Steam restricting accounts which have not spent money

[Zontar]

To fight fishing and spamming which has been rampant on Steam for some time now (and only gotten worst recently), Valve is restricting accounts which have not spent 5$ will not be able to send friend invitations, vote on greenlight, sent messages or post content on workshop.

Personally, I'm in support of this. I've been getting a lot of spam invites over the past few months (once getting 10 within an hour).

 

[snekadid]

This could screw over younger users who are stuck with no money or credit card and just play F2P stuff like Smite. When I first signed up on Steam I don't think I even had a card for an ATM let alone online purchasing.

Most of the F2P stuff offers their own private friends lists that exist outside of steam friends list. Plus it only limits people sending friends requests, not accepting them.

To emphasize the problem, I just got another random friend request from a level 0 secret profile person, the 4th in 3 days. Nothing but scammers and dickbags, as far as the eye can see. This is a necessary evil.

 

[Flammablezeus]

I'm in support of this. It's hard not to spend money on there. It's not like you need a credit/debit card anyway, since you can buy physical copies of games and activate them.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

It sounds like a bad idea to me. I understand there's a problem but I don't think this is the best way to deal with it. I have a steam account but I haven't bought anything on it yet, imagine I will in the future though.

Just as an example of how this could be bad, if two friends opened Steam accounts and got a F2P multiplayer game so they could play together, how could they? Neither of them can send friend invites because neither of them have spent $5. Should they have to spend that money first before they can play together? What if they're teenagers or something and can't add money to their account?

 

[Zontar]

It sounds like a bad idea to me. I understand there's a problem but I don't think this is the best way to deal with it. I have a steam account but I haven't bought anything on it yet, imagine I will in the future though.

Just as an example of how this could be bad, if two friends opened Steam accounts and got a F2P multiplayer game so they could play together, how could they? Neither of them can send friend invites because neither of them have spent $5. Should they have to spend that money first before they can play together? What if they're teenagers or something and can't add money to their account?

Unless it's TF2 or Dota 2, they'd probably be able to add each other on the in game friends list instead of through steam. Plus, given how easy it is to get money for steam (you can get cards at Gamestop) it's not that big of a deal.

Plus, given how few users are in such a situation, it's worth it when taking into account the near systemic problem of bots that has only gotten worst over the past year.

 

[kris40k]

I am in support of this as it will put a monetary cost to the amount of account creation/abuse from accounts that quickly get banned from service.

A one time cost of $5.00 is not much to ask for someone to open up full functionality. Many F2P games do similar to prevent farming/spamming accounts from being created.

 

[Flammablezeus]

It sounds like a bad idea to me. I understand there's a problem but I don't think this is the best way to deal with it. I have a steam account but I haven't bought anything on it yet, imagine I will in the future though.

Just as an example of how this could be bad, if two friends opened Steam accounts and got a F2P multiplayer game so they could play together, how could they? Neither of them can send friend invites because neither of them have spent $5. Should they have to spend that money first before they can play together? What if they're teenagers or something and can't add money to their account?

If they're teenagers and can't add money to their account then they need to stop wasting their money. It's not hard to make $5. I worked a paper route when I was 11 and got a fast food job at 15. As somebody else mentioned, free-to-play multiplayer games usually have their own friends lists anyway.

 

[Tayh]

So steam officially has a paywall now.
What's next - premium subscription?

 

[Zontar]

So steam officially has a paywall now.
What's next - premium subscription?

You can still install steam and play free to play games, you just can't send invites, vote for greenlight, write reviews or post workshop material.

Honestly if you're the type of person who isn't using bots who hasn't spent 5$ on steam, it's unlikely you'd be doing any of those things anyway.

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

So steam officially has a paywall now.
What's next - premium subscription?

Well, considering all the features and games you get for a one time payment of 5 bucks...

Seriously, I fail to see this being a big deal, at worst, people spend 5 quid at a steam sale and get 12 games for it.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

I honestly hope that this includes Steam Card Money, because I know I've spent some money (More then 5 Dollars certainly), but I've spent more Steam Card Money then real money. It'd suck if you absolutely have to spend real money to get these features.

Also, I can see where Valve is coming from with setting these up, but I'm not sure I agree with it.

 

[Darks63]

As long as its 5 dollars one time only I'm fine with this. If it turns into having to spend 5 dollars every x amount of months then I will have a beef with it. I have been lacking funds as of this year and wont likely spend any money on anything anytime soon and I dont want be punished for that.

 

[Mutant1988]

This is actually proven to be an effective way to cull unwanted elements, such as trolls, spammers and scammers. Same reason why Something Awful has a 10$ cost for signing up.

Even if it doesn't deter those people and bots, someone still makes money from it. Of course, I can think of a ridiculously easy way to get around this on a market service - Make your own dummy product, pay money to yourself. Valve gets a cut, sure, but they might still get enough bots through to make it profitable.

 

[VanQ]

Oh thank god. Maybe I can finally stop having to block ten level 0 accounts and checking my comments to delete links to phishing sites on a daily basis.


It's not hard to spend $5 on Steam and you don't need a credit card to do it anymore. You can buy physical cards with Steam Wallet credit like PSN cards and paypal is an option too. Anyone with a bank account should be able to manage this.

You also don't have to worry if you've already spent money on Steam. Spending $5 on games ups your level from 0 to 1 so if you're level 1 or higher this won't effect you.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

This doesn't seem like a bad idea. I get why some people might immediately scoff at any idea, but $5 is nothing, and there is a real problem with bots and spammers. Even if this negatively impacts a few people who only use the service for free games, well, who cares really. They aren't actually customers if they don't buy anything, so I don' think it's that much of a big deal if they don't have access to certain fetures.

 

[DementedSheep]

I'm fine with this. I can't imagine the group of people (excluding scammers) that use steam, have spent less than $5 and want to send friend invites, vote on greenlight or post workshop content is a particularly large one and the bots are becoming a problem. If you are playing the online FTP games most of those have their own friends list and messaging system anyway.

 

[Alfador_VII]

Very happy for this, been getting spam friend invites for ages. If this reduces them, great

So steam officially has a paywall now.
What's next - premium subscription?

It's definitely not a paywall, all features of all Steam games will still work if somehow you haven't bought $5 of them. It just restricts friend invites and messaging.

 

[Fhqwhgod]

Over the last week I had 2 people trying to pish my account. Yeah I like the idea but in the end it will be useless. Because once they have one account they will just send their messages from that account without any limitations and it just snowballs on.

It's definitely not a paywall, all features of all Steam games will still work if somehow you haven't bought $5 of them. It just restricts friend invites and messaging.

Isn't stuff like drops in TF2 & DOTA 2 still limited to accounts that have at least 1 non f2p title registered to their account? Not that it's hard to get an unwanted steamkey from some bundle.