Is this some really stupid BS?
Respond to a Steam email? Hah! As if!
The only option they give me at the bottom of the email is to contact Steam Support via the generic Steam Support link. I guess I'd have to file a ticket and try to explain what the ticket is about?
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I would email them to contest. Sounds like the worst rule ever made up.
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Valve's logic on this one is really weird, to some extent I understand removing screenshots but banning you for upvoting them is ridiculous. They're punishing you for liking something, wtf?
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They aired that episode just yesterday here, and I happened to see just that part in the few minutes I watched. :P
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Exactly. They decide those screenshots are against their rules (which seems ridiculous to me, but whatever), fine, remove the screenshots. But banning me for liking the screenshots? It's shifting the burden of upholding Steam's rules to each and every member who views reviews and screenshots.
And it's not like I was voting on screenshots to be a jerk. I don't know what screenshots Steam had issues with, but whatever I voted for were screenshots that I felt were representative of the game and useful for potential buyers to see.
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It basically extends the concept of "wrong opinion" to clicking the wrong button. Not the best example of how to regulate a community, more like killing a fly with an axe.
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Why is there no option for No?
Also, email them and ask for proof, or it didn't happen XD
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Why is there no option for No?
Said option violates Steam's Rules and Guidelines, and thus had to be removed.
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back during the great skyrim paid mods massacre they were handing out 1 month bans on all comments left and right and it would WIPE every comment you ever made clean off steam. they didnt give a fuck what you said or did if you commented on the skyrim board you got a BAN. our lord and savoir gaben stepped in and fixed it all. got unbanned but all my comments had already been blackholed. 5 years of shit gone and it was mostly helping other people on message board for games/asking for help. things other players will want 2 see when they run into the same problem
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he should they waited to push the paid mods until gaben went in for surgery
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Wow. I missed all of that, but wiping every comment you ever made? That's beyond over-reacting.
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It felt like it was a real war back then, nobody was talking about anything but paid mods.
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just take a break for a month. the stress isn't worth the ticket
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Yeah, you're completely right. I'm not angry, just really surprised and confused.
Though I'm sure I'll be pretty annoyed the next time I try to up-vote a helpful user review (they exist, I swear!), and get an error message saying, "No voting for you, you naughty screenshot up-voter!"
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In case of a single incident I agree with you. If this starts to happen more often or has something like a three-strikes rule it can get problematic.
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Maybe of of those screenshots showed a nipple? I know Americans are terrified of those.
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As an American, I can confirm that we are, in fact, deathly afraid of nipples.
I saw a pair of nipples once, and they've been haunting me every since. They're seldom visible, but I just know that they've been following me everywhere I go ever since - just waiting, biding their time, until I lower my guard and they can pop into view again.
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But... without nipples, breasts would be pointless!
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Oh, relax. In some countries, you could go to jail for such a terrible act as voting for the wrong thing in the internet, you could get a lower "social rating" and so on. Steam is only on the way to dystopia, still not quite there
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That is some straight-up BS, but I too wouldn't bother making a ticket if it's only a month-long ban on voting of all things. It definitely makes no sense to ban every voter on a screenshot of a game buyable on their platform, now the next time anyone carelessly votes on one of those funny or biased reviews, I'd think again, if only slightly.
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I wish. If anyone deserves a ban, it's the people who vote the joke and meme reviews up as the most helpful. "git gud" and "died in a fire, 10/10," is helpful to absolutely no one.
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Yes, sadly, typical Valve logic:
"Okay, guys, no more censoring, everything goes!"
"Does that mean tits and dicks are okay now?"
"Everything goes!"
"You are not answering the question. Is it okay to post pornographic content, you allow that now?"
"Everything goes, guys!"
"Please answer the damn question with a yes or no: your 'everything goes' means sexual content too?"
"Everything goes!"
sigh "Okay then, so everything goes, here is this." posts a pornographic game and makes a screenshot of it
"You have violated the Terms of Service and we are now banning you."
"You just said four times that everything goes, but now you are saying it violates the terms. Where?"
"It is right there: 'We can boot your ass off if we think the game is bad for our reputation.'"
"So, where are the guidelines to know what harms your reputation?"
"We know those, you don't have to. It is not public."
"So, I can post anything, unless you say it violates a guideline I cannot know of, after which you just ban me for a reason that is not explained?"
permabans user and never responds to messages any more
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Valve can and will ban in-game screenshots for violations that aren't there. It's happened to me.
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Well you're pointing a gun at someone. You're clearly a psychopath or something. You might encourage people to become mass shooters!
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WTF.... then, maybe they should stop selling games like that if they are triggered about their content. Oh wait that's not gonna happen because it will mean less money for valve.
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Yeah I think Valve suffers from a multiple personality disorder and none of the personalities know what the others are doing.
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Better yet, it says so underneath: "Return to the censorbot"
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Serves you right for screenshotting an obviously alt-right Trump-supporting, woman-hating Tru Gamer. Ban GamerGate.
Or something. I dunno. Every time I attempt to try and make sense of Valve logic, my ability to think straight takes a break anyway, and all I'm stuck with is:
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China is quite a big market.
You can't post stuff with "Freedom of speech" wherever you want!
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Bizarre. Any idea on what the issue with that screenshot might be?
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Well, it does say "Return to the censorbot" underneath a quest titled Freedom of Speech...
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Banning someone for posting a screenshot with a quest titled "Freedom of Speech" seems too on the nose.
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Either that or someone had a too few before/during working hours and thought it would be funny xD
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Now that's dumb. I feel for ya, dude. Even more of a reason to not take an active part in the Steam Community. I love how they keep shooting themselves in the foot with these decisions...
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this is the result of always living over the line, Timo... you should be thankful that somebody is still trying to enlighten you.
...
can't believe that someone has been payed to do that. i might be wrong, but this smells like someone has reported you, and then Steam support has banned you, without paying too much attention.
anyway, this is hella fun. i'm sorry, Timo, but this is fun!
edit:from what i'm reading, it looks like i'm "a tad" wrong. unbelievable.
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this is the result of always living over the line, Timo...
You know me, always the rebel. Not only do I vote on screenshots without first checking whether they might violate some terms of service, but I even sometimes eat food that's past it's "Eat by" date! And, when there are no cars around, I'll cross the street outside of a sidewalk!
anyway, this is hella fun. i'm sorry, Timo, but this is fun!
Nothing to be sorry about. Amusing people is all I really hoped for with my post. :)
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How do you know you were banned for upvoting Agony screenshots? I thought they don't specify for which exactly upvoted community item you are getting banned? Or you haven't upvoted anything else except Agony and it's just your guess?
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It said in the email what game the screenshots were for. It also gave me the time that I up-voted them. I think that's them trying to make sure that someone didn't hack my account to up-vote game screenshots.
Now, I don't actually remember up-voting the screenshots, and particularly not at the time they specify (really early morning). But I do remember looking at the game at some point in the past since it was part of a bundle, and I can't imagine that someone would hack my account to vote on screenshots.
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I'm happy to see nobody (yet) came here with the usual argument "but Valve is a private entity so it's not censorship".
That being said, that kind of BS is one of the main things that refrain me from spending money on Steam. Wallet-voting is the only thing that works.
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Next you will be banned from Steam discussions for half a year for posting this thread.
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So... now I'm supposed to check every single screenshot on steam and check whether I liked something with nipples or not? How am I supposed to do that?
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Only items that are marked scam will give ban. Same goes for reviews, if you upvote review with scam links, you'll get banned from voting reviews.
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That is one way and it won't affect me because i try to not support scam in any form.
But there is another way - for posting/liking nsfw content. Even now, when nsfw games - even with pure porn in it are allowed - you can get ban for posting screenshot. And some people were complaining about getting community ban for just liking nsfw screenshot.
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I don't even know if nipples were the problem. The true stupidity of this is that I have no idea what screenshots they were, or why they violated the ToS. Given this example of a banned screenshot, it could be absolutely anything.
It's the equivalent of someone saying, "A week ago you did something wrong, and now you're grounded for a month!" But, what did I do? "You know what you did!" No, no, I really don't. "Grounded for a month! Now go and think about what you did wrong!"
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There was "freedom of speech" mentioned. One month community ban is nothing - in some countries you could get death sentence for that xD
But yeah - i get the point. Got community ban once - for posting screenshots from mafia 2.
But if somebody could be banned for liking that screenshot... well - that would be fucked up.
Edit - especially - that I was banned about 2 years after posting it!
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It just seems like a really stupid thing to do. Banning someone for liking a screenshot seems incredible over-reach.
And you were banned 2 years after posting a screenshot? That's pretty crazy.
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If you were banned recently, it supposes to say in that support message for which upvoted community item you were banned. I was trying to find out for a long time how those messages looked like exactly, and I found it today - https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/593085870647803914/624943014220922890/unknown.png Looks like at first this guy was banned for upvoting community item called "How to get FULL trading cards sets without buying them" on August 16, which looks like a guide with scam links, so it's understandable.
But the second item is from "BERSERK and the Band of the Hawk", but it doesn't have the name so it's hard to understand what's exactly it is, probably a screenshot or artwork. And screenshots from this game can be kinda NSFW (SERIOUSLY, DON'T CLICK IF YOU AT WORK) - https://steamcommunity.com/app/502280/screenshots/ but that doesn't look like a valid reason for such radical measures like community a ban since the game itself is approved on Steam store so screenshots from this game shouldn't get people in trouble, this is stupid.
I'm trying to investigate what's going on with that recent wave of bans, but it's hard to find more info about this stuff and Valve still hasn't specified new rules of what exactly is prohibited to share and upvote on Steam. I guess they started to ban for rate ups because of this - https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/152884184065507328/613679440983097380/unknown.png At some point there was a huge influx of scam videos and reviews with links on phishing sites that were getting tons of rate ups withing few minutes and always staying on top. Again, banning for an upvoting obvious scam is fine, but that new wave of bans look like affecting people who just rate up 18+ screenshots, which is not fine at all and kinda worrying.
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Same here mate
Your account will be unable to vote on some user generated content on Steam until 18 Oct @ 12:13pm
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Yeah, it seems a wave of bans have hit lots of people and multiple games.
We should just make our own digital distribution service, with blackjack, and hookers! It'll be epic! ;)
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In the meantime EPIC games store:
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Say what you will about Epic, so far they've given me lots of free games and not banned me once for liking a screenshot. ;)
It's like Steam's trying to make themselves look less appealing.
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That's what I mean! I was wondering when they will stop giving free games - but now I have quite nice games library there :)
And one thing that steam NEVER did right - key activation! You never know what game it is for if you don't try to activate it on steam. I was browsing my old bundles on hb couple of days ago and noticed that in one game that had already used steam key - appeard additional key for epic... So I copied it - pasted on epic site... and got message: "this is key for GAME NAME HERE - do you want to activate it?"
And valve is pretending that it's impossible for years!
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wooow first Time I read something like that. wich games give you epic Keys? do you remember?
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Wow, I didn't know that about Epic. I really wish Steam would let you know what game it is before actually adding the game to your account. I believe GOG also lets you know what game it is before activating it and adding it to your account.
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Yep, same thing for me on Control on EGS, was honestly surprised in a good way. I remember the same on Blizzard when I activated my Destiny 2 key. Steam is just lazy as always.
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This logic always baffled me.
So, you are going to ban anyone and everyone for posting, or in this case, voting on, a screenshot, for allegedly breaking whatever rules, and yet you have that same game in your store and selling it. WTH am I making a screenshot of if not of the content you endorse and market? I screenshotted a product, ban the product then.
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W.T.F.
I mean... first of all if they don't want screenshots of games that are R rated, they shouldn't sell R rated games? Double standards maybe?
I guess if they made money off screenshots, they'd be cool with it.
Second; ban the creator, not the people voting on it. Ridiculous.
Steam, sometimes you just suck.
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Ah, Steam... "We can support a dev by letting them sell this game, but you can't support content found within said game." I like my Gabens with salt and hypocrisy.
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I just received an email from Steam that a week ago I up-voted a few screenshots of Agony (3, to be exact) that have since been banned for violating Steam Rules & Guidelines. As a result of not reading through the Rules & Guidelines to confirm that each and every screenshot I consider up-voting as being helpful conforms with the guidelines, I am now banned from voting on user generated content for a month.
Of course, I don't know why the screenshots violated the Rules & Guidelines, I don't know what screenshots they were, and I certainly don't remember what screenshots I may have up-voted a week ago.
I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, but it strikes me as pretty ridiculous to ban people for a month for up-voting screenshots of a game when the game obviously doesn't violate Steam's Rules & Guidelines. Steam can advertise and sell the game, we can buy and play the game, the devs / publisher can post screenshots of the game, but up-voting user-posted screenshots is clearly way over the line. And because I up-voted a few screenshots that apparently violate Steam's rules, now I can't vote on user reviews for a month?
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