Steam made me a pirate!

[Fangface74]

Do not sell games that you have already registered to your account or you're just as big of a douche as the guy who hacked your account.

Not sure what you mean...if it clarifys anything, it's Xbox360 versions of anything made by Valve to fund my reacquisition of my Steam accounts original state.

 

[Dele]

This was sparked by johnman's "Pirate copy of Fallout 3" thread

In a nutshell:

My Steam account got hacked, by the time (just over 3 weeks) Valve let me know it had indeed been hijacked and had reset my password. Logging in I found my account VAC banned. I was told that the ban would not be lifted and no information would be provided; like the type of cheat used or on what servers (like I give a shit), so now I sell copy's of L4D and the Orange Box to buy my honestly purchased Steam games again. Googling this situation shows Steam doesn't budge on this issue except in exceptional situations.

To all at Valve, I love your games, but take an unjustified, hard stance with me...expect the same in return. I'm not proud, but I've done nothing wrong yet receiving a penalty.

Why did you buy those games from Steam when you could gotten them cheaper from retail?

 

[-616-]

Write to Valve, post on their forums, etc. You'll eventually get your account un-VAC banned.

VAC bans are rarely ever lifted no matter how much whining one does.

 

[J-Man]

Write to Valve, post on their forums, etc. You'll eventually get your account un-VAC banned.

VAC bans are rarely ever lifted no matter how much whining one does.

Unless under certain circumstances - an account hijacking, acknowledged by Valve, is a pretty sure bet of a ban removal.

 

[_Serendipity_]

Well, that sucks a lot. All you can really do is e-mail valve a lot and hope that they feel pity for you.

On a side note, I walked into a second hand game store, and there are loads of copies of Left 4 Dead and the Orange Box (for PC) on the shelves. Either I'm missing something, or someone's getting mightily screwed over...

 

[-616-]

Write to Valve, post on their forums, etc. You'll eventually get your account un-VAC banned.

VAC bans are rarely ever lifted no matter how much whining one does.

Unless under certain circumstances - an account hijacking, acknowledged by Valve, is a pretty sure bet of a ban removal.

Yes, in the rare case - which is why I said rarely.

 

[Fangface74]

Like -616- said, there not going to help me, they're quiet clear on this

And to all the "You've only got yourself to blame" crew...one question;

how exactly?

Accounts get jacked all the time, it's just the luck of the draw, it's Valve's treatment after I object to.

 

[-616-]

Because you don't know how to effectively protect your account of hackers.
Or maybe because you downloaded a virus without knowing and it key logged you of your password.

The only one here to blame is yourself. Not Valve.

He's right... protecting your password is quite easy if you stay away from shady sites and aren't dumb enough to fall in to a phishing scam. VALVe will never ask you for your password.

 

[Axolotl]

If your account got hacked then there's no one to blame but yourself.

That's all I have to say about this.

Surely the hacker is more to blame?

 

[geldonyetich]

now I sell copy's of L4D and the Orange Box to buy my honestly purchased Steam games again

I'm running under the assumption that what you mean by this is that you've got a key generator and are now over on eBay or somesuch selling several fake copies of L4D and Orange Box, because this sentence only makes sense under English that way. Of course, titling the thread, "Steam made me a pirate" only helps to confirm this.

So, basically, the scenario breaks down like this:

• [li]Valve locks the OP's account for his own protection (to stop the pirate from committing crimes in his name and sticking him with all sorts of identity-theft-related problems).[/li]
  [li]The OP gets ticked off his account was locked so he decides to go commit a crime by selling illegal copies of their games to get a new account working.[/li]
  [li]Then he comes here to this forum to brag about his thoroughly illegal actions believing that the Escapist will protect him if Valve hears about this and decides to press charges.[/li]

Not the sharpest tool in the drawer, is he?

Here's what you should have done: Call Valve's tech support line and explain what happened. Chances are, a face-to-face with their customer over the phone would have been enough to get your account back online. They'll do some kind of verification, unlock your account, and you would have been good to go.

I know this because I had my account locked once. All I had to do to get it back up and running was send them an email with a digital photo of the CD case with the code. Given this physical evidence, they believed I was me, so reset my password and I was good to go.

As for the OP, I would just pray that Valve's legal department doesn't hear about this. They don't often get a chance to crucify pirates on account of how they're generally not stupid enough to identify themselves.

 

[DragunovHUN]

Do not sell games that you have already registered to your account or you're just as big of a douche as the guy who hacked your account.

Not sure what you mean...if it clarifys anything, it's Xbox360 versions of anything made by Valve to fund my reacquisition of my Steam accounts original state.

Oh right 360 versions. Initially i thought you were going to sell the discs of your Steam games that you already registered. Nevermind then.

 

[_Serendipity_]

Because you don't know how to effectively protect your account of hackers.
Or maybe because you downloaded a virus without knowing and it key logged you of your password.

The only one here to blame is yourself. Not Valve.

He's right... protecting your password is quite easy if you stay away from shady sites and aren't dumb enough to fall in to a phishing scam. VALVe will never ask you for your password.

Whilst you are more or less right, that doesn't really invalidate the fact that his account got hacked, and that he got banned for no fault of his own. Someone who walks through a bad part of town on their own and gets mugged still deserves support and sympathy (and maybe a little advice about bringing a friend next time...) from people, even if they weren't as careful as they could be.

 

[Handofpwn]

Like -616- said, there not going to help me, they're quiet clear on this

And to all the "You've only got yourself to blame" crew...one question;

how exactly?

Because you don't know how to effectively protect your account of hackers.
Or maybe because you downloaded a virus without knowing and it key logged you of your password.

how exactly is it his fault that a keylogger took his details without his knowledge? No matter how careful you are, there is always the chance that you could get an E-STD.

 

[KungFuMaster]

now I sell copy's of L4D and the Orange Box to buy my honestly purchased Steam games again

I'm running under the assumption that what you mean by this is that you've got a keygen and are selling several copies of L4D and Orange Box, because this sentence only makes sense under English that way. Of course, titling the thread, "Steam made me a pirate" only helps to confirm this.

Somebody obviously didn't read the whole thread...

Seriously, though, CALL them, my friend Nick managed to get his ban lifted after talking to a real person.

 

[Handofpwn]

Like -616- said, there not going to help me, they're quiet clear on this

And to all the "You've only got yourself to blame" crew...one question;

how exactly?

Because you don't know how to effectively protect your account of hackers.
Or maybe because you downloaded a virus without knowing and it key logged you of your password.

how exactly is it his fault that a keylogger took his details without his knowledge? No matter how careful you are, there is always the chance that you could get an E-STD.

Really?
It never happened to me or other people who are conscious about Internet that I know off.

Edit:

I also would like to say that I'm a pirate, I go to malicious sites, I've been playing WoW for 2 years now and I never got any problems with anything.

I know how those programs work, I know how hackers access accounts, and I know how to defend myself.

I know how to defend myself as well, but not everyone is tech savvy or has the money to buy one of those expensive anti virus software packages. All I can say to the people who cant afford it is to get the free vlc antivirus.

 

[geldonyetich]

Somebody obviously didn't read the whole thread...

[This was a reply to KungFuMaster's original post, just having my entire post quoted followed by the above comment, before he edited and clarified. ]

Since you're too busy making unnecessary block quotes and snarky remarks to clarify, I'll assume you're referring to this:

I don't think this is an exceptional case, I understand that accounts get hacked daily, but to take away from the wronged party is, well....wrong.

They received a number of emails from me providing proof of purchase, the IP I play from and all manner of 'What about if I....." scenarios, they just won't budge.

The trouble with this is I don't know exactly how it went down. It could just be he happened to have reached the sole idiot in Valve's support department who bungled his case. Does that give him license to start peddling illegal copies of their games on the Internet? No. And a judge would agree.

[Having seen you were specifically referring to his references about selling his existing copies of XBox games, I'm not sure I believe him when he said that. He goes from "I'm a pirate selling several copies" to "I'm actually just selling my existing 360 copies and this has nothing to do with piracy."]