My friend said he is farming it and has over 300 coal at the moment. He said he has by making multiple accounts but wouldn't that be VERY expensive?

12 years ago*

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Depends. If you only do the free achievements (Steam ones and F2P ones) Then it isn't expensive

12 years ago
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Don't they need to buy something to trade though?

12 years ago
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You can just buy a 1 euro game and you can trade with that.

12 years ago
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Well that does make it kinda cheap.

12 years ago
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Nope, 1 cent humble bundle codes work as well

12 years ago
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No more, you have to spend at least 1 dollar to get steam keys

12 years ago
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I think there are still plenty of people who bought them before the 1 dollar rule.

12 years ago
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but if you make new account, you can't trade any games (only coupons and coal) for 30 days...

12 years ago
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You should report him, you know? It's illegal to participate in the giveaway with more than 1 account plus with farming coal everyone else has less chances of winning anything in the grand giveaway. If he would actually win anything then he'd get his accounts banned for doing illegal actions...

12 years ago
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Actually, there are no rules against this. Stupid as it sounds, yes. But it technically is allowed.

I've looked through the steam terms of service and the competition terms, it 'isn't not-allowed'

12 years ago
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You can only participate with 1 account, that means that if you cheat by making more accounts you CAN'T participate in the grand giveaway, which would make the coal only usefull for crafting and trading, and that doesn't hurts anyone as far as i know

12 years ago
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They still can remove all games you got by that since it still ISN'T aloowed to farm it.

12 years ago
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Games you get are allowed to be kept, Valve always honour any games obtained, this is an error done by Valve, allowing this, so they will honour it. The coal will not count for contest entries, HOWEVER, they are allowed to craft it without breaking any rules.

12 years ago
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Games you get are allowed to be kept, Valve always honour any games obtained, this is an error done by Valve, allowing this, so they will honour it. The coal will not count for contest entries, HOWEVER, they are allowed to craft it without breaking any rules.

12 years ago
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Yeah, if one uses multiple accounts, said person just wont participate in the grand contest. What one does with the coal is one owns problem ;)

12 years ago
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damn that is some shitty loop hole. I guess steam hasn't thought of that.

12 years ago
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They should ban such people...

12 years ago
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Well now i know to redeem all my coal for shitty coupons.

12 years ago
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this is just like buying humble bundle for 0.01 cents... SUCKS (ok, buying humble bundle for 0.01 is worst)

12 years ago
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You know, they activate accounts using the 1 cent humble bundle codes :P

12 years ago
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as said before, now you need to spend at least 1$ to get the steam keys, but still - cheap

12 years ago
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Wow. Does that mean I can buy 100 humble bundles for $1, make 100 steam accounts, use steam achievement manager to get coals, craft them into coupons/games and give the coupons to friends whilst keeping the games I want or trading/selling them?! What the heck... HOW CAN THIS BE ALLOWED? IT'S LIKE INIFINITE GAMES FOR $1!!!!

12 years ago
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as far as i know the accounts need to be 90 days old(maybe 30 don't remember).. so if you already have the accounts made awhile ago, yes

12 years ago
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Holy crap. That means that someone out there basically has infinite games if they had a load of accounts before hand!

12 years ago
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No, you have to spend at least 1 dollar to get steam keys

12 years ago
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That limit ONLY counts against trading games, you can still gift games won and trade coal and coupons.

12 years ago
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For the record, Steam Achievement Manager is never allowed for anything.

12 years ago
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Coals don't last after the Holiday Sale, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't really see the point in farming coals in the hopes of getting a game. Most likely just useless coupons. It is much more easier and cheaper to buy coals off people.

12 years ago
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I know around 5 guys who got caught and banned for farming this way. 1 of them managed to get his account back. I was going to do it but backdown because of it.

12 years ago
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Valve can't and won't ban you for this. People have been doing this for almost every holiday event for this, this was just bad timing with the humble bundle out aswell.

As I said, it doesn't break any rules, it isn't necessarily good, but it isn't completely prohibited

12 years ago
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They can and already did deactivate the accounts of plenty people. Stop spreading out misinformation.

12 years ago
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Well, technically Valve are breaking the law there.

12 years ago
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They're not breaking any laws at all. They can do whatever they bloody want with your account.

Remember when you first started up Steam a while back and pressed "I AGREE" right after you skipped everything? Yeah. It was they equivalent of "I agree with your terms where you can do whatever you want with my account deem you find it suspicious."

12 years ago
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Yes they can. The rules of the event clearly states only 1 account is permitted. If they detect you have been exploiting with multiple accounts and the humble bundle you will get banned.

http://i.imgur.com/ll03t.png

12 years ago
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1.Buy Oddworld: Abes Oddysey (62 cents)
2.Give it to an account
3.Do the 5 free achievements
4.If you won a game, go to step 2. If you didn't, go to step 1.

12 years ago
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They should've limited stuff, buy games worth at least 10 euro if the account was made after the contest was announced, watchout for accounts that are turned off right after the contest and such.
I mean people are farming like mad and it's not fair, especially to people who do buy games just because they want them and get achieves.

And in the end, if indeed they don't check, people might get a lot of money's worth of games instead of people who actually use Steam fairly.

12 years ago
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Better idea = Accounts need to be active.
Like , steam user visits his account 2 days in one week.
If not , he has to wait about 2 weeks for his account to become "Active" again for competitions like this one.
And obviously , the 1dollar fee for making a active account. Also , after making a new account you have to wait the 2 weeks. I think this idea would deal with the problem of coalfarming and such. Since... I doubt anyone would visit his account/accounts every week twice to keep them active.

12 years ago
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I agree with both of you.

12 years ago
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Completely disagree... I think they would login to their account everyday or so... why would they not? They want to "check for the new achievements", right? Two weeks to regain access to your account after you just activated it again??? What? What if they don't have the opportunity to login everyday or week or so? I understand your urgency for security but there are those few users out there that will fall into that category and be lucked out because they don't have the means of logging in that often. Security, but not THAT strict.

12 years ago
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Very VERY bad idea to be honest. If they'd do something like this then they'd lose quite some costumers because of this. And paying 1$ to activate your account that has games? You have no idea how many people would leave Steam that way...

12 years ago
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WHAT!?
You didn't understand the point. Read it again but this time with brain.

12 years ago
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http://s43.radikal.ru/i099/1112/52/61c9e5cc448c.png - check this one, nd have fun guys

12 years ago
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I would kill them if that would happen to me o_O
Well once it did because I got hacked, but if they wouldn't re-activate my account ever again I'd demand a refund for all the games...they can't just take what you bought =/

12 years ago
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yes they can just take it, you agreed to it.

12 years ago
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When you are intentionally breaking their terms of service, they can do it.

12 years ago
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But the coal farmers havn't broken any terms? its strange but they havn't. Valve have compeltely missed out stating anything about "alternative accounts for promotions", Valves agreement doesn't like exploiting if said exploiting was for a commercial purpose, otherwise, they dont care

12 years ago
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Maybe they didn't break any "terms" but they are doing scamming steam trying to get more then other honest people.

12 years ago
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actually they don't need any reason to ban a steam account according to their user agreement they have all rights on any account

12 years ago
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Can you please show us the rest of the conversation?

12 years ago
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wasnt me dude ;) i got this pic from russian forum

12 years ago
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I doubt steam will check every accounts which may be a farm one. And they can't ban a guy if he has 125 coals on his account, even if these coals come from other accounts. They can't and that's really bad. Good news they'll add more security if they do this again.

12 years ago
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No they probably won't but they'll check the winners from the giveaway, for sure

12 years ago
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+1

12 years ago
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and now ppl with more than 1 account hope the will not winn anything :D

12 years ago
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They wouldn't need to check every account. They could just check for trades happening between users with the same IP. It would be pretty easy to track people who are cheating.

12 years ago
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If they started deactivating accounts, it would be a disaster for them, some may be innocent.
Many accounts from one IP, could be a care home? Or a military camp? Could be anywhere, where a PC is shared, could even be a library!

I've looked through the subscriber agreement, I cannot find any part of the agreement saying anything about exploiting promotions.

The only time the word exploited is mentioned: "this Agreement does not allow you to exploit the Software or any of its parts for any commercial purpose" -Coal farming is not a commercial purpose, so it doens't breach this.

Exploited is mentioned once more, but in the source sdk section of the agreement, so it is irrelevant.

So, If you happen to be a coal farmer, you have not breached any of valves agreements, if you used third party programs for achievments (For example) or modified the steam client or any games to make achievments easier then you may get banned.

12 years ago
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But you're not sure if you're gonna get a coal, what if you get a game or coupon? Plus you need coals for what exactly then to get other games and copuns and/or enter the draw...so it is commercial.

12 years ago
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But something that is "commercial" has the aim to make as much money as possible. Some of these coal farmers just want to get more games, so I am unsure if that would technically count as "commercial use"

12 years ago
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"Many accounts from one IP, could be a care home? Or a military camp? Could be anywhere, where a PC is shared, could even be a library!"

It's a big difference when an account is made right after the start of the promotion and contains only one cheap game than when it's old and actually worth something.
You see? We can now find all those bad guys and ban them!

12 years ago
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I believe they abused the indiegala's separate steam key bundle. 1 cent gets you like 5 accounts. Then doing the free steam achievements, and f2p ones gets you around 6-7 coal right now.

12 years ago
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I think they can tell if one person is abusing the system. It might not be obvious but a lot of these people seem to be trading and gifting all their winnings on their new fake accounts to their home/main account which makes it obvious. If someone get 20 trades in 1 day all 1 sided just giving coal and such, that's a huge red flag. I hope those people get banned.

12 years ago
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don't create multiple account.. it's just not worth it..

1000++ games in library
17 pages of coupons and games
hundreds of new friends added on the same date, and most of them are private accounts..
and it's all gone with one email :
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cSfwpKmeKjsJ:forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php%3Fgoto%3Dnewpost%26t%3D2389208+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

12 years ago
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I doubt it was a "8 000$" account. He probably invested like , 1000$ on it , sure , that is alot too. But. 7000$ of free games speaks of itself. He gives no chances to us others to win the 1# price. So shouldn't there be like. Max coal limit?

12 years ago
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Closed 12 years ago by Eon.