Yes, it is! A bit of Google Search can do the trick! But you can ask me, of course! :)
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So tempting to get his personal response about steam's recent decisions and changes. :p
It's bad that there must be a bunch of people that are in similar situations as you, get the same non response from support and be left with it, atleast nice you got it sorted.
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Yeah... Now that I think on it, it's just terrifying I actually got my case solved, where thousands of other cases might be left hanging...
I could have been one of them, holy shit...
And, well... Don't expect much of a response, hehe (But not saying you can't try :) )
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It is not exactly a secret, since pretty much half the Western world knows it: gaben[at]valvesoftware.com. There is even an entire song written about it. Heck, this is where the entire GabeN thing originates from.
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That he doesn't get swamped with dozens of support pleads then.
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He does, constantly, even talked about it a few times. He randomly decides to help people. The cynical me also wants to add that strangely these stories tend to get more frequent around the times more shit is shovelled on Steam for some of their latest fuck-ups.
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Perhaps there are more of these stories around the times Steam is in a situation where they are upsetting the community or getting bad press, but that doesn't necessarily have to mean anything. When a well known company is put in a situation like that, more people will also share their positive experiences to show that it isn't all bad. It kinda gives people the idea of "people are mad at the company for X, but they did Y for me so maybe I can help them by making them look better through my story".
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Woah you were extremely lucky. Better buy a lottery ticket or 2 today xP
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Well, calling it luck would be an understatement, haha!
It would take a very angry Gabe Newell to make my account banned forever :(
Glad it didn't happened, thank God! :O
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I can only imagine how many memes he is receiving daily by having his email account be public!
Good to hear that it was finally sorted out, yet it saddens me that you have to go so far for something that could indeed be an honest mistake.
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Well, I didn't minded that at all.
I'm a man who did nothing, so I wasn't afraid to show personal information about myself (Of course, no need to worry about that, I covered sensitive information that might be used for identity theft), and if I did something, I would be stupid to reveal who I am, so I get arrested more quickly for fraud, lol.
But jokes aside, I feel much at peace right now that I got a positive response from Steam Support :)
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Haha! Not sure about this, they have Steam Sale, and it's good, huh? xD
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Nice to see you only had to google for Gabe Newell's email on google and cross your fingers to not lose your sg account and have your steam account frozen for the rest of your days :)
Also trying to use "several fraudulent credit cards on April 17 and April 20" is not an accident at all and your brother knew exactly what he was doing, a 14 teen is not a 6 boy... Sad to see there is always a way to circumvent rules (and laws).
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No, pal. He had no idea. He was thinking on those gift cards that had Visa/Master Card capabilities.
I'm pretty sure that guy told him the same thing to make the gift card thing more legit for him to do it... Again, a theory...
It might be me, but you've typed like I've actually did it... :/
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I never said you did it. I was talking about your brother.
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Hehe, told you it might be me thinking in how I see you type xD
But anyways... He learned his lesson and he is not touching my account ever. Only his own account from now on.
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Error: English Reading Comprehension failed T_T Sorry.
BTW using family sharing your own account can still be VAC banned.
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That's why I'm giving him the single-player games only. He has to purchase his own stuff for Multiplayer games :)
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How do you go about giving him only certain games with steam family share?
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Like I said, just single player games.
I don't quite understand your question when it was already answered, sorry. :(
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From what I read, it shares the entire library. So the question is: how do you exclude certain (multiplayer/VAC-enabled) games when it shares the entire library?
Unless you don't have any. I don't know if it's changed or if you can exclude games where you can earn a VAC ban, though.
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I was curious about this myself but turns out there's simply an option to either share all games or pick and choose which ones.
I think this is only for Family View, not Family Sharing.
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Huh? Family share is for entire library, you have no control over it. There are games which cannot be shared, but that is controlled by the game's publisher. (And they are getting more and more numerous.)
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Maybe I was confused. When I click Family View there's an option for choosing which games but I'm guessing I assumed wrongly that it applies to Family Sharing too.
I don't understand at all why there wouldn't be an option for Family Sharing to restrict multiplayer games or choose games individually. I mean if someone on Family Share gets VAC banned it would apply to the original account too, right? (obviously I've never used any of this stuff.)
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It's like that to discourage sharing with strangers. Without that, you would probably have a ton of shady "account renting" type services floating around.
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Family View = Parental control under a fancy name.
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He was thinking on those gift cards that had Visa/Master Card capabilities.
I… you do not really believe it yourself, do you?
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Eh... I'm aware they exist...
EDIT: Or maybe this is just a themed debit card, after all...
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Yeah,
From my experience with my siblings screwing up, he probably knew what he was doing and thought he'd get away with it, so when he finally got caught he played dumb in hopes of not getting punished.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Nah, they never did anything notably illegal or this dumb, as far as I know.
They just, for example, broke things, bought things, and one sent emails insulting classmates and then acted like it wasn't them, thinking it wouldn't get back to them.
Basically, they made mistakes, played dumb and blamed other people instead of taking responsibility, only to come clean a few years later when people wouldn't get angry and they didn't feel as embarrassed.
I doubt that a 14 year old did not understand what he was doing, and I bet in a few years he'll come clean to you.
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Yeah, 14 is not that young, and at that age with internet you know how to google stuff, you may see him as your little brother but in fact he knew he was doing wrong, and just hoped it would work. That's why he didnt tell you the detailed story about it and the multiple attempts at doing it.
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In order to get things, you have to buy them with hard word and with your own cash from that hard work!
Or win them at SG. :)
(Or get them for free when devs or stores or other legit sites give them.)
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Haha! But I've also donated games to SG, so that should even things out! xD
But yeah, if you look to my profile, there's no incident of "Not received" games at all :)
And all the won games are in my game library.
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I read that whole thing... and... wow. Good for you, and lessons learned.
Although, support seems to think multiple unsuccessful attempts were made to use fraudulent cards. Perhaps you need to look into that as well a bit further?
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Yeah... Glad you saw this.
Whoever the guy who tricked my brother was, he may have had a lot of stolen cards that might or not have been using. So my brother got "unlucky" in activating one himself and then, when he got several victims in his hands (Hopefully this is not the case, or else, I'm sorry for them...), he started charging-back everything, perma-restricting accounts at his leisure...
That's my theory though.
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Or, as the e-mail from Valve says, someone using your account tried to use Multiple fraudulent cards, which would imply that it's not that guy, it was your brother who tried more than 1 card. IMO that guy gave him a bunch of numbers and your brother was like "didn't work, this one didn't work this one went through, this one didn't" etc., which would lead me to believe your brother knew well what he was doing. I'm being judgmental for sure but I think you got beyond lucky and should never trust your brother close to your account again. I've also heard of Valve doing HWID bans depending on what you do btw so if he likes trying fraud again he could get your pc blocked. I mean honestly to all the other people who have had other people on their account try shady stuff to come and find it trade banned with no chance in getting it unbanned it seems a little unfair imo. You unban one, you unban them all. Because we can't tell anyone's real story.
I still applaud you for getting Gaben to reply to you though.
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The only ones that used my account was either me or my brother, even SteamRep has a user tag history. If you use Enhanced Steam on me and find my SteamRep, you'll find out that there's a user tag for my little brother (Which is obvious looking, actually, lol. Even I provided my brother's ID card to demonstrate his name was that one).
Who knows? He might have been aware he was activating the cards by himself, or he was instructed to try and activate what the guy told him to activate... But a kid his age has no way to get stolen credit/debit cards, unless he steals them himself, which is very unlikely.
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The point I was trying to make was that when Valve says that someone tried multiple cards on that account between the 17th and 20th, they don't mean one card one time. So if your brother says he only tried one, he lied to you, he did it multiple times. So when he got declined multiple times I'm surprised he didn't get the memo for 3 days. But I was just pointing out that it wasn't just one transaction that was attempted on that account that was fraudulent there were multiple ones.
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it sounds to me like "neighbor = same isp = same ip range = confusion on valves behalf".
them being literal neighbors who may of even logged from each others internet essentially linking them together could easily cause confusion as to which one did the fraudulent activity.
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No, my little brother did the purchase right in my computer. And each IP address is different, so there's no confusion.
That guy lives far away, according to my little brother... I don't care how far, that guy is gone for good from Steam.
We don't want scum like him, anyways :(
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ahh i hear you. for some reason i was imagining literal next door neighbor. ^^
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Oh wow, I had no idea you were having this kind of trouble!
It's nice to read that things got sorted out at the end! :)
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Man that was amazing to read, makes me feel happy. I understand the horrible sadness that would fall onto me if I lost my steam account. Congrats dude, I hope your more careful with these things now :)
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Oh ho ho! My little brother won't be touching my account in a life-time.
He will be paying what he spent with that fraudulent cash, and he will always call me if he activates anything in his own account, because, being a kid himself, he might do something dumb xD
Thank you! Those 3 days were very dark for me, but I had to fight back, even on the verge of despair :(
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14.
He is the type of kid who is very impressionable with odd stuff happening (Free money, for example :( )
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Yeah, that was pretty naive for a 14-year old.
My youngest brother is 15 now, I could have seen him mistaking a credit card for a gift card when he was 10 or 11, but I hope now he is smart enough not to commit credit card fraud without realizing that's what is happening (though, he has his own account :) ).
At least you were able to get another chance.
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Even as a gift card, if that card gets refunded somewhere it will become fraud. Say you purchase it, then use it and return it basically at the same time depending on a store systems it might go through the return but when it's caught it will be fraud on Valve's side, causing the red flag. Doesn't have to be a credit card.
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Yes, that's correct.
I've seen cases where a relative charged-back money accidentally, and all out of the sudden, Steam thinks you are a criminal and will go all out "judge, jury and executioner" on your account, no matter if it was accidental or deliberate...
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Technically they have no way of knowing who charges back for what reason and they are negative in money so it's hard to judge them. $5, $10, $25 is nothing for them so so making them wait even longer isn't fair when it's supposed to be such a simple process and no one should ever charge back unless something fishy is going on.
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What a happy read, I'm glad everything turned out okay in the end. :)
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"Free things have never existed"
They do exist, but you have to be very discerning.
I constantly see free stuff given away, the most recent being Mount & Blade on GOG.
It's pretty awesome that your account was fixed, now you know to never let family members on your computer or any of your accounts.
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Well, my little bro will be getting his own account, with Family Share on Single player games only.
And about free stuff, well... They do, but there's a reason why they exist in the first place. Might be a good or a bad reason.
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Yeah, you are right.
Even the guy who got multiple VAC's changed account to another... He didn't really cared to destroy other people's accounts (If not only myself was affected...)
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Extremely lucky, especially since "my brother did it" is basically the oldest excuse in the book for this kind of thing.
Lesson learned: change your passwords, on every account you have, and do NOT give them to your brother.
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Well, there were a lot of factors that legitimately considered my brother the perpetrator.
And he is getting his own account, however. Not mine anymore. He is also banned from playing while the ban goes on. So that's pretty rough for him already :)
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Glad to hear everything is fine now! :D
(Including that bit about giving your brother his own account and never letting him touch yours again.)
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Should have done that sooner than later :(
But I won't do that mistake again :)
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So you had to contact Gabe just to prove yourself innocent after sending all the ID and phone numbers and stuff to the support already.
The biggest problem with Valve support is they think all the users are fucking robots. They are treating us like they are doing us a favor. We are CUSTOMERS dammit. Millions of people are using steam daily, so silly situations like this can happen, and these issues need human interactions in order to resolve these kind of problems. At least give users a goddamn chance to prove their innocence.
Steam support is really horrible, it's not just a meme. It's the most hostile and most careless "support" ever.
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Yeah... Steam Support is complete garbage...
Even Blizzard and Origin have live support chat!
I even got my Blizzard account back when I forgot my password and had no way to get it back, by sending my ID card, but hiding sensible stuff, obviously.
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We are COSTUMERS dammit
...and we have our own Association!
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Do you make costumes?
customer
noun
1.a person who buys goods or services from a shop or business.
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My bad, I edited the text now to look less like an idiot. Unfortunately my english is horrible and I can't even hide it. Best if I just shut up.
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Yup, even though it has a happy ending, the whole thing shows first and foremost a disproportionate reaction (even for fraud like this, they don't need to permanently freeze the account, they could just hold it "hostage" until a proper agreement is reached to fix up the mess) and a bunch of "we don't give a donkey's doo-daa about you because you're not a customer you're a slave". Upper management saved the day, but maybe some company policies should be amended... After all, in the offline world, even murders get to get out of prison sometimes.
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Hopefully, it's never too late to give a clueless little brother his own account xD
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VAC bans are given for a very good reason.
You might have cheated in some way to get one, VAC guard has very rare cases of false-positives :(
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Well... so was this one, your brother technically committed credit card fraud, despite not being aware of it.
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Though it has a few typical false-positive cases, I faintly remember something serious fuck-up about Dark Souls 2? (maybe skins or mods) and even 100% OJ had some weird stuff going on with it
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I used to use an app called TexMod to make my own skins for games and overwrite the defaults, it worked with unreal engine games.
I haven't done it in a while, but I'm curious if that can get you VAC-banned.
Technically you could use it to make enemies easier to see, but I don't know if it would get detected like that.
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I looked up what I could remember to, and it was Superbunnyhop's video - the link is to a timestamp when he talks about how he got banned because of a mod that added bloom to HL1 because changing visibility (and could be exploited in multiplayer, so they just carpetbomb it) - I wouldn't try that app for your VAC-secured games, better be careful.
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Yeah. I don't really play MP games any more, but it seems like the VAC checks involve a pretty technically incompetent piece of software.
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It is not, but VAC rarely makes a mistake in how bans people.
I am afraid that VAC ban might be legit...
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VAC rarely makes a mistake in how bans people.
It does happen though, and probably more than we know (since surely some innocent people didn't go through the lengthy trouble of appealing)
https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/2cm34j/yes_false_vac_bans_do_happen_my_ban_was_lifted/
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Awesome story, bro! :D
Absolutely good idea to make him another acc and family share your games with him.
Glad it got resolved for you!
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Congratulations that you got everything sorted out. :)
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"In a world where a man was never touched by sin, and a brother who was filled with greed..."
"Both will find out the hardships of their possession being taken from them due to the brother succumbing to his own needs..."
"Now... the innocent man, seeking retribution from the Gods, will attempt the impossible..."
"Recover his Steam account..."
Cue epic music
Hehe :)
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Uhhhhhhhh...
No, pal... It's not fake, I can even show you more proof that this is more real than you think :)
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Read before commenting: Steam Support cleared my name for a good reason, they can search all my activity in my account, so I was proven innocent, and all was an accident. If you think otherwise, then you can comment on why you think so, and I'll try my best to give you a logical answer to it.
Alright, so, few people know of what happened to me (Touhou Group knew this before I even posted anything and BLAEO knows this after 10 days of my restriction happened), so now, I'll be sharing my story to the SG community (If my account gets liberated after the 30 days, I'll be posting this same message on Reddit, courtesy of a comment by one of my fellow group members, since it's proof that Gabe Newell can really help you out if you are in trouble... Of course, just messaging him won't just magically solve your problems. You have to arm yourself with a strong case, in order to prove that what one does was either an accident, a false positive, or you never did it.)
I'll copy-paste what I wrote on the BLAEO group, so here it goes...
See that red thingy?
This is what happens when you do something bad, even though it was all an accident...
It's all resolved as of now, but I want to tell you what happened and why this happened...
So, my little brother came to me, with a happy face, telling me he got a "20$ gift-card", I felt slightly suspicious about it, but thought he activated the card via the Steam Wallet option (The option where you activate Steam Giftcards)
I was wrong...
The guy who was giving him such a thing was giving my little brother a stolen card from somewhere (Or it was his own card, after all, but I doubt it, I'll get to this soon), of course, since this is a criminal offense, and it violates the Steam Terms of Agreement, it made my account perma-restricted.
What does this mean? No trading, no key activation, no gifting, no Market buying, no Steam Store buying (In other words, a general trade ban), which means my SG account will be unusable.
Well, when I got hit by that, I had no idea what was happening, so I contacted Steam Support.
At first, I had no idea what was going on, it could have been a false positive, so I contacted them, so they know I was worried about my account
After a day, they gave me a pretty discouraging answer...
They weren't going to tell me any reason (I was probably put in the folder of "Fraudulent Activity, use canned responses only", because once you do anything that is fraud, you are pretty much screwed (And this could potentially be an account-ender if scammers know how to do this...).
So I confronted my brother, remembering as well about that "gift-card", he told me he activated the gift-card via the credit/debit card area while he cried to me when he couldn't lie to me anymore (He managed to take money from a credit/debit card, even with expiration dates and the secret code... Whoever this guy is, I am glad he got what he deserved, according to my little brother, this was the guy who did it...
Then, I responded again to Steam Support, first part...
Second part...
I know I might sound corny in the message and pretty cliché or something, but I was genuinely desperate, even I could have disclosed full information about myself, so they see I have nothing to hide and that I was innocent.
I couldn't sleep that night, I remember well... After the night passed, and in noon (Or around there) they came it with another response... The one that would seal any opportunity for you to get back your account
Yes... for those who don't know, this response is the last thing you want to hear when you have a problem with your account... You can't reason with them or negotiate anything (Even if you could see that I tried, even showing all what I had to type to convince them otherwise... It was futile...)
I felt tremendously bad for a couple of hours, I was feeling down for that moment, as if I had no way to get back my account, until an idea struck to me, it was possibly my last resort... I had to contact...
Gabe Newell...
Yeah... Contacting the CEO of Valve and the gaming platform Steam... When I finished the e-mail, I thought to myself... "Are you out of your mind? Do you think he will take his time to read this when he might be developing a game at this very moment?"
I sighed as I went to sleep... When I woke up, my little brother (Who was playing some games in my account at that moment, now he is forbidden to enter my account at all, only me. I'll make an account for him and use Family Share on him) woke me up, telling me... "Kevin! Kevin! Gabe Newell replied!", and I was like... "What?" (How did he knew, you ask? Windows 10 links your e-mail, so it appears at the bottom right of the screen as a notification, you know it happens if you do have an e-mail linked)
I quickly went to see the response... He is a man of a few words, haha!
I really was out of words, even for a short response, he actually read the e-mail! So, I told him my story to him as well, leaving the ticket number so he can see it, I saw that he was also part of Support, first part
Second Part
Third Part
After writing that big letter for Gabe, I felt a bit stupid... "What if that e-mail wasn't even his? Did I just sent a letter to a complete stranger that used that e-mail to scam people or something?"... Yeah, it was a possibility, but I had no options left... Everything in that letter and in what I wrote past this is completely true, you never go anywhere by being a liar and by being rude about it. Yes, Steam Support takes time, and you grow desperate, but you need patience. Over time, they'll answer :)
Next day, around 7 or 8 p.m, my little brother, who was still in my account (He was forbidden later) saw a very strange phenomenom... The red bar dissapeared!
My little brother called me, yelling... "KEVIN! KEVIN! GABE NEWELL DID IT!". I thought he was joking, so I followed him... "Yeah, yeah! Wow, he did it..." Knowing it was permanent, it was pretty much him playing... But no! It dissapeared!
Momentaneously... The red bar went back again, my little brother and I were confused, but then... Steam Support sent us a message!
HOLY SHIT! We hugged each other, my brother cried to me that he will never activate anything without me watching. Even though I wasn't mad with him, it was a good lesson he learned that day.
We won a seemingly unwinnable case... There are factors that might have contributed to me having a much legitimate side of the story, which I can explain, if you ask me.
I sent Gabe my "thank you" letter, I was a bit afraid, since he is a busy man, after all...
And he answered me a few hours later!
Awww... No Left 4 Dead 2 Free Weekend, missed chance... :(
Oh, well! This is my story! My account is banned for a month (10 days now), my brother has to use another account, the guy got his Karma destroyed by getting VAC-ations (He made another account... Yeah... He didn't cared at all on losing it...), and my brother learned a lesson.
I also want to tell you what to do in order for you to not get over this too.
Never, EVER, let your brother/sister/relative to activate something, a code, a string of numbers, etc. Without you watching. Teach them that free things never have existed. In order to get things, you have to buy them with hard word and with your own cash from that hard work!
I would have published this in a much popular site (Reddit), and I would probably get a ton of hits and get myself revered as a god or something xD, but nah... I am an achievement hunter, and you achievement hunters deserve to know what happened to me.
I hope you had a good read and learned something in the way there :)
Have a good day/night!"
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