Didn't have to spend anything to have a "full account" before.
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Well I haven't made an account in a while but I don't recall anything like that. Possibly you had to complete a profile setup before using community or something along those lines?
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There have been different types of restrictions added before and different ways to unlock them - I believe trading with other users could be enabled by activating a gift, but buying and selling in the market place also needed an account to be 'in good standing' with an actual store purchase in a certain time frame.
These new restrictions seem far more unified and severe. I think I approve given all the bots and spam and so on.
Edit - Although I have just spoken to one person who has never made a store purchase and isn't affected by these restrictions so they may not be retroactive?
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I registered about 2 months ago, maybe 3, and I could access everything. Only thing I remember was that I had to buy sth so I could be able to trade and such. Plus the purchase had to be 30 days ago. So basically I waited a month until I had everything.
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Didn't have to worry about bot accounts and phishing before, making people give up their private info and lose their Steam account/inventory to a scam. Now we have this problem, so I applaud Valve in this decision.
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It used to be that you have to activate a gift on that account. But you would still not be able to use the market.
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You need to buy something or activated a gift copy of any game (any giftable i ear even those dead island epidemic gift can be used to fully activated a steam account). Gun Monkeys and Bad Rats giftables copies too LOL.
Now : Purchasing a Steam gift from the Steam store (Receiving a Steam gift from a friend doesn't count)
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It used to be not doing anything, but in recent times it changed so the whole steam community thing was restricted until you brought a game of any price on steam, even for 0.01USD. Now its been raised to $5EUR minimum
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Directly from the article:
"Limited users are prevented from accessing several features on Steam, including but not limited to:
Sending friend invites
Opening group chat
Voting on Greenlight, Steam Reviews and Workshop items
Participating in the Steam Market
Posting frequently in the Steam Discussions
Gaining Steam Profile Levels and Trading Cards
Submitting content on the Steam Workshop
Posting in an item's Steam Workshop Discussions
Accessing the Steam Web API
Using browser and mobile chat"
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YES!
FINALLY!
FREAKING GABEN ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING ABOUT THEM BOTS!
SO HAPPY :D
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That actually sux for ALOT of people tho ...
I got a few friends who never bough a game on steam , but got like 100 games or even more in their accounts.
Now they get treated the same way as the bots , cause they didnt buy games directly from steam ... but from HumbleBundle ( for example )
And their inventory and everything in it its Untradable , untill they throw 5$ in steam.
I agree , it was bout time Volvo did something against the bots... but punishing old members aswell kinda sux ...
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I agree. My best friend is not very good with computers but she loves playing some casual games on her laptop. She has an Origin account which she uses to play The Sims, Peggle etc but I wanted to set her up with a Steam account because I know she would enjoy a lot of the games I have spare keys for/don't want, and we live far apart so I figured I could send her a steam gift on her birthday, etc. I know the bot problem has been really bad but it sucks that they have put so many limitations on people who may have games in their account, but just haven't spent any money. My friend likes games, but isn't too fussed about what she plays and couldn't justify spending money when she can just play my leftovers for free. I think that even if redeeming keys doesn't count towards the $5, gifts should. Because if a scammer were to create a second account for a bot, the scammer still has to spend five bucks in gifts to the bot account.
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Why ?
Why should That be the solution ?
The bots are annoying and stuff , but forcing everyone to spend 5$ in order to use the platform is something EA would come up with tbh .
Yeah i am 100% for some solution against the bot spam , but why should that be it ?
Why force everyone to spend money on steam ?
There is barely anything decent that you can buy on steam for 5$ ( unless on sale ) , while for 5$ you can get 5x the 1$ tier humble bundles and get like 15ish games .
For some ppl 5$ might be cash they dont wana spend on steam , or they may be Unable to ( Being younger , or not having credit card etc )
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Those who own a gaming computer or something that resembles it, 5 bucks shouldn't be >THAT< much of a problem.
Also I suppose they can just buy 2 TF2 keys which they can trade for other games or sell them on the market. There is a loss but the majority of the cash stays on the account which can be spent later on a sale.
Also also, this sum can easily be gained by selling cards.
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with this new system you cannot get cards or sell them before you pay these 5$, so your last solution won't work ;)
But I agree - for someone who owns 500-1000$ worth machine pending 5$ on a game isn't so much. But it's not so much for the botter either - he will buy these TF2 keys or gifts and resell them and will get all his money back as well. All this changes is that Valve will now make money on these bot accounts.
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This seems to be the real answer.
You now have to pay if you want to spam on Steam.
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limited users can not use the market, nor can they gain cards/levels from what I understand from the release.
I think he is more concerned about the precedent than that actual amount, and would be arguing just as much if the sum was 1 dollar. I understand the view point, even if I dont agree with it.
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You are in no way forced to spend 5 dollars. There is nothing a "limited" account prevents you from doing that you NEED to do. You can still talk with friends, you just need them to add you. You dont need to trade gifts or cards, but can still receive gifts, idk about cards. You can still post in discussions on the forums, your post "speed" is just limited.
Just to add, how many bot adds do you get? Some people get upwards of 50-100 a DAY. That is more than a bit annoying. Not to mention for new users, or less savvy users that fall for the scamming, it kinda forces steam into a corner with this.
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sadly you cannot get trading cards on a limited account :( so you won't be able to farm your bundle leftovers on alt accounts (at least new alt accounts, as some of old ones remained non-locked) and send them to your main.
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TBH, if you have one or more designated alts for card farming, you can make up the investment. Buy a 5 dollar steam wallet card per account -> buy market goods/ steam games -> trade to main -> profit.
Unless all you do on steam is buy bundle games and farm cards and dont actually buy or trade, this shouldnt harm users like some make it seem. :|
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There are days where i get like 20+ invites ... i agree something must be done to combat them .
But in the same time , screwing over existing users is kinda Bad idea from volvo .
I know quite a few people ( me includes for the most part ) that get their games from Bundless or With Keys / Trading cards.
Or even from tremor ... i got a few games from there just by trading in cards and farming coins that way .
Not being able to trade now , would mean the most free ways to get games get closed for me if i Dont spend that 5$.
And even tho my account isnt limited since i spend 10eu a month on steam for awhile now , that sux for other people who dont have that luxury / or for the ppl who dont have credit card .
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Poor ALOT, sucks for them indeed!
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-alot
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Yea, not being an uneducated bastard is funny.
Gifts Won
8 ($67.92)
Gifts Sent
1 ($4.99)
BL'ed
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I don't care at all. I was getting 5-20 bots a day, and steam exists to be a store. People who don't want to buy anything can use yahoo messenger and leave me alone.
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It will only slow them down but not stop them,after all if your scamming people what is 5 bucks?
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No more bots maybe?
If this works as intended it will be the first good thing that valve has done this year.
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It will kill some of them, certainly. There are still plenty of jacked accounts to spam with, of course.
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This is actually a good point. Wouldn't surprise me if this was done just to profit from them.
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I had that thought as well. Smart for them to do I guess unless they start using stolen credit cards and other fraudulent methods of payment.
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A way around it would be for the bot maker to buy 5 dollars worth of game gifts and then trade them off. Prob see a 50% reduction in bot accounts, but now we have an issue of bot accounts appearing more legit than before.
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Nah all they will do is use stolen credit cards and use those accounts for a few days until the purchases fall through.
In the end this will solve nothing but piss off a ton a people in the process . My account which is over 700 games probably only has $10 total spent directly on steam
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csgo smurfs as well, most of them buy gift copies and use them in new accounts
unless if they actually pay full price >.>
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How exactly are dota2 smurfs f**ked?
You can still create a new account, download dota and play.
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Can't sell items, use market, have an actual profile or add friends. Playing DotA2 bets, trading and adding friends are disabled. There will be still smurfs but they'll have to suffer a little bit which is nice.
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not like anything that drops from dota is tradable anymore anyway ...
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Who said you can't trade? And you always had to spend money to be able to use the market. You can always tell people to add you instead or add them from your main account.
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lmao they can still play. What a moronic statement.
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Sorry to burst your bubbles but it has been like this for a couple of months. I tried to create another account back in January i think for card mining and i couldn't send them to myself.
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There's the 15-30 day restrictions new accounts get. That's the thing that's been there for months.
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You may be correct in what you were referring to actually, as you were talking about trading. This is mainly referring to community based things (namely posting on profiles).
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Oh. If I recall i couldnt even add me. Hmmm. Let me go check on it.
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At least now some devs gonna care more about having a full Steam account, but maybe for devs it will be an exception.
This thing will make less scam bots accounts, less ppl farming stuff from CSGO, Dota 2, Tf2, etc, then less card/market selling account bots, etc... that's a great update. I hate those bots selling or buying stuff in market they just ruin the market and I hate scam bots too.
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Wow, an actual approach to preventing fraudulent activity and not a thinly veiled attempt at destroying trading?
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Will it affect existing users?
I don't really like it, they should bind it to steam account level or something like that, not to the amounts of money spent...
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5$ is not THAT much.
Anyway - you are here. So you must have account valued at at least 100$.
Don't worry :)
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I am not worried about myself, I spent ton on Steam...
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If it was level then how would it work? "Hi I'm new to steam and I just bought $50 worth of stuff on TF2 but for some reason I can't add friends or anything. Can you help me?" Last I checked you don't get Level for spending money on steam.
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No not directly, but it I it is more complicated than pay $5.
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It actually did affect existing users ... couple of friends got their accounts limited and all Steam items became Untradable ...
They got a decent library of games , and level 8 -21 .... but still got limited :|
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GOOD! Finally those stupid bots will stop spamming me invites.
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Sounds like only steam store purchases or steam wallet funds
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"The below actions will not remove limited user restrictions:
Activating a retail game on Steam"
Bundle keys show up as 'retail games' the same as CD keys from physical purchases. So I guess not.
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Scammers willl find the other way to scam.. but by now I must admit : good move Lord Gaben
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+1; especially when people first find out about Steam they usually don't spend any money for a while and stick to F2P; it will give then a bad impression considering in order to get a full account they are forced to spend $5.
But then again, the good outweighes the bad IMO.
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if i ever write this guide you'll see at the end that whenever steam makes an update...
That is literally what happens across all fields related to security. Hacking, drm, physical security, fraud, money laundering... and so on.
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Will this work retroactively? I mean I have over 200 games on my steam account, but I didn't buy even one of them via steam shop and I'm curious if I will be affected by that change ;]
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It prevents bots but it sucks for the peoples who play all the free-to-play games
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So basically, I assume that the only change is that new users can't send friend requests anymore without spending money first, right?
Because my sister made a Steam account, and she could add me, but couldn't do anything related to the market/trading.
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Not being able to access market/trading may have already been implemented but now she wouldn't be able to send you a friend request so you would have had to add her.
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The adding thing is great when it comes to bots trying to add you otherwise you will just have to make sure you know the person's steam if they wouldn't be able to add you.
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Whatever made you think that? :P
I meant that it was good against bots, I'm already friends on Steam with my sister's account.
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You always had to spend a minimum of $5 in order to have access to the market.
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this kills alt accounts to farm cards with extra keys unless you buy something on the account
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Could buy a gift then trade it to main account if I'm reading it correctly.
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Great work around as long as you can trade with the alt account!
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yes but what bundle buyer is willing to spend $5 on a game retail?
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I guess you could make it your one "big purchase" maybe get a usually $15-$20+ game on sale for $5 then trade it if that works
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Well I do.
I suppose you're going to get a mix of people and some will only buy bundles, but I'm sure there's also plenty of us who buy bundles and the occasional game directly off Steam too for that kind of price or more.
Bad news for those who don't or can't then. :( Maybe they could trade the keys for bundle keys they don't have or even make giveaways for them?
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quite a few actually, considering that the account only needs to purchase a product. Even a wallet code would work. But the alt account could say purchase a giftable copy of dlc/games and trade it over to the main account, or just trade for cash like many do already.
This will slow down on bot accounts, and for a month, cut them down completely.
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This should help now to limit spamming from bot accounts as it will not be so cheap to do any longer, More details here.
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