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Accounts that have spent less than $5 on Steam now have limited access

It's a good move but I kinda feel for the people that only play like TF2 and Dota or something and never spent any money in those games.

That said I wasn't aware of how rampant this is. Then again I don't play a bunch of CS:GO and I havent played TF2 since 2010.
 
Finally, it'll stop.
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Ikuu

Had his dog run over by Blizzard's CEO
Couldn't they reactivative it though for people with over X hours on games, for example? I've clocked about 800 hours in Steam (mostly in TF2, but also in games I got as a gift like L4D, Portal) or through Keys, but I've never spent anything.

All in all, it's a good move, but it may hurt some old-time users, which isn't all that great.

People would just idle their bots for whatever the requirement was.
 

Mr_Zombie

Member
To be honest, that's a shitty thing to do.

So lets say someone bought a retail Steamwork multiplayer game and that's the only thing he uses Steam for; now he has limited access to basic things like chat, sending invites to people he just played with or posting in discussions just because he doesn't want to buy anything on Steam. And given how in Poland many retail PC games are a lot cheaper than they are on Steam (sometimes even Steam sales prices are higher than in retail here) it's not hard to imagine that there are plenty of gamers who have never bought anything on Steam.

For many people this will mean that they will have to pay just to get access to basic functionality. :|
 
This seems like a good idea except for the fact that unless I'm reading it wrong activating steam keys that come with retail purchases wont unlock it either which kind of sucks for people out there that just buy physical copies of games and don't want to spend money in the steam store directly (people without credit cards for example). Like if you are trying to prevent bots from making accounts for free it seems like allowing keys from retail purchases to unlock your account would accomplish the same goal.
 

CHC

Member
This is great. If people are complainging about it taking something away from legit, free users, well... It's FIVE bucks. You will spend more today on food, just spend the damn money.
 

darkside31337

Tomodachi wa Mahou
This is really shitty. Sucks for anyone who is playing F2P games or playing games without spending money.

I think its a good idea in theory but there needs to be a way to be able to not have restrictions without completely tying it to money spent.
 

Sendou

Member
I wonder if they surveyed a ton of bot accounts and determined $5 was enough to wipe out most of them vs $10.

More like Valve sees a new source of revenue here, lol. "Pay us if you want to spam".

I am not sure Valve is super concerned about the "I only play free games and will never buy anything from Steam" market with this move.

Agreed. It's unfortunate about people who only play F2P games but many paying customers have been getting screwed over by phishers for way too long. I can't see any other effective way to deal with it.
 
To be honest, that's a shitty thing to do.

So lets say someone bought a retail Steamwork multiplayer game and that's the only thing he uses Steam for; now he has limited access to basic things like chat, sending invites to people he just played with or posting in discussions just because he doesn't want to buy anything on Steam. And given how in Poland many retail PC games are a lot cheaper than they are on Steam (sometimes even Steam sales prices are higher than in retail here) it's not hard to imagine that there are plenty of gamers who have never bought anything on Steam.

For many people this will mean that they will have to pay for basic functionality. :|

Yeah really shitty i mean $5 dollars is a lot /s the real shitty thing is eastern Europeans/russians adding me because they want to scam me out of my items.
 
This seems like a good idea except for the fact that unless I'm reading it wrong activating steam keys that come with retail purchases wont unlock it either which kind of sucks for people out there that just buy physical copies of games and don't want to spend money in the steam store directly (people without credit cards for example). Like if you are trying to prevent bots from making accounts for free it seems like allowing keys from retail purchases to unlock your account would accomplish the same goal.

The prevalence of indie bundles would make the intended deterrence trivial. You can buy bundles with 6 games for a dollar which means the cost associated with removing the limitation would be 15 cents instead of 5 dollars if they allowed retail keys to work.
 

Dreavus

Member
I think this is fair. It doesn't say anything about restricting the friends list other than sending requests, so I'm guessing you can still receive requests to build your list.

Might be slightly annoying for the guy who has steam just to play Dota 2, but if it's a big problem just throw down for a Dota hat or something.
 
I am not sure Valve is super concerned about the "I only play free games and will never buy anything from Steam" market with this move.

Which is weird, since they already took them into account when they changed the criteria for active users. But something had to be done I guess...
 

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
I am not sure Valve is super concerned about the "I only play free games and will never buy anything from Steam" market with this move.
I was thinking the same. Valve won't care at all that non-paying users lose the mentioned features, since they don't bring any benefit to the company.

What's weird is that I only got like 4 or 5 spambot invites so far. Seems bots don't care about me either :(
 

Xpliskin

Member
It's a very elegant solution.

Friend requests are annoying but that really sucks for people who sign up for Steam to play TF2 or Dota or whatever and find that they have to pay money to unlock basic features...

True, but 5 USD ?

it's the price of a decent meal.
 

MUnited83

For you.
This seems like a good idea except for the fact that unless I'm reading it wrong activating steam keys that come with retail purchases wont unlock it either which kind of sucks for people out there that just buy physical copies of games and don't want to spend money in the steam store directly (people without credit cards for example). Like if you are trying to prevent bots from making accounts for free it seems like allowing keys from retail purchases to unlock your account would accomplish the same goal.

no it wouldn't , because of indie bundles. You can sometimes get 8 steam keys for a measly dollar.
 
People would just idle their bots for whatever the requirement was.

Yeah, that's another problem. Still, there should be some way as to not hurt old F2P-only players that much. Can't think of one at the moment, though. They probably won't hurt their heads over that (after all, they're non-paying users), but it's still a bummer.
 

Instro

Member
Holy shit, thank you. Almost all of the friend requests I've gotten over the last 4-5 months have been scam accounts.
 
That's shitty. I gifted CS:GO to my brother last year and he's been playing it for 300 hours, and 700 on TF2 before that. Now they remove basic features from him to use and he need to pay $5 to be able to use those features again. That's really fucking shitty. But I guess that's just Valve being Valve.
 

NastyBook

Member
That'll be my account then, since registering in like 2006 I've spent £0 :)
Same. I made one when Portal 2 dropped on PS3, but never used it. Was gonna buy Hunie Pop, since it looks like my refurb can handle it, but I guess I might have problems doing that now?
 

Sendou

Member
Same. I made one when Portal 2 dropped on PS3, but never used it. Was gonna buy Hunie Pop, since it looks like my refurb can handle it, but I guess I might have problems doing that now?

Problems buying a game from Steam store? You would have none.
 
So why do activated retail games not count? I mean you pay at least as much as for a digital copy, no?

I'm not a PC gamer, but that sounds like they want to make more from it than just verifying real users...
 

Mr_Zombie

Member
Yeah really shitty i mean $5 dollars is a lot /s the real shitty thing is eastern Europeans/russians adding me because they want to scam me out of my items.

No, it's not a lot. But it's still paying for basic functionality, especially since activating retail games - you know, games that you paid for and due to used DRM are forced to use Steam - doesn't cancel the limit. So I can have tons of retail games activated on Steam and Valve would still regard me as a spambot.

I wonder how would people react if Microsoft or Sony put things like friends invite behind a paywall.
 

eFKac

Member
Guess i'm a limited user now since gifts and keys are not eligible :-/

No big deal since I'm not really searching for new Steam friends and don't use the store much.
 
i honestly expected them to do nothing

i would just get home, open steam, block the two level zero bots that added me and then start up dota

it was like clockwork those bots
 

cyba89

Member
That's shitty. I gifted CS:GO to my brother last year and he's been playing it for 300 hours, and 700 on TF2 before that. Now they remove basic features from him to use and he need to pay $5 to be able to use those features again. That's really fucking shitty. But I guess that's just Valve being Valve.

So he got a thousand hours of entertaiment out of steam and this is not worth $5 for him?
 
That's shitty. I gifted CS:GO to my brother last year and he's been playing it for 300 hours, and 700 on TF2 before that. Now they remove basic features from him to use and he need to pay $5 to be able to use those features again. That's really fucking shitty. But I guess that's just Valve being Valve.

The thousand odd hours of gameplay he's enjoyed for nothing should soften the blow of having to cough up $5.
 
Sucks for anyone who is legit user and hasn't spent a dime. It's a service worth a single payment five dollars and finding an interesting steam sale ain't hard though.
 
Wait so it says they can't Send friend invites. What about receive them? I can imagine some people might like to use family sharing to give library access (but not account access) to family members. I'm just wondering if they need to cough up $5 for this now.

Is it confirmed indie bundles would work? I mean... retail games are basically steam keys too, no?
Yes which is why the proposal King Radical gives wouldn't work as Steam Keys are equal.
 
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