Steam restricting accounts which have not spent money

[Volothos]

I staunchly disagree with this implementation as we have been having functions locked away or held for ransom for quite a while now.

They took away the /me functionality because people used it to impersonate as staff members despite the notice at the start of every chat telling you to never tell your password to anyone.

If I recall correctly, you couldn't even add a friend on a new account to begin with unless you at least bought a game. Maybe this one changed.

They limited your friend list cap behind the level system which is completely unnecessary.

And now this. They're slowly taking away pieces of what was a good client and it honestly worries me how positive everyone is being.

 

[Rayce Archer]

I 100% support this. It's a PITA ignoring 8 or 10 people every time I check my friends list.

 

[EvilRoy]

I staunchly disagree with this implementation as we have been having functions locked away or held for ransom for quite a while now.

They took away the /me functionality because people used it to impersonate as staff members despite the notice at the start of every chat telling you to never tell your password to anyone.

If I recall correctly, you couldn't even add a friend on a new account to begin with unless you at least bought a game. Maybe this one changed.

They limited your friend list cap behind the level system which is completely unnecessary.

And now this. They're slowly taking away pieces of what was a good client and it honestly worries me how positive everyone is being.

I can't speak to the other changes you mention (didn't even notice them to be honest), but I do understand why people are so happy about this. A big part of how scammers/phishers/whiners pester people is through unwanted friend requests and board posts - not to mention abusing the already shit system of greenlight by creating fake accounts to vote with. Adding in this paywall at least prevents people from being able to annoy others or abuse the voting system without inconveniencing themselves, while at the same time being cheap enough to allow for reasonable "mom please" requests to avoid it for people who legitimately are unable to spend money on steam. I'm for parental involvement in childrens gaming habits anyway, so I would support this if for no other reason that it might increase parental awareness of what games their kids are playing on steam.

 

[Elijin]

Havent bought anything from steam store =/= does not pay anything. First ~20 games of mine were gained by recieving keys to activate. my steam account balance shown i have spent 0 at that time. yet im sure steam took a cut when i bought the key.
Also in business a customer is defined as [http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/customer.html] A party that receives or consumes products (goods or services) and has the ability to choose between different products and suppliers.

Payment is not required for customer to fit the definition.

You're a paying customer. Or at least, someone is a paying customer on your behalf. If it can be registered on steam, it has a designated financial value in the steam system. You're automatically assumed to have that account value, when a check like this is made.

If you were talking about how you throw non-steam executables into steam, to play other games and use the steam overlay UI to communicate with friends, it'd be one thing. But what you're doing is like saying you're not a customer of your local shops, because you use pre-paid gift cards to get what you need, and have never once made a transaction yourself with them.

 

[Rayce Archer]

Look for those of you who still think this is unfair, consider this: SOOOO many indi devs are going to see spikes in sales as scammers gobble up whatever the cheapest titles are so they can keep scamming! It's GOOD FOR DEVELOPERS!

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I'm actually somewhat surprised how much support this has. Imagine the kind of insane shitstorm there would be if this were Origin instead of Steam.

 

[DoPo]

I'm actually somewhat surprised how much support this has. Imagine the kind of insane shitstorm there would be if this were Origin instead of Steam.

Well, Origin doesn't have as many scammers lurking around, so it doesn't need to implement such a measure. Moreover, Origin doesn't have as much to restrict, either.

If you were suggesting some sort of equivalence, there isn't, really.

 

[aozgolo]

As a steam user who has spent several hundreds of dollars on there, I'm in full support of this. I consistently get friend invites from spam accounts that have no steam rank, no games, nothing at all to their account, and they try to scam you out of your account by getting you to log into fake sites under the guise of offering trades with you, I've never been duped but I get new spam friend invites like this almost daily and it's very annoying.

I understand some people who only use Steam for the F2P games may not like this, but Steam is a digital rights management and distribution platform first, and a social messenger second, and I personally feel that the protection of paying consumers from scammers outweighs the inconvenience of F2P users. This is a rather low entry point to be honest, $5 is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things and there's plenty of great deals on games for that price for people to take advantage of.

This seems like a very good method for combatting unscrupulous accounts who just want to scam people out of their account info. I'm not even sure what these scammers do with the accounts, maybe sell them? or sell the items in their inventory for profit? I'm not sure but either way this will dissuade most scam problems that happen through Steam.

 

[DEAD34345]

I don't really like the idea, it will screw over younger kids who don't have any access to disposable income. I suppose Valve doesn't really have much incentive to help out non-paying Steam users, but on the other hand, those kids can become lucrative customers later in life, and perhaps they will be less likely to do so now. On the mutant third hand maybe other users will enjoy and spend more on Steam with less spammers around.

I don't really know, but I do know it's shitty enough to have to play nothing but crappy free 2 play games online all the time in the first place, and this will make it slightly worse.

*Edit* Also, I've never received any spam on Steam, so I can't really comment on that. Surely you only even look at the friend requests of people you've already decided to befriend anyway, though? What difference does more or less random ones you're going to decline make?

 

[aozgolo]

*Edit* Also, I've never received any spam on Steam, so I can't really comment on that. Surely you only even look at the friend requests of people you've already decided to befriend anyway, though? What difference does more or less random ones you're going to decline make?

I believe it's a better business practice to remove the exploit in the system that allows scammers to do this in the first place than to hope everyone is smart enough to know how to screen their incoming friend requests. Not to mention that there's many sources of legitimate friend requests outside of your own circle of friends, steam groups, facebook, online games, etc.

It's better to make your system foolproof, that's smart customer service.

As to the other issue, there are many alternatives to the steam friend's list for social interaction, many of which are better, the only real advantage is in some F2P games having the ability to queue directly up with friends, again though I think $5 is a low entry point for someone to get access to this feature and players who utilize the social aspects of Steam regularly I can't see being too stingy to go through with that or find a suitable alternative.

 

[babinro]

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.

I agree.

Seems like a potentially better solution would have been to give steam account users the ability to auto-ignore all requests of Steam Level X or lower. Since all spam invites are level 0 this would resolve that problem. Since the USER could set the base level it would make it challenging for a spammer to adjust and work the system.

 

[AT God]

I support this as well, I don't trade with people and have made that clear to any person who has asked but I still get 3-4 random invites from brand new accounts to trade as well as be friends. It just gets annoying having the little invite thingy pop-up every few minutes and I feel that requiring accounts to spend money before being able to mass spam people is a good idea because I feel it will help decrease spam significantly.

If it is successful at stopping the problem I will somewhat miss the random attempts at friendship. I kinda want to start documenting the names and avatars I get because there is probably a very clear pattern. Most of the time the display name is just a woman's name, and the picture is often some anime character.

I did get one that was pretty funny earlier this week, it was the name "Jessica" but the avatar was a image of a fat white guy that looked like it was stolen from a Let's Play reaction video. Thought that was pretty funny and will miss that sort of thing.

 

[Atmos Duality]

About fucking time. I'm tired of having to cleanse my inbox just because I made another review or such.

 

[Major_Tom]

This also includes retail games activated through Steam and keys from Humble store and such? If not, it's kind of a dick move. And yes, I get spam requests constantly, but if it hurts legitimate customers, it's not worth it.

 

[DoPo]

This also includes retail games activated through Steam and keys from Humble store and such?

No, only money that goes to Steam directly counts: here is the Steam FAQ on it [https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3330-IAGK-7663].

 

[GodzillaGuy92]

This is a godsend for Greenlight in particular. It's not the same as the full-on Q.A. that Valve ought to have been doing on its releases for several years now, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

 

[FPLOON]

Wait... is it just $5 (or more) in your account's entire lifetime? *whew* For a second there, I thought I wouldn't have to support this on principle, alone... Thanks, Skullgirls...

Other than that, I'm now picturing $5 spammers on Steam... *internally laughing throughout*

 

[KenAri]

I think this is way overkill for the problem they're trying to solve. A group of kids from school can't play TF2 together because they can't add eachother as friends? Talk about innocent people getting caught in the crossfire.

They could make level 0 accounts able to add other level 0 accounts as friends, which would solve that problem. <-- Good idea right there.

But are scammers really that much of a problem? I like the Greenlight prevention thing; that's a good one. Posting comments is good as well; those aren't things that f2p people need to do. But the ability to play with your friends? That's pretty silly.

 

[Signa]

people can pay quite a lot without showing up on steams account balance. for example - every physical or digital copy activated through steam that was not bought directly through steam store. bought a physical copy? still spent 0 on steam account page. bought from amazon? still spent 0 on steam account page.

Edit: fixed quotes

Do we know if keys/activations don't count towards your $5 total? I'm making an assumption here, but I would think that they would.

 

[DoPo]

people can pay quite a lot without showing up on steams account balance. for example - every physical or digital copy activated through steam that was not bought directly through steam store. bought a physical copy? still spent 0 on steam account page. bought from amazon? still spent 0 on steam account page.

Edit: fixed quotes

Do we know if keys/activations don't count towards your $5 total? I'm making an assumption here, but I would think that they would.

They don't.

This also includes retail games activated through Steam and keys from Humble store and such?

No, only money that goes to Steam directly counts: here is the Steam FAQ on it [https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3330-IAGK-7663].