Hello. Here says that:

If an account has directly 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.

Still, what's exactly this "direct gifting"? Is it only about sending a gift directly to a steam friend? But if I send it to his e-mail, is this also direct gifting? Also, if I buy the game from someone else and then gift to someone else, he plays it and gets VAC ban, who will lose the ability to gift that game - me or the original buyer? Thanks in advance.

8 years ago

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I'm pretty sure that e-mail won't change anything - otherwise the whole "security" would be totally pointless.

8 years ago
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Sounds logical. Still, what about my other question? If I buy the game from someone else and then gift to someone else, he plays it and gets VAC ban, who will lose the ability to gift that game - me or the original buyer?

8 years ago
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Good question, I think only Valve knows the answer.

Logical part of my brain says: "The guy who gifted, not the buyer".

But then, one guy could just buy gifts, send to another temp bot account, and from that bot account to everyone else, so it again defeats whole purpose of this security.

If you want to be safe, assume original buyer + last person who had gift in the inventory. However, I think that original buyer should NOT be banned in this case, but this is Valve - you can't be sure.

8 years ago
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Hmmm, so they really want to destroy traders. I recently sold 2 DayZ copies. I had bought them BEFORE this new kind of "ban" and I traded these copies normally through the steam trade window. Will it affect me if the buyers get VAC ban? And thanks for all the help.

8 years ago
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TBH if I was really into trading, I'd set up another account not connected in any way with my primary one (especially without 2FA and any connected phone number) and send gifts from there to people that are buying/trading them from me. If you do it properly, Valve can't track you and in worst case they'll ban some dummy account. That however requires some experience and is a technique used mostly by cheaters and other rule breakers (scammers too), so it will be very suspicious.

I'd ask Steam support - I'm sure nobody here knows the answer for sure, you can only guess.

8 years ago
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I know, that's why I avoid getting a second account. :/

8 years ago
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"Trading" is not really the word. People (possibly including you) stock up on games when they're on sale and sell them for a profit. Before, it was this plus exploiting regional price differences (I was a buyer, living in Europe). Valve is not targeting this behaviour, but it's understandable that they don't care if their measures undermine it.

8 years ago
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So, you mean it won't affect me because I only traded them through the steam trade window, right? And also, there's no way to buy them somehow without getting this new kind of ban?

8 years ago
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No. I like your optimism but I was actually criticizing you for calling "trading" what is actually a stock market where you hope to buy low and sell high. Same as the infamous "key sites", but more reliable.

8 years ago
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Oh, I'm really sorry. Next time, I will magically start shitting money and buy games that way. Trading is the only reason I actually have games right now. I have never spent a single cent of my real money on steam because I'm not "wealthy" enough to do that. Trading is an honorable thing to do - nothing like the key sites, you compare me to. There's nothing shady in that and this way, most of the times, the buyer gets a game at a lower price and the trader still gets profit. But if I ever start shitting money, don't worry, I'll stop trading in order not to get poor Gabe broke. :'(

8 years ago
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That's better! :D

I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, I'm not saying it's shady and I don't have much sympathy for Gabe's fat wallet. But I maintain it's not trading and it's not a practice that deserve protection. You're still profiting from gamers and indirectly from developers, not from Gabe.

8 years ago
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'Directly gifted' suggests that you wouldn't suffer if the person you gifted it to passed it on to somebody else. But it would possibly make the whole thing rather exploitable, and on past experience I doubt anyone has even discussed this with Steam support. So who knows?

8 years ago
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Pfff, they should have explained it. ;_;

8 years ago
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Well I'm fairly sure they explained it, they just didn't think to fully cover the more subtle nuances that might turn up in real life (or the things that might immediately occur to scammers to exploit).

8 years ago
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Well, I've been thinking the same thing - they just didn't want to fully explain it.

8 years ago
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volv as usual ... good luck figuring that out - best heard straight from the afflicted horses mouth (an actual case)

my guess

  • you buy it > he uses it and gets banned > you can't gift or e-mail it anymore (but you could trade it obviously)
  • you buy it > gift it to someone > that someone gifts it to another > that one gets banned > none of the previous gifters get a "gifting-ban"
8 years ago
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So, the fact that I traded 2 DayZ copies recently (through the steam trade window), won't affect me at any way, right? Still, I wanted to buy more copies and I'm trying to find a way to do that without a possible ban. :/

8 years ago
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so it should be, else that "direct" is very misleading ... what i'd do if i'd play it carefully > buy with a new account > and send it from it ... (saves the step of buying it with your main account and sending it to another and again from there ... )

8 years ago
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And what if I get a ban quite fast? It will all be for nothing. :/

8 years ago
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You can no longer trade games that use VAC as you can no longer store them as gifts in your inventory. You can either send direct to a friend or to an email address.

8 years ago
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Well, I recently traded 2 DayZ gifts though. Maybe this new kind of "ban" won't affect me because they were old copies?

8 years ago
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ah right ... forgot about that "update" - only old VAC game gifts were still trade-able

what remains: create a new account, gift it to that account and gift it again from there there until it gets banned
... altogether a rather bothersome manual approach

8 years ago*
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direct = buy a game from account A
send to B
B gets banned
A is blocked

8 years ago
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Buy a game from account A
Send from A to B
Send from B to C

100% exploit success?

Or with non-gift gifts:

Buy on B
Send to C
Keep A free?

8 years ago
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exploit? A will be blocked no matter what.

8 years ago
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Why? He's not giving it directly to C.

If an account has directly gifted a game

8 years ago
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lol, it's valve. i'm sure they track who was the one buying it. else it will be extremely easy to bypass this block.

8 years ago
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If somebody does it properly, without using same IP, same phone number etc. - it will be very hard to track original owner, unless one of the buyers call him out. And Valve is not a court to spend time resolving the case.

8 years ago
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Why A? If A sells it to B, B to C, C to D, etc. and eventually Z plays it and gets a VAC ban, only A will get affected? Only the original buyer?

8 years ago
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what's the point if you can "cheat" the system by trading between all your alts?

if you have 1 account that can buy stuff, and 100 more to trade, then re-trade, this whole block-thing is pointless.

8 years ago
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I only have one account and nobody said about alts. What I'm saying is that many people are resellers, so a gift that A bought, may get sold to B, but eventually get played by C. :P

8 years ago
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You can't add VAC games to inventory, so only options are add to library or decline gift. Thus first won't work.

8 years ago
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Ye, but second one is still possible.

8 years ago
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i thought that only applied to csgo.

8 years ago
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I had copies in my inventory already and I sold them. This new kind of "ban" won't affect me, right?

8 years ago
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Now I wonder what happens when you gift someone a game and they decline. Will the game just vanish? Will you get your money back? Will you get the option to send it to someone else? Will you get a gift copy after all?

8 years ago
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When you decline it goes back to person who gifted it to you. At least on straight gifting. Don't know what happens when you do it via email (or if you can decline at all) . I declined once..

8 years ago
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I don't understand why you're puzzled.. The way you "quoted" it, it's a bit unclear but in the original article it clearly says that if you gift such a game to someone and they get banned, you will lose the ability to re-gift that game again. "Directly" is just mentioned because you cannot keep the game in your inventory since it's vac-enabled and must either use or gift straight away.

8 years ago
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Mostly because there are still people that have it in their inventories. And I don't know if, when I gift it to someone, that someone can gift it to someone else afterwards.

8 years ago
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Indeed that's an odd case which is seemingly not covered by that and perhaps it's better to ask them. (But I doubt they can re-gift them.. it seems like an easy thing for them to force the person on the receiving end to either activate-on-accept or refuse the gift and have a little warning to state what they can do. Or that's what I would do anyway..)

8 years ago
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So, you don't know what happens about the old copies that people can still trade? :/

8 years ago
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Closed 8 years ago by TheLuckyShamrock.