This also prevent the farming of trading cards from free games =P, pump on greenlight with low lvl accounts and write positive/negative rewievs from alt accounts.
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Those as well which are all positive except the first for those that do that.
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You are fine then if you were already a full account.
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Thought so. This is definitely a good move for Valve since before all you had to was buy a store item / activate a gift.
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So then this is not retroactive? I have an account that is several years old with over 1000 games but I have never bought directly from Steam (I bought from brick-and-mortar, keys from Amazon, bundles, etc.) I am currently not seeing any restrictions on my account, but I am not sure if this is in effect yet...
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So far this seems the case as Sviat and I have tested.
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This is good news, a lot of bots and spammers lately
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Anyone know if we'll be able to see our purchase amount? It'll permit to see how much we really spend on Steam ... for those who care :D
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You can already check that with Enhanced Steam. :P
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Yeah I know, but since each purchase are track it'll be great to have the real value (with sale price, price error, price at purchase time, etc.) and not an estimate one
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Is the change retroactive? My best friend is level w/ great games like monaco, Borderlands 2, tropico 4, granpa's leftovers, etc but I don't think he spent 5$.
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if by retrocative you mean , does it affect existing users .... it did for few of my friends :|
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My second account still seems to be able to trade. I've never bought anything with money on that account, just put in keys in the past when I used to farm cards on it.
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I must be the only 1 who is like ... Cool Volvo , its nice that you actually adress the issue ... But at what cost ?
There are tons of people right now , who got their accounts limited , and their stuff became Untradable , because of that restriction.
I do agree , those bots are beyond annoying ... there are days when i get like 20+ invites from them ...
But punishing existing users , just cause they cant / dont want to spend 5$ Inside steam ... and have other methods for obtaining their games ?
IT sux alot , for many people ... Keep that in mind :|
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Thank god ! Finally something good happened on steam :D
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My only concern?
" What if my Steam store currency isn't in USD?
If the Steam store isn't in USD, we will track the purchase amount in USD by converting each purchase total made on Steam using daily exchange rates. Once you have made the equivalent of $5.00 USD or more in total Steam purchases, you will gain access to the restricted Steam features."
Currency fluctuations. That is all.
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Is this lifetime spending or do I have to spend $5 a year per given time period?
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lifetime. so if you have spent it in the past you are fine
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This will kill all alt accounts
You can easly gift a really cheat or buy a game with a 90% coupon and gift it to your alt account and go to dlh.net to get some free games.
All my alt accounts are worth more than 20€ because of this...
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activating a gift or key won't unlock your account. You have to spend 5+$ on this account directly (so add 5$ wallet, buy for 5$ at store) to activate an account.
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I activated 3 alt account gifting them Region Locked gifts...
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when did you do so? because this new policy went live today, and it says exactly this:
What will not grant me access to the above features?
The below actions will not remove limited user restrictions:
Activating a retail game on Steam
Playing free demos
Adding a non-Steam game as a shortcut
Adding/playing promotional trials like Free Weekends
Free to Play games (Examples: Alien Swarm, free versions of Portal and Team Fortress 2)
Activating promotional CD Keys from hardware or graphic card manufacturersI received my game(s) as a gift, will I gain access to all features?
No, games that have been received as a gift or via Steam Trading are not eligible.
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I did it like 20 days ago or so, my alt account are still able to do it all as far as I know...
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This is not a new policy, it's just basically a rephrasing of the existing one. You've always had to spend money on Steam to unlock certain features.
I say that because the only reason I started using Steam in the first place is because I got a physical copy of Skyrim at Christmas 2012 (I think?), and you HAVE to install steam to use the game.
So that's an actual, real, purchased copy of the game. It comes with your legit CD key.
It doesn't actually count as a Steam purchase. As such you can't actually use the Steam market because you put money into a retailer that wasn't Valve.
Naturally my account has grown since then. I've got well over 100 Steam games though frankly I spent $0 to get most of them. It's amazing what you can build up just paying attention to giveaways, promos, things like Tremor Games etc. I simply don't have disposable income to burn, so I don't. Even then I've been able to host a few small giveaways from time to time.
They're just expanding that original policy out. Is it a bad policy? Of course it is. Will it solve anything? Highly doubtful. Any sort of "scam" account on Steam has a lot more than $5 value to the prospective scammer and frankly won't even put a dent in their, uh, business, such as it exists. But it will inconvenience some people.
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In theory, an evildoer could create 100 new accounts per day, activate 1-2 bundle keys in each, and start bots that would send friend requests to random people in order to scam them... With this change those new 100 accounts with activated keys would be useless for scamming. They would have to spend real $5 in each to get them working again. Some will maybe do that, bust most script kiddies will have to give up on their evil ways.
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I completely agree with you, this is surely going to hit bots and I believe that the poster above you is very wrong, scammers clearly do not value their phishing accounts above $5, not even close, they are dispensable, they serve no purpose other than adding people and sending those messages and their power lies in numbers, with this measures it simply won't be worth it for them, unless they use stolen credit cards and in that case there's not much that valve can do.
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Im so happy! D: [unnasigned] will stop stalking me everyday! D:
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keep dreaming - scammer sets up new bot account, buy 5$ worth of games AS A GIFT, sends it to his main account, has account unlocked for bot spamming / scamming and he gets 90% of his money back by reselling gifts, or even earns extra money, if he buys on sale and then resale gifts later on for higher price.
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You are actually right about this, the measure is esentially a decent idea, but the $5 shouldn't count for games purchased as gifts, only for purchases made and activated on said account; even then, scammers could still use stolen credit cards, but still...
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why? what does it change? Bot spends 5$ on gifts, send gifts to legite account, start phishing-spamming like usual, owner ;later resell gifts for profit to earn his 5$ back. Only change it makes is making Valve earning profit on all these bot accounts, but I don't believe it will stop scammers from using them.
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You ruined my dreams... why? Is because im black and a cat? D:
Well, at least the scammers will have to spend money on steam... yai...? D:
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yay, Valve gets even more money on ppl getting scammed! let's be happy for them! ;p
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Yeah, it will not stop "professionals", but it will stop poor kids who wanted to get some free games fast by choosing not so honorable path. You know, those who do not have money to spend on their alt accounts.
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maybe, but the thing is that the most scams are done by "professionals". For example a lot of pp, who are quite new to Steam may fall for all these screenshot bots, while I guess not many will fall for kid who cannot speak english but promises that will give them their item right after they give him theirs. Also a common trade scammer will take several aproaches to get maybe 1 successful scam, bot will send tens if not hundreds of invites/msgs per hour. Each successful attempt will immediatelly give him much bigger profit (all items from inventory, wiped clean wallet etc). So the only tye of scammers this will maybe affect are the ones who are least harmful. Sure they are annoying as shit, but not nearly as bad as these "professionals" that will still be free to go.
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I do not disagree, I'm just saying, if this helps reduce scams by 1% it's a good news after all.
It's like having 3 locks on your door. There's no lock that will stop a professional thief, but most amateurs will think twice about losing time with your somewhat more secured door, if your first neighbor has only one lock and breaking his into his house would take much less time and create less risk for them to be seen outside doing something shady.
Any security measure is actually there only to deter amateurs.
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I can agree with this. I guess I'm just angry at Valve at their "solutions" which while maybe help reduce these few% damage done by noobs, but at the other hand each has a main purpose of generally generating Valve more money. If they really wished to seriously fight off scammers and other lowlife scum they could maybe finally hire more people to work in their sh*tty support. The people who would help users, react fast, put consequences etc. For any company 1st step is having employees to assist customers, then all the security system is just a measure to reduce the number of this problems that employees must deal with. And Valve just puts more and more ridiculous restrictions, earning them more and more money, while avoiding the major problem and totally neglecting it. Because solution for this major problem would actually cost them money instead of generating more of it.
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I understand, and I do not agree with their policy "we are small private company and all our employees do everything including programming, developing steam and doing user support" which is ridiculous. I know their organisation is not that flat and I'm oversimplifying, but they should really split valve as a developer from steam, and also hire bunch of new stuff in order to keep steam what it should be now that it has almost 100 million users worldwide.
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Those "Professionals" will now be "legit scammers", because they will at least paid the fee of 5$ to start scamming... xD
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I assume because once those accounts are discovered, they are disabled and the scammer has to keep paying $5 every time to open a new one, could get costly.
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not really - keep in mind these 5$ doesn't need to go for a game added to their account. You buy a gift for 5$ during sale, you resell it on ebay or anywhere else after sale ends and you get your 5$ back, or at least most of it.
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People who run bots do it on the hundred of thousands of numbers. They won't be spending 5$ on all those hundreds of thousands of accounts. It would be too expensive and it would take way too much time. So yeah, this new policy will work for the most part.
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spending 5$ expenses per account - I may agree. Investing 5$ per account that will get back to you - not really a big problem.
If you'd have to spend 5$ to add something to your account, aka each bot account would have to be worth 5$ of direct steam purchases it would be not profitable. But this way these accounts will still have 0$ value and 5$ worth of gifts/keys will be easilly resold to gain whole investment back.
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Again, that would take a shitload of time to do for each account and selling the thing you bought isn't really that easy or fast. So again, it works wonders to prevent bots. Bot makes ain't going to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars they might or not make back.
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Seems not to be retroactive to all accounts (at least not for bigger/leveled/older accounts - cannot really tell what is the factor here for not locking)
~1.5 year ago I set up an alt account for my fiancee - at 1st so we may play coop games together, then so she could activate bday gifts on it and finally adding some of my leftovers with cards there to double-farm them. No purchase has ever been done on this account, no payment method was added, the account still cannot use marketplace because I never needed to unlock it. BUT - it has Steam level 5, is over 1 year old, had both Steam Gifts and Retail keys activated on it and has 137 games on it. And is not retroactively restricted. So any of above reasons may prevent locking.
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Do you have an account set up for your future son? If not, you should have done that before the new policy. Just saying.
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no need for son, so no need for account for him :D: Who eed kids, when you can have more cats? ;p
And sadly our kitties are not much into gaming.
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Hmmm, I made an account for my son over 2 years ago - I wonder if it got restricted... goes to check Yup, it got restricted because all his games were gifted from mine and my husband's account. I guess I will just buy his next game straight through his account to unlock it in case he ever does want to trade or something.
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Very similar story with my alt. account. Created September 2013, 154 games, level 10, no purchases/market access, have activated gifts (Gun Monkeys, The Ship, Takedown Red Sabre).
I unfriended that account, jumped on my alt and was able to send a new friend request to my main. Can also still trade (seeing people saying they can't on the Steam forum).
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Tried that too, you can send invites and comment on profiles, you can't chat in browser, did not tried in client, try sending a message via chat from your alt to main, and then try to send a message to the alt via chat and see if you can reply in chat if a full account sent a message first. Seems if the account has badges it can comment on profiles and send invites, but not chat.
Because I'm pretty sure this scammers will find loops in that system
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just tried that and chat is working for me normally as well on this "alt" account:
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This are loops, that Valve has to fix, until then, we should expect less scam bots adding ppl, but this doesn't means all scam bots won't be able to add ppl.
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Yep, chat worked for me too from alt to main both in browser and client. I did have the client running still when chatting in browser if that makes a difference? But still, I could see the little globe icon and it said "web" next to my alt account's name in the chat window.
Trying out with cards now. Just started idling a game.
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report results for cards, sadly my fiancee is fully idled ;p
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$5? That's barely anything. One dirt cheap indie game. I think the number should be higher. $60 at least.
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At least this time they do actually have to spend something in order to activate.
So activating an account by just using a free DLH Steam Key won't work anymore.
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Well, they don't have to "spend" anything if the buying gifts to trade/sell does actually work as a loophole.
I know it's been mentioned, but has anyone tried it yet?
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So can you still gift $5 USD equivalent games to an account to unlock it? Or does that not count anymore as well?
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nope. but you can buy 5$ worth of gifts on your alt account and instead of activating them send them to your main. it will unlock the alt account.
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GOOD! /punches bot in the right, kicks bot in the left.
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While this is finally a good move on Valves part, there are still one thing they could do to tweak it to make it even better.
Instead of just buying something for 5 bucks and then being able to trade that thing away, it should be that you have to buy at least 5 dollars worth of games/programs and activate them on that account. This way they can't just buy stuff on sale and then trade/sell it off later for a little more.
Unless I missed something and thats how its suppose to work.
It also still doesn't stop bot accounts that have been highjacked, but at least its a step in the right direction.
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5$ is a small price to pay for getting rid of the majority of the spambots.
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Since this came out, I've been getting way more bot invites. That...totally makes sense. Probably just Gabe testing the system. :P
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interesting... I haven't gotten any. so far so good for me
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it's only affected on new acc created after this new policies
maybe will reduce creation of bots in the future that need $5 to release limit access
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Hope so yes. retrospective locking will mess many real accounts who are unable to spend being students and dependent on family members of if accessed from public networks, gaming zones or shared wifi.
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Can someone tell me how to figure out if a particular account is in the restricted list.?
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try adding someone/leaving a comment on their profile to see
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I did, i can add and comment....does this means account is not restricted.?
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You can comment. He cannot comment if flagged limited. He can receive your trades. He can't give you stuff but. Really crazy. Its should be the other way round. LOL. Send a trade offer. Say you are account A and your friend is account B. Blue text at top in the trade box about account B with generic info like date of joining and since when you are friends means its fine. Else a red exclamation mark on that account and yellow text saying this is a limited account and not been used in steam for long means its a flagged account. That account also can't invite you to trade and you won't see it's items in his trade window. Normally in app inventory you will see the items in his inventory. But not in trade window.
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Send a trade offer. Say you are account A and your friend is account B. Blue text at top in the trade box about account B with generic info like date of joining and since when you are friends means its fine. Else a red exclamation mark on that account and yellow text saying this is a limited account and not been used in steam for long means its a flagged account. That account also can't invite you to trade and you won't see it's items in his trade window. Normally in app inventory you will see the items in his inventory. But not in trade window.
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Crazy Part do you want to know.?
I have a mining account....i save all the good stuff there in the inventory....obvsly that mining account doesn't have any games. but i can comment, add people and also make trades.!
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I think its work in progress as steam support must be flooded with real accounts hit in red last night. I feel in end old accounts before date of implementation will survive. I think that is the only logical thing.
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hahahaha i transferred back everything :D or else i will be stuck with nothing if it was remained in my mining account :D lol
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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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