Venting Steam

[Iwata]

Hey people.

Now, before I go into details, I should clarify that it is not my intention to turn this into a hate thread, but knowing people here, I have no doubts that some will have inflamed opinions about the subject matter, for better or for worse.

Alright.

This happened to me about a year and a half ago, but I've recently thought about explaining it here in full, to serve as a cautionary tale, of sorts.

I was a PC gamer most of my life. Up until very recently, in fact. I got my first PC back in the early 90's, and ran with the system until about 2009. What happened in the meantime? Well, I found that the PC was becoming a less-than-ideal platform for gaming, but one incident in particular threw me off completely.

Steam.

Now, I was skeptical of Steam when I first had to install it with Half-Life 2. Eventually, though, I grew accustomed to its ease of use, automatic updates, and other advantages. My games library of Steam-enabled games grew. I then went off-line for a few months, as I moved houses, and my PC was left in a corner, ignored in favor of my newly-bought PS3.

After a while, though, I decided to reconnect my PC, and finish my neglected playthrough of Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising.

It would not let me log in. How bizarre. I tried it all, and it simply refused to let me log into my account. After many tries, I contacted Support directly, and explained my problem. The answer? My account was "suspended". No further explanation, just that. I repeatedly requested clarification of why my account was suspended, and they literally just copy-pasted the same response. My account was suspended.

I pressed the matter. Eventually, they started requesting that I take a photo of a certain manual with a certain keycode. No mention of even a game name, just "take a photo of a manual with this number". I explained repeatedly that, at the time, I had no means of taking said photo, but furthermore, I had no game with that key. After a while, they finally revealed that the game in question was "Metro 2033"... a game I have never owned. No wonder I couldn't find the keycode they were asking for.

After much back-and-forth, with me asking, pleading and requesting clarification and assistance, and them literally just copy-pasting the same replies, a different reply arrived: "you account has been deactivated. Thank you."

Now, at this point, I'd like to make one point very clear: I have never copied a game, or downloaded a pirate version. I buy all my games, and always have. Similarly, I rarely, if ever play online, and don't even know if that can open an infraction with this penalty.

After many, many months of on-again, off-again contact, I gave up. I even contacted some of the game developers like Relic and Creative Assembly, but they told me there was nothing they could do: it was all up to Steam.

And what bothers me most is that for all intents and purposes, Steam robbed me without a gun. They took hundreds of Euros in games that I have legally bought, and simply went home with them. I have them, they're in my drawers, but I can't play them. Because... well, I don't know why and given Steam's silence, I don't think I ever will. The fact of the matter is, I went from buying dozens of PC games a year, to buying just three in the past year and a half... and two of them required me to create a new Steam account (ironically, one of them is indeed Metro 2033. The other is the Dawn of War II Trilogy)!

I wrote this as objectively as I could. I have no doubt that to many, Steam is the best thing to happen to PC gaming in years. I know, because I once started thinking exactly that. I am similarly aware that the vocal minority who hate the program will jump on this example. But I have never before had a situation where a company simply took my property and forbade me to use it, without a simple "because".

So, take this as you will. But the truth of the matter is, since then, my PS3 has never seen so much activity... and similarly, my PC has never had such prolonged breaks. As in, months pass before I sit in front of it to play a game.

An incomplete list of games that Steam whisked away:

- Half-Life 2
- The Orange Box
- Left 4 Dead
- Left 4 Dead 2
- Order of War
- Dawn of War II
- Dawn of War II Gold
- Empire: Total War (Imperial Edition)

And more besides, all bought at full price.

 

[Pinkamena]

Sorry that this happened to you, I've never heard of such an instance before. I guess shit happens, eh?

 

[Atheist.]

If you're telling the truth and didn't pirate any game you should be within your legal right to download them off torrents. Granted you won't be able to play on Steam's servers online, but you should be able to get your single player games back. Not sure if I'm right here, so someone correct me if I'm wrong. I don't want to advocate him to do anything illegal.

 

[Hiname]

Hmm... don't nail me down here, but..

You said you moved? Did you changed your adress on your steam account? As far as I remember, when steam notices that an account loggs in from a much different location then ussual, it locks down instantly.

Well, yes, of course, customer support should have noted such a thing. Or maybe you just pissed of some GM while at it, only hell and valve know for sure.
Sucks to be you then I guess, sorry dude. *pats and offers a few cookies for compensation*

 

[Irridium]

Yep. That's the side of using Steam nobody talks about. If something happens with Steam, your shit out of luck when it comes to playing the games you bought. It's why I always buy physical when I can, and always buy the non-Steam version if I can.

It's not good to keep all your eggs in one basket, no matter how good the basket looks.

 

[Olofelefant]

If you're telling the truth and didn't pirate any game you should be within your legal right to download them off torrents. Granted you won't be able to play on Steam's servers online, but you should be able to get your single player games back. Not sure if I'm right here, so someone correct me if I'm wrong. I don't want to advocate him to do anything illegal.

Nope. He's still not allowed to illegally download th titles, despite him having bought the games and being unable to play them. Shit happens bro.

 

[Signa]

that's a massive load of bullshit on Valve's part. I wonder if you got hacked while you were inactive for so long and some one screwed with you while your PC was in storage.

I have to ask how much effort you put into letting them know you didn't own Metro or know how it was associated with your account. It sounds like Steam is under the impression that you tried to add a fake CD key to your account and that's why they banned you.

 

[Atheist.]

If you're telling the truth and didn't pirate any game you should be within your legal right to download them off torrents. Granted you won't be able to play on Steam's servers online, but you should be able to get your single player games back. Not sure if I'm right here, so someone correct me if I'm wrong. I don't want to advocate him to do anything illegal.

Nope. He's still not allowed to illegally download th titles, despite him having bought the games and being unable to play them. Shit happens bro.

Huh, I guess I didn't know that. I thought it was the same deal as with ROMS that you can download when you own the original cartridge.

 

[Staskala]

If you have a bit of money lying around you could try suing Valve.
Your chances should be pretty decent and there's a lot of internet fame to gain if you win.

Or, you know, just circumvent steam. Legally, of course.

 

[psicat]

It happens sometimes, my brother was in a similar situation with his account. And, of course if your account is deactivated you lose all your games and can't do anything. It's basically in the Steam EULA that you don't own your games it's just a subscription that they can take away at any time at their discretion.

Part of the reason I have a self imposed limit with Steam. I don't buy anything for more than $10 and I'll never buy more than a dozen games through them. So basically I just use Steam for Portal, Half-Life 1, and a few other games I picked up dirt cheap. I prefer to buy my games through GOG, GamersGate, or just on a console.

 

[Iwata]

It happens sometimes, my brother was in a similar situation with his account. And, of course if your account is deactivated you lose all your games and can't do anything. It's basically in the Steam EULA that you don't own your games it's just a subscription that they can take away at any time at their discretion.

That's part of what makes me mad. I own the game discs. They're right here, not two meters from me. Yet they're the only pieces of media I can't run, because of an obscure company decision that they never shared with me, the person who actually bought the things.

 

[WolfLordAndy]

From the sound of it your account could have been hacked at some stage while you didn't use it, and then a stolen credit card used to buy games with it or something to that effect. I had a friend that happened to, although he got his account back in the end after very long chain of emails with steam. He even had the games illegally bought on his account for a couple weeks before they removed them, so he got to play the singleplayer campaigns on them!

 

[Halo Fanboy]

buy the valve pack and then sell the disk games. Might be a net profit

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

Wow thats shit.

I still don't understand steam since Iv'e never used it.
Why can't you play the games if you own a physical disc? How does steam actually prevent you from doing that? (just out of curiosity)

 

[Mad World]

Ridiculous. You shouldn't take that. Personally, I'd phone, e-mail... whatever in order to get them back. You paid for them; you deserve to keep them.

 

[psicat]

It happens sometimes, my brother was in a similar situation with his account. And, of course if your account is deactivated you lose all your games and can't do anything. It's basically in the Steam EULA that you don't own your games it's just a subscription that they can take away at any time at their discretion.

That's part of what makes me mad. I own the game discs. They're right here, not two meters from me. Yet they're the only pieces of media I can't run, because of an obscure company decision that they never shared with me, the person who actually bought the things.

Granted this is still a bit of a gray area compared to purely black un-legality of pirating, but since you own the discs themselves you could install them and try a no-cd exe. Replacing the steam encrypted exe with a no-cd exe is actually how some people play Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic with the widescreen patch. So it should at least work for single player campaign games.

 

[Iwata]

Wow thats shit.

I still don't understand steam since Iv'e never used it.
Why can't you play the games if you own a physical disc? How does steam actually prevent you from doing that? (just out of curiosity)

Steam requires a login to allow you access to the games. There is an offline mode, but you need to login first to activate it...

Ridiculous. You shouldn't take that. Personally, I'd phone, e-mail... whatever in order to get them back. You paid for them; you deserve to keep them.

E-mail contact proved fruitless. As I said, I have a nagging suspicion they didn't even read most of my e-mails, as the replies were always copy-pastes of previous replies.

As for telephone contact, I repeatedly asked for a phone number to call them and deal with someone "in person", as it were, but... well... see above.

 

[Cronq]

You can go ahead and whine all you want about this, but guess what?? This is coming to consoles by next generation (it's already essentially here). Half your games now probably come from PSN and XBLA; you don't think they are capable of the exact same thing?

Also, I'm a bit of a skeptic and find it hard to believe you've completely exhausted all your options to retrieve your Steam account...

 

[Iwata]

You can go ahead and whine all you want about this, but guess what?? This is coming to consoles by next generation (it's already essentially here). Half your games now probably come from PSN and XBLA; you don't think they are capable of the exact same thing?

Also, I'm a bit of a skeptic and find it hard to believe you've completely exhausted all your options to retrieve your Steam account...

You are wrong in all counts, I'm afraid:

1- I am most certainly not "whining", unless you consider a cautionary tale told a year and a half after the facts as qualifying for that. Not to mention I fail to see how that classification can do anything but make you somehow feel better... somehow.

2- No, half my games do not come from PSN. I do buy games on occasion from the PSN, but my physical copies outnumber PSN games by almost 10-1.

3- Be as skeptic as you want. I'm afraid that as far as my possibilities were open, I did in fact exhaust all options.

 

[Rednog]

Ridiculous. You shouldn't take that. Personally, I'd phone, e-mail... whatever in order to get them back. You paid for them; you deserve to keep them.

That is actually one of the things that absolutely infuriates me about steam, the lack of phone support, seriously a multimillion (billion?) dollar company that doesn't have phone support, what the hell?
And their email support is pretty piss poor too, replies are usually copy and pasted, and they take 24-48 hours to get back to you, this can get really frustrating because each reply takes that long. So if you end up with a chain of responses odds are it took you a week+ to get there. Hell I had an issues with Portal 2, it took me 13 days to solve the problem because of how slow the turn around was in replies. Seriously, you'd think they'd give priority to responding to an ongoing problem.
Also, their reps really suck in general to answer problems, more than once they've sold some bundle of games, just to have the games not work with steam at all and their response is basically one of "though luck", seriously how can a company sell a defective product and not offer and support/refunds.