What'a relief.... :D
We all have learned a lesson, thanks to you sharing your story with us.
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Hehe, hopefully, if you have brothers or sisters, you take my lesson to yourself too!
Quick, before it's too late! D:
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"Do you think he will take his time to read this when he might be developing a game at this very moment?"
Ha, good one :p
...
:(
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Maybe... Half Life 3?
...
Nope, it's Ricochet 2 :D
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I should have my room decorated with him all over, hehe.
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As someone who's working with 14 year old kids, it's really surprising to me on a daily basis how much about the world they don't know. Like, at all. One day they seem almost adults, and then they'll show you they have no idea about the simplest things we take for granted. That said, I don't believe your brother was 100% innocent in this, as you said yourself, he wanted the free money (from a "gift" or stolen credit card, no matter) and thought he'd got away with it. While naive, he's obviously not a "I'm not allowed to take money from strangers" sort of kid. Keep your account locked, there are no third chances.
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Can't judge him about that myself.
I always try to see the good in people (unless they do something despicably bad), and I know my brother might be a bit reckless in his actions, but he is a good boy himself.
He got very worried when my account was restricted, then tried to hide what happened from me, until he felt too pressured... Then everything fell down in place, that's how I found out what happened.
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I'm not saying he's evil... just that it's exactly what I'd expect any of my students to do even if I told them 1000 times how to behave online and specially on steam... and that they'd know very well what they are doing but would act like your brother did afterwards.
You got lucky this time, but have to remember he's a kid and uses kid logic. Keep that account locked from him.
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Thanks for sharing your story with us. Am happy for you that everything got sorted out :)
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Holy moly I would never read thread this long but oh boy it got me hooked and I didn't even realised when it ended. Indeed you had ton of luck there but that story was sooo interesting. So glad everythingis fine now (except for the next 10 days).
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I still can't get one thing.
Why most people see main evil of gaming in Valve, when situations like OP told us now, proves Valve is not bad at all?
Yeah i don't like some things Valve do like with gifting lately did, but somehow from time to time they do something good, instead of Blizzard or EA.
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It's because I'm a rare case in which I recover my account by actually talking to a human being.
Steam Support is pretty infamous for using canned responses every time you have an issue, and if you have a serious problem, you are screwed.
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Well idk. When someone wanted try hijacked my acc i waited one week to solve issue. But guy from support helped me. Well was worth though.
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Why most people see main evil of gaming in Valve, when situations like OP told us now, proves Valve is not bad at all?
Because his story starts with his account being completely locked down and support politely telling him to fuck off with canned answers until he asked the CEO of the entire company to personally intervene and overwrite the initial ruling? It is the equivalent of getting sentenced and hoping to get a presidential pardon to reverse it. And happens roughly as often.
If your only hope of getting anything done with your account's problems is to go straight to the highest-ranked member of the entire company's management, then there are significant issues with that company in the first place.
Only people like the whole "good guy Gabe helped the little guy in trouble, how sweet he is" Robin Hood angle and tend to forget what the original problem was in the first place. That in a normal company, he would never have had to receive that letter in the first place because the employees would have spent time untangling the problem of the user, not doing it because their boss eventually told them to do their job, for a change.
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Absolutely this! Once you do something severe in your account (Be it accident or not...), start praying, because there are high chance your account is screwed for the end of times to occur.
Let's look at Blizzard and Origin, what do they have in common?
They are less popular gaming platforms, but they have the best support system ever! Live support chat!
They fixed my password problem for my Blizzard account in mere minutes!
That's how Support should be in Steam! I was lucky I got my case resolved in less than 3 days! That's a world record or something, lol.
But seriously speaking, I would volunteer myself for the live Steam support if they pay me something extra each month, a couple of hours each day, which is not bad. I'll not look at you as a criminal, but as an innocent person that needs to be proven otherwise.
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I would volunteer myself for the live Steam support if they pay me something extra each month
And this is where you are wrong in your assumptions. Based on some of those screenshots and the general data we can see from the stories about their support, the bulk of their support personnel is made up of the absolute cheapest outsourced people out there. I would hazard the guess that there is only a small team in the US and they are mostly dedicated to cases where Valve's income may be affected directly.
You are right about the other two. As much as I dislike Blizzard because I think they are the most successful and least talented game developers ever existed (at least Bethesda Softworks did have a few original ideas on their own instead of basing their entire portfolio on stealing ideas from others), the battle.net support is legendarily great. So is Origin's but many Steam groupies just refuse to believe that Origin, as strictly a gaming service, is leagues beyond Steam for a while now.
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Wow, too cool!
I wrote a letter when I was younger to a piano composer and told her I named my cat after her... she wrote me back and said what an honor to name my cat after her...
That was snail mail before email existed or the internet...
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Oh, yes! I do know about mail like that!
I think J.R.R Tolkien did the same thing with fans of The Lord of the Rings, having arguments for months with them about the story (Months because the mail delivery was really slow, hehe)
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Interesting thread. Who would have thought that Gaben would respond. You're a lucky man. :)
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Thank you! Really lucky, actually.
I still cannot believe I won my account back... Now that I look back at it, if I didn't do anything to it, I would have been perma-restricted...
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Well, that's the good news and I'm glad you're back. You've learnt the lesson. :)
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Me alegro por ti porque pudiste recuperar tu cuenta, sin embargo el soporte sigue siendo una mierda, realmente Steam es un RIESGO total... no tienes poder sobre nada, si se les da la gana te chapan la cuenta y ya, no tienes derecho a reclamar ni a quien acudir. Y como alguien más comentó, las historias como la tuya tienden a surgir cuando Steam la caga muy seguido. (Como ahora con el bloqueo de regalos).
Por cierto en Costa Rica pagan los mismos precios que en Australia/Estados Unidos o tienen su propia tienda como Mexico?
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Pagamos como los cristianos (En dolares, lol)
Y sobre los bloqueos, es mas una medida de seguridad en contra de los "mercados grises" (Grey markets), ya que ellos se estan enriqueciendo, sin importar que las keys que vendan sean fraudes.
Yo nunca intercambio por medio de Steam, solo intercambio juegos que son ROW (Rest of World), por medio de Humble Bundle, que dan esa clase de llave (Algunas llaves no son así, tienen restricciones también!)
Sobre lo de recuperar la cuenta, tuve mucha suerte... Hubiera perdido la disputa y jamas obtener la cuenta de vuelta... Era un 50/50... Y la pude ganar, por obra y gracia de Dios.
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A mi en lo personal me molesta mucho pagar el mismo precio que Estados Unidos y en algunos juegos incluso más, The Witcher 3 siempre me aparecía $5 más caro que en USA, y el burnout paradise a $5 mientras que en Europa a 2.50 euros... Pero claro nosotros estamos en la región "pobre" y pagamos lo mismo mientras que nuestros gifts tenían bloqueo de región.
Y no hablo de bloqueo de keys, hablo del bloqueo de GIFTS. El bloqueo no es ni por cerca una medida de seguridad para los mercados grises... Si comprabas un gift legal era tuyo y podías hacer con el lo que quisieras, ahora ya no. Tu compa Mexicano podía venderte LEGAL un juego y te salía más barato, ahora eso se acabó, quieren más dinero pero no se dignan a regular los precios en los países pobres.
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Pues si... Jodieron a muchos, pero beneficiaron a otros, en términos de seguridad.
No se puede satisfacer a todas las personas, honestamente :(
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That was a good, dramatic read. Thanks for sharing!
Funny to read this right now when that "Valve is not your friend" article is getting so much traction. Wonder if that was partly what inspired Gabe on this? Just speculation on my part, really.
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Wait... What article?
It might be a coincidence, since I was planning to post this after there were 10 days left for me to get my account back.
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https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive
Maybe it's just the circles I hang out in, but lots of people talking and debating about this one right now. So it was funny to read this, today! Very likely just a coincidence though.
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Same I was thinking!! x) "Oh, I better prove the internet wrong! Or make it seem better"
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Glad you got this whole issue sorted out! And welcome back to the community! :D
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Curious how this happens RIGHT after the big article hosted on Polygon.
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Lol, I've been hearing about some article.
Want to link it to me, please? :)
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https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive
Don't be fooled - the article is written in a vile way. It's an angry rant. Unfortunetly, what is says is not wrong. And it cites a long of sources for every single claim.
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wow i actually read the whole story despise it's very long
anyway glad to have you back and happy hunting !
u r awesomely lucky btw ^_<
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Thank heavens that you are alright. Better not let your brother touch your account no more XD
Happy Gaming!!
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Haha, he won't! He is getting an account of his own.
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Sorry hear about your miss hap there any way you get A++ TindalosKeeper in book it just goes show that this is a very great story that end well.
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Hey, long time no seen. :P Glad everything worked out well. This is exactly why I never let anyone else use my account (and I believe I've expressed my concerns for you letting your brother use your account before). I have family sharing enabled for my little sister, although I'm also a bit scared of that, if she somehow gets VAC banned playing one of the shared games.
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Yeah... I couldn't locate you since you dissapeared from my contacts (Turns out, you changed your username, lol)
The trick is to not share Multiplayer games to your sister, because if she cheats, and she is playing multiplayer from Family Share, your account is affected too.
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I changed it and changed it back. I'm revilheart again on Steam an I'm waiting for cg to revert my username here as well. But I haven't been very active on Steam lately.
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Glad to see you get a happy ending. I can't even describe what I'd be feeling if I were in your situation. :D
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I'm happy to know everything ended well. I was reading your story with interest and even feeling what you felt. Damn those sure were tough days for you!
Un saludo desde España! Y muy bien por el hecho de seguir luchando. Esa gente de soporte son unos cabrones sin corazón.
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Bueno, uno nunca sabe, Soporte esta para ayudar a los que se lo merecen.
Pero al parecer, si haces algo serio, no te van a ayudar tanto como uno cree que pueden, porque lo que hizo mi hermano menor fue ilegal, y hasta penalizado por ley.
Hay que comprender eso también. Por dicha, salí bien de ello, y no pasó a más...
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Should i ask Gaben how to get my fried chicken wings from the outside delicate and inside crispy?
I always get it just the opposite
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Heh! He even answers weird questions like yours! Sometimes...
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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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