Steam Account Banned

[partyguy]

So the other day I turn on my computer like i always do. Xfire, MSN, and Steam i have set to automatically connect and a message pops up saying steam need my password. No problem; it happens occasionally. I can't login and try to reset my password. No email so i contact support and they say "Your steam account has been disabled due to illegal activity on your account. Your account will not be reactivated."

The only thing i can attribute to this "illegal activity" is that i have been playing counter-strike for a long time. I am no pro but consider myself exceptional player. But i know other great players who have never had their entire account banned just because they were good. Otherwise my account could have been hijacked. I don't see why i would not be reactivated if this was the case however.

The big issue here is that i have always been a huge fan of steam. I even do everything in my power to turn my friends on to steam. I wipe my computer frequently and have issues keeping track of game discs and CD keys. I have over 50 games on my account and routinely defend steam from anybody. This is still more about the principle than the lost games.

I have a friend who had a similar thing happen to him when he was quite young and innocent. The result turned him into a pirate and he actually insists on pirating every game released ENTIRELY due to a false accusation of illegal activity.

I am curious as to if anybody has had a similar experience with steam and how they responded. Did you just move on? Turn pirate? Make a new account? Perhaps you just want to flame steam...

 

[funksobeefy]

call their customer service hotline

 

[BolognaBaloney]

Call the customer support, if no help there, then grab an eye-patch, because it's pirate time.

 

[partyguy]

You really cant call steam from what i can tell. The main idea of this topic is if anyone had similar experiences. Not "OH TEH NOES I HAVE BEEN GHEEEED WTF MATE!!??"

And i do believe that you only get VAC banned. However they said illegal activity and not exploiting game mechanics or anything like that.

I realize there are people doing illegal things out there and steam needs to be on the guard, but i would hate to have to cast it into my list of disappointing things because of this.

 

[13lackfriday]

I don't see how you could have been banned from your steam account altogether...

In personal experience, I got my account hijacked after I stupidly lent it to someone I thought I could trust.
I got it back by contacting Steam Support, but it happened repeatedly afterwards.
The next time I logged onto Steam, I found I'd been VAC-banned, which means the little bastard hacked back in just to plant some naughty evidence and render it essentially useless for online play.

 

[Skwee]

There are ways on the internet to pirate games and still have them in your steam list as if you bought them, I know because a friend of mine did it a long time ago. If steam somehow misplaced or deleted your registration of one of your games then it would be registered as a pirated copy on their servers and thus you would be reported as such.

I happen to take snapshots of my receipts from steam so that if it ever happens to me I can just say "here are all my receipts, give me my account back"

 

[redsoxfantom]

I've never had a problem with Steam, although I have had ENORMOUS problems with other games *cough*Spore*cough* so I can see where your friend's coming from. Don't know how to fix your problem other than calling up Steam, sorry.

 

[NotAPie]

There are ways on the internet to pirate games and still have them in your steam list as if you bought them, I know because a friend of mine did it a long time ago. If steam somehow misplaced or deleted your registration of one of your games then it would be registered as a pirated copy on their servers and thus you would be reported as such.

I happen to take snapshots of my receipts from steam so that if it ever happens to me I can just say "here are all my receipts, give me my account back"

I'm going to do that from now on.

 

[Ushario]

I've had my steam account shut down previously for supposedly participating in some kind of illegal activity. I gave their customer support a call and sorted it all out, they were reasonable, especially after I told them I only ever used steam on the one computer.

Apparently the illegal activities occured on someone else's PC, so bam they un-banned my account.

 

[sgtshock]

I'm fairly certain you can't be banned by VAC based purely on someone's testament. That's what VAC is for, figuring out if you use hacks or not.

Did you ever give out your password to anyone? If you ever gave out your password to a friend or a "Steam official" in steam chat, you could have had your account hacked.

 

[partyguy]

Good news... I took screens of all my receipts and sent them to steam. They decided it was a jacked account and returned it to me. I celebrated by spending money on valve games.

 

[tucci]

Yah i got my account hacked once, i was still a kid back then, the only game i had bought was css (thankfully) and i never got it back.

Then i made a new account and just moved on, i guess that's just the way things go sometimes, ya know?

*Slowly walks to his horse, gets on, and rides off into the sunset*

 

[Knonsense]

Contact support again. Someone else will probably get it, and they might be more reasonable.

Did they elaborate on the accusations? Because I thought that even if you did get flagged with VAC, that only banned you from VAC secured servers, not Steam. EDIT: Read other posts.

 

[blaze96]

recently I got to make the rounds of my account being declared non-existent, but steam support was helpful and I got back to gaming, that is until trying to join a L4D server caused my internet to crash every time I tried but eh.

 

[kiltmanfortywo]

damn, sorry to hear that. Like everybody else said, give valve support a call and talk to them.

Its unfortunate that they have to do things like this, but it means that they are actually doing things there to prevent and punish illegal activity. Some people are bound to get caught in the cross fire, but luckily getting out of it should be simple enough.

 

[not a zaar]

Are you seriously suggesting that you were banned from Steam because you were just that good at Counter Strike? That is so sad it's not even funny.

 

[wonderbanana]

I'm fairly certain you can't be banned by VAC based purely on someone's testament.

You can't.

You only get banned for cheats that VAC picks up and in some rare cases programs that modifies the games core files. Hence why downloading mods from a legimate trusted source is a must.

It's possible your account was hacked. Contact Steam support.