trained individuals reviewing every suspicious activity and verifying before authorizing a purchase. This costs time and money, and is overall a nuisance for everyone caught up in it, which are three reasons why Steam won't do it properly.
But, because steam can get in real trouble if they don't do anything, instead they create algorithms which they believe would be sufficient to avoid government penalties. These algorithms are quite harsh and can result in false positives. It's cheaper and easier for Steam to restrict every account that the algorithm flags than to investigate properly. Unfortunately, you got caught in the middle
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You wrote it better than I could.
It's like all are guilty until proven innocent, which exactly the opposite how laws (should) work.
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Long shot but try sending reasonable written email to Gaben with all your points that you wrote here just written more nicely because that's kinda what you have to do if you are emailing Gaben, he reads all emails but he might not answer but who knows he might still help even if he doesn't reply, well written email and also since it is Gabe you can even screenshot and ticket id and all of the conversations you are complaining about so he knows whats up.
Anyway, really sorry that you are having problem with steam, good luck!
And since his email is public, if you don't know, it is gaben@valvesoftware.com
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Thanks for the idea but I decided to not spend more time on this.
If they don't want my money, well, that's ok with me.
It's just that I was surprised because I haven't seen any other user with a situation like this and very very disappointed by their support.
Thanks for reading this.
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They want money on steam account stay on steam (by buying games and don't sell it and use it on cards to take fees)
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That's understandable but that's what I tried to do!
I tried to buy a game as a gift!
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But they think it's a money that goes out of steam cause they think you'll possibly sell it
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What's the point of gifting then?
This can be said for all the gifts, right?
Possibly doesn't mean definitely too.
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I predict soon we will see some more gifting restriction, such as "you cannot gift to someone unless you have been friends for at least 60 days" something like this...
And I also predict new steam keys generation will go away entirely someday, replaced with API activation only by approved resellers.
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As for the later it sounds logical, I guess they have lost a lot of money because of the bundles and the key sites.
But as for the gifting restrictions, I have no problem at all, as long as I know what is ok and what is not.
Considering people suspicious is not the way to solve problems.
Can I do whatever I like my Steam wallet money or do I have to ask Valve too?
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same here man. i have not given any gift but they also wrote me same things...
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I've been giving away games like since 2015. My gifting spending balance is much way higher than buying games for myself.
And yes, they name me suspicious as well and now I cannot make gifts. I've tried to reach them with reasonable requests, but have got the same answer almost every time - "You look suspicious, please don't bother us anymore".
That's a shame.
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I think their new flagging system will do more harm than good for everyone in general.
The vast amount of users , other than the small minority doing illegal practices such as money laundering, will find itself facing this new issue. I don't think it's good for Valve neither and it might even decrease their direct profits from wallet purchases. The cons outweigh the pros I guess
The solution against money laundering is case by case handling or just a better system
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Did you try gifting to longtime friends in your list, or recent friends?
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yes, I tried to buy a gift for the winner and got an error, tried to buy a cheap gift for an old friend and the gift was bought, tried again to buy a game for the winner and again a mistake, I don’t know, maybe I gave the game to an old friend because it’s cheaper or maybe because an old friend, In any case, an unpleasant innovation
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It seems like the problem is related to adding someone and buying quickly. But, I can't find documentation for any cooldown period. As someone said already, it might be they make a limit public later.
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Even if this is the case, I think we should know clearly that time cooldown, as we already know the 7 days about trading and not treated like suspicious criminals.
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Yes I know that but in my case we are talking about 2€ !!!
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Trading is suspicious now too?
All this is so vague that we can't come to a conclusion about what is wrong and what is right.
But the worst of all is their support respond "You are suspicious, you can't complain" end of story.
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Probably but I would like to know the exact restrictions and not treated like suspicious criminal.
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Trading = making a advantage (and partly scam), often with 3rd party sites involved and no (big) win for steam.
For sure they don't like that because their infrastructur (Servers, Friendlist, Chat, Support and so on) are used without a "fair" payment....
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Makes sense but the other side of the coin is increased sales. Gifters may buy the same game multiple times.
Their store, their rules, but I would like to know those rules, red flags, restrictions and not this support answer which is tragic.
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I had the same suspicions when I got the purchase error.
It happened not too long after a longtime friend from a different country gifted me some wallet credit. With that I eventually bought a couple of games for myself but got blocked once I tried to gift one to another friend (from my own country). So I figured it must have been a "Another user adding funds to your wallet? Suspicious. Better not let you send any gifts anymore!" case.
Considering I've been broke for a while now, and have Region Restrictions in place, my gifting activity was already pretty sparse, so it'd be weird for that alone to raise a flag.
I've never really done much trading (mostly cards/emotes, and only a few involving games like 6 years ago?). But around that same time I did use to buy devalued items (emotes/cards/etc) to resell on the market at higher prices later on. There's also the CS:GO operation cases I managed to drop and sell on the market. Augmented steam does indicate a fairly high value in market sales from that time, so that definitely might be part of how they're limiting accounts.
My "TotalSpend" and "OldSpend" (On account data for external funds used), even separately, are higher than my Total market sales though... It'd be nice to know where they draw the line exactly.
(I also just checked how long I've been Steam friends with the friend I tried to gift, and it was less than 3 months, so maybe that played a part as well?)
Steam support lifted the restriction for me when it happened and I managed to finish the purchase, but I'm definitely wary of what will happen next time I try to gift someone something, after reading all the comments.
Thanks to PicPay (a payment processor in my country that often offer cashbacks), it's been more common for me to add wallet funds in advance than to directly use my credit card on individual purchases, so if the amount I currently have there becomes permanently unusable for gifting, well...that'll be pretty depressing.
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Oh, come on, you know how steam is. Everything that can be considered relevant to trading, is slowly, but steadily, getting removed/banned. Most of these changes were implemented in the name of "customer safety" - or, at least, that's what they said. :P But yeah, sure, Epic is supposed to be the devil, while steam is such an angel. :P All these years, steam hasn't been improved, only worsened.
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I agree completely and I know all about trading, that's why I almost have stopped it.
But gifting too? Did they ask the devs about it? I am sure they didn't.
As for the Epic store, not big fan but I am customer meaning I have bought 4-5 games, but I didn't want to mention it or Uplay or Origin or all the rest to avoid derailing the conversation.
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That's what I'm saying. They banned/removed everything that COULD BE CONSIDERED relevant to trading. That's gifting too.
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My usual payment method was restricted last week and they asked me to use another. I refused since i have been using the same method to make all store/community market purchases and fortunately, some other representative acknowledged it and lifted the restriction.
But they are doing this to fight people that use stolen credit card on steam and scam others for items. A large number of people are getting scammed and there are huge amount of reports of such occurrence recently. What they are doing is kinda acceptable but they should also review a users behavior and act accordingly, in your case, it's clearly a false positive.
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Yeah, but is it though? That's like putting someone in jail because he might have robbed a bank, and then perhaps set him free if he complains. Or in this case let him rot and avoid any further discussion about it.
That is what bugs me the most about this. They just write You won't be receiving any further replies regarding this issue, and suddenly you're left alone with the situation without any hope of clearing up the situation. This is really the worst possible support they can provide. They accuse him and restrict his account, based just on a (probably over-ambitious) algorithm - and then don't even allow him to respond, to have a discussion, to present his case and maybe show that they are wrong. Instead they restrict his account, probably for life. That's not how you treat your customers. And Valve has been behaving this way for a long time. I remember several examples where they said they won't answer anymore, and even threatened consequences if the user dared to post any more.
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I never encountered any such behavior where a support agent threatened me in any way but what i understand is not all support agents feel the same or have the ability to help you correctly. I came across one guy who offered me steam wallet via item transfer through market and next thing i know, i got a warning from valve restricting my account access and upon contacting them, they said the payment was fraudulent. They are putting some restrictions now to limit those activities but they also need some sort of screening to avoid innocent people suffer just like OP did.
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Welcome to the club
Sell 15 Euro worth of TF2 cosmetics and CSGO skins>blocked
Spend 200 Euro PayPal wallet gifting games "for commercial purposes" during the summer sale>not a word from steam
They just don't want you to cash out your inventory, but they close their eyes if you use fresh cash to "violate" their ToS.
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Exactly, steam wallet is suspicious but "fresh" money is ok.
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So, you can still gift games to other people, but using a different payment option?
As for your Steam wallet, they only let you use it on games for your own account, but not for gifting?
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Yes to both.
You'll gain risk score based on your gift activity (and market). If it's too much, you'll trigger fraud prevention systems.
I'd assume adding someone to gift something is considered much more risky than gifting to long time friends for example. Because in first case you'll definitely look like gift seller, which means better not use Steam for things like Steamgifts.
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Seems so but both my gifting friends were not new and they still accept paypal money for gifts, only steam wallet is the problem.
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This is why monopol is bad. Sorry to hear but steam getting worse every year after they restricted to keep gifts in inventory.
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I had this exact same problem with the same copy and paste "You won't be receiving any further replies regarding this issue.".
If you legitimately didn't do anything wrong just keep sending tickets until you get someone who isn't a copy and pasting asshole who doesn't even read.
My restriction eventually got lifted.
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I thought about it but I decided not to waste any more time on them, I will buy my gifts elsewhere.
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I find it even funnier that I'm unable to gift games to myself. I used to put extra crap on another account to sell it on the market to keep main account market cleaner and occasionally buy myself a game from sales with the wallet. But now that is forbidden so I must buy TF2 keys or whatever and sell them for real money to buy bundles with instead. I can understand some people using alt accounts to scam others and then gift games to main or whatever, but can't be a very big risk with an account that has never traded with anyone other than my main account.
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I have only one account but I see your point.
This shows how wrong their algorithm is.
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The fun thing is, I had this problem with my previous gift purchase, but a message to Support helped to fix it. On the latest purchase I got the same error, but this time I got answered by another support representative who accused me in "suspicious gifting actibity". I've only gifted games to a few select friends during the last 3-4 years, and it's always on the same dates - their birthdays and Christmas. Still my gift activity was somehow flagged as suspicious by Steam.
But seeing how I got different answers depending on Support representative that handled my request, I'm going to try again after the Winter Sale starts. Worst case, I'll have to gift my friends marketable items instead so they can sell them and buy what they want
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Another proof their system is flawed.
Please let me know about their third answer.
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No need for more proof of that, their support has been well known to be horrible since forever. Mainly automated replies about something totally unrelated. Just retry until you get an actual human who bothers to read your ticket.
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I didn't wait for Christmas and made another support request without going into much detail. The answer was that they "have updated my acccount again" and I should try buying the gift again.
I successfully gifted my friend "Crypt of the Necrodancer", hope he enjoys it. But I still wonder if I have to through this again on winter holidays
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I wonder too, please let us know if you buy another gift, thanks.
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Well, it happened to me recently too.
I believe i figured out what triggers this "event":
If your total gifted value reaches the total money value you uploaded to steam then you will be banned from gifting.
Last time I uploaded money to steam was about ~4 years ago as I invested a lot in items that gave me a lot of extra what was enough for my own purchases and eventually gift to friends or to steamgifts winners. I checked my own gifting and purchase history, which was extremely long lol, and figure out that the value I gifted reached the total value I uploaded, and since that, I can't gift.
Any other opinion on this? To figure out if this theory is correct.
(Definitely not the gifting to new friends triggers it as most of my gifts went to IRL friends I have on friendslist since 2011)
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Interesting but I think it's more than one reason. Your situation and theory seem logical but it doesn't explain all "red flags".
Thanks for your post.
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In the summer sale, i wanted to buy my friend a game, this did not work.
I thought it was up to the Steam servers and let it be, 2 weeks ago i wanted to give something away again
and it still was not working.Then I wrote a suppor ticket.
Then I contacted Steam Support...the answer was only one line "Your account has been updated".
Could then buy the game again as a gift and my friend has received it, only to be immediately locked again...
Yesterday I contacted the support again because I want to give away something during the Sale, which meant I should try it again.
I can only test it tonight and I doubt it will work
I have no idea what the nonsense should bring.If you want to prevent people form selling games as a gift directly to external sites.
Then should they just introduce a restriction that you have to be friends with people for a certain time and the problem is solved
assume that it would be super easy to lock these people anyway, is not difficult especially for Valve to find out who does it all the time
i'm a trader i have a shitload of steamwallet ...which I could never spend...I dont use the Gift system or any other way to get my wallet into real life
I rarly give away Gifts and only to 3-4 long-term friends.
There's no reason to stop me from using my Steam Wallet especially if I can use it for my own purchases
If I really wanted to get the money into the RL, I would simply buy a few Valve Index and put on Ebay ^^
And even gifting works over detours, in which I simply send marketable items to my friends instead
What you have to do anyway to get the credit in the first place...
I can only hope that they will undo the shit soon or regulate it otherwise
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had the same issue yesterday and used other payment method (not Steam wallet) to purchase the gift to send via SG. but my support ticket has been resolved by Steam with the words: "we have updated your account, please try to purchase again". so next time I will try to use the wallet again. hope it would work)
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I hope too, it didn't work for me and it's really annoying to contact support for every single gift.
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They told me that a month ago. I gifted one game.
Last week I tried to give something, blocked.
Am now up to 5 different ticket responses that I am permanently blocked from gifting with wallet because of unusual gifting activity.
I have sent 7 total gifts this year.
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Suddenly for some reason, gifters are suspicious, well done Valve 😢
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As an update, I sent another ticket, and this time my account got unlocked.
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Good for you but can we send tickets for every gift we want to send?
The worst part is that they don't tell us which rule we broke.
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Turns out that was a lie. The ticket response told me I'm good to go.
But it's not.
The next reply to the ticket told me I can't gift with wallet ever, stop asking.
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Exactly what I feared in the first place, no explanation at all, permanent lock.
Steam seems less appealing every day...
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As another update, I wrote a long new ticket The day after that post.
I heard back yesterday. My account was really unlocked, I was able to schedule one gift for today and it sent and was received and redeemed.
Who knows what will happen in the future, but for now I seem to be ok.
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You mean that even they wrote to you that you won't get any new reply they unblocked your account?
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It's the support lottery, the more tickets you buy the higher your chances to win are. Also most likely nobody wrote anything, a bot just chose an automated response based on some keywords.
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Not really, just Steam as usual. It once took me couple weeks to convince them that my next door neighbor isn't an evil trader from a cheap region so yes, I really should be able to accept his gifted game. Just keep trying your luck until you win.
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You need to buy the game on your personal account, then you can give gifts again. Yes, and the purchase price on your account should be higher than a gift. Try it, it helped me.
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Not sure what you mean exactly, care to explain the steps in detail?
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- Buy the game on your own account (using Steam balance). Let's say a game costs 3 euros. Your gift limits will be updated and then you can give a game that is cheaper than 3 euros (I don’t know how much cheaper) without using external sources to replenish your account.
- Now you buy a game, worth 2 euros as a gift to a friend, using the Steam balance. It works for me when Steam blocks my gifts, but I don’t know if it will work for you. Just give it a try.
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I see, thanks, but I bought around 80€ of games for me during sale and yesterday I was denied to gift a game of 30€ .
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Very sorry. Strange Steam rules that are not clearly spelled out or explained anywhere.
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Interesting, I was just trying to buy 2 games for my girlfriend (brand new Steam account) and kept getting errors without any explanation. I sent a message to support but now I'm scared they're gonna block me as well since I was using my wallet.
My girlfriend hates spending money on games (I don't mind buying them for her) but I put so much into my wallet for this I'm going to be pretty angry because it if happens I'm never buying anything on Steam again if there's alternatives.
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Hey, figured I'd update you if you still have issues. I just heard back from the support, they also said the updated my account and my wallet gift purchase went through. Though, the account I was sending it to was connected through family share for me and I mentioned that and they mentioned that in their response back so maybe it had some influence.
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I didn't think of that. Maybe but it's not my case.
Thanks for letting me know 👍
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Joined the No-Gifting-Gibsmedat-Club 2 Months ago
Contacted "support" once, told me "we wuz done too mouch gifting + muh suspicious". Never mind, I had barely
used my account in the last year, let alone had been gifting much, ever since they went nuts with the restrictions.
Won't be contacting them again. Found a fix though - namely fuck em, shan't be buying jack
shit on steam anymore if its in bundles (hb) - can't be helped, but anything else sure can.
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That's what I am doing right now, bundles only.
Latest restriction, "No tokens with Steam wallet"!!!
I wonder what will it be next...
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Although I have noticed this since Winter Sale 2019:
- you can no longer gift a game purchased with wallet funds.
- you will not receive tokens with wallet funds.
They also ask you to update your account information during checkout, even if buying for your own account.
So there is nothing to worry about here. It is just a change of their policy.
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Well, I tried to buy TWO gifts both around 1€ each, one last week and one two days ago.
Both purchases were blocked, I contacted support the first time and I got a message that my restriction was lifted and I was able to complete my purchase.
BUT, when I contacted support for the second block, I got this message:
"Hello,
Thank you for reaching back out about the gifting restriction you're running into.
You're running into issues purchasing gifts because we've detected unusual gifting activity on this account. We will not be lifting this restriction for you.
Using your Steam account for commercial purposes violates the Steam Subscriber Agreement and may result in the account being locked.
If you'd like to continue purchasing gifts on this account you'll need to do so using an alternative payment method. All of the payment methods available in your region will be listed upon checkout.
You won't be receiving any further replies regarding this issue.
Thanks for using Steam,
Sierra"
During the first block I bought a game for me to test the situation and it was completed.
During the second block, I used paypal and purchased was completed too.
Both gifts were for giveaways here on SteamGifts.
Please help me to understand:
1)What does "unusual gifting activity" means?
As I said, two 1€ games during the last month!
2)"We will not be lifting this restriction for you."
Does this mean that whoever got money in his Steam wallet and too many games and he wants to gift some is suspicious now?
3)"Using your Steam account for commercial purpose"
Are they for real now? I have spent 10.000s here for games and I finally realized that I won't play most of them so I stopped buying most games from the store, just bundles. Am I punished for not being a good customer anymore?
4)"If you'd like to continue purchasing gifts on this account you'll need to do so using an alternative payment method"
So my Steam wallet is not good, but my paypal IS?! They are robbing everybody with their fees and then they don't accept my Steam wallet for GIFTING?!
5)"You won't be receiving any further replies regarding this issue"
Best suppoort EVER?!
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