How Gabe Newell saved my account.

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!"