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

So you fall into the camp of never having spent $5 on Steam in your life-time but upon losing a trivial sub-set of community features you decide you're not going to play PC games anymore? Dem features man.

Dem features that aren't even on the Wii U or 3DS that he uses so much.
 
I spent money on the orange box and other retail boxes from Valve. I'm not a customer? Ok.

And again I know you're speaking of a cumulative sum. You're desillusional if you think they invest in spambots, if it does only generate 5 usd per bot.

Just wondering, what exactly do you lose from this that you feel the need to attack them for it? I'd also like to know of your solution to the problem if you think this is so bad. Keep in mind that Valve is in fact a business and that businesses do not like wasting money where they do not have to (aka hiring a fleet of new people to handle the bots).
 

danielcw

Member
I mean, what do they lose? They can still chat with the PC client, post on the forum in limited amounts, and add friends if the other party sends the request. 15 people who are going to lose sleep over not being able to chat on the phone app? If they've never spent $5 on digital titles, what kind of investment do they have in the platform that they would care about losing trivial community features?

Well, in my opinion the only feature that hurts are the friend requests.
My 15 people are the only people I know of, but I don't think it is unreasonable to assume, that there are many active steam accounts who only have one or some big retail games.

Why is it okay to take away their community features?

Why don't the new rules only apply to new accounts?



Your situation is weirdly specific and not likely a very broad experience.
I was trying to be as specific as possible as far as it relates to the topic.

Do you really think there's a lot of people out there that are forgoing buying games on their own account because a friend has a payment method setup already and are just going to give him the cash directly?
No, but I think there are many people who only use retail games or key-sellers.


If anyone seriously can't find a game that they're marginally interested in and runs on one or more of their computing devices (Windows, Mac, OR Linux) then I will personally come to your house and buy you a $5 meal of choice, hell I'll even cover the goddamn taxes and tip.
Nobody is denying, that there are cheap and good games on Steam's storefront.
But that doesn't mean one is actually interested in playing them. Some people are contempt with the games they have.

I think we enthusiasts on boards like NeoGAF, who have backlogs in the double digits, or care about hats, or jsut buy games because they are on sale are the exception and not the rule.


Now some people are suddenly forced to spend money you were not going to spend, if you want to keep access to features you had before.
 

Aurongel

Member
If you're too young/broke to give Valve $5 then you're not the type of person they want to focus their digital services on anyway. The amount of people affected by this are an extreme, extreme minority that Valve should not be obligated to cater to.
 
The investment before was basically ZERO, other than running scripts on a computer and shit. They do not get 5$ or more per bot, I guarantee you that. Again, you seem to fail to realize that spam is all about volume.

You know computers and current are investments too, right? Funny, my daily work involves fighting spam, not sure how you can judge whether I know how this works or not though.
 

gai_shain

Member
No, I did understand what he said. And what I'm saying is, this is not the solution to it. Spambot owner will invest in it as long as it's profitable for them. The smaller ones might die, but most of them will laugh at the fee.

What Valve is doing is outsourcing the costs to fight spambots to the customers, if you think that's okay... fine. I don't think it is.

I dont think they just have 1 million laying around to spend to keep their spambots.
How do you know if its profitable for them already though? They just changed it and if there wont be spambot friend requests in the future it isnt
 

Swarna

Member
Well, in my opinion the only feature that hurts are the friend requests.
My 15 people are the only people I know of, but I don't think it is unreasonable to assume, that there are many active steam accounts who only have one or some big retail games..

Again, you can just have the other party add you as a friend. I really doubt peepz who haven't spent a single cent on the storefront really care about the other minor features that even I, as someone who buys games, don't even use.
 

MUnited83

For you.
Why don't the new rules only apply to new accounts?

Erm, because, you know, there's already millions upon millions of spambots registered on Steam...

You know computers and current are investments too, right? Funny, my daily work involves fighting spam, not sure how you can judge whether I know how this works or not though.
Those are quite negligible costs compared to a 5$ per account.

And now, you don't seem to know how this works at all if you really believe they can get 5$ per spambot. They don't.
 

Sendou

Member
How do you know if its profitable for them already though? They just changed it and if there wont be spambot friend requests in the future it isnt

Magically enough unlike every day for the past month or so I haven't received any friend requests today.
 
I dont think they just have 1 million laying around to spend to keep their spambots.
How do you know if its profitable for them already though? They just changed it and if there wont be spambot friend requests in the future it isnt

If they run a farm of spambots in the thousands, then they sure have some money to invest in it.
 

Sendou

Member
If they run a farm of spambots in the thousands, then they sure have some money to invest in it.

We don't live in a world where Steam is the only place to act with spam bots. No matter what at least I hope we can agree that this makes Steam a lot less desirable target for people looking to do this kind of thing.
 
I can talk with experience that the only way to deal with spam bots is to take drastic measures. In my old job we had to go as far as doing full country blocks because we realized not a single IP from certain counties was a player but were pure spambot production. We decided it wasn't worth the effort to cater for a potential few from that country that would most probably be not be paying for the service at all than to cut off all bot activity and improve the service for everyone else.

One rep can probably just mass ban a hundred script made accounts easy and investigate maybe a handful of "suspicious" accounts a day. But to go through the numbers Valve goes through, this measure can make their lives easier. There is no perfect system to deal with bots, but the more prevention measures in place can reduce the number of bots to near unnoticeable levels.
 

Gr8one

Member
If they run a farm of spambots in the thousands, then they sure have some money to invest in it.

Its more about return on investment. By increasing their operating costs scamming and spamming steam users is less financial attractive. There are likely better opportunities elsewhere for them.
 
Good now the requests from all of these shitty bots will stop. No sympathy for those entitled babies who cry crocodile tears over 5 dollarinos but still want to use this excellent platform.
 
If they run a farm of spambots in the thousands, then they sure have some money to invest in it.

It's stupidly easy to run spambot farms, and very little money to get it going. It's because it's so cheap thats why people do it. However many thousands of accounts get banned for every successful scam. The investment to keep operating under steam under this system is a huge hurdle.
 

MUnited83

For you.
I'm pretty sure I already mentioned that, but hey...

Im out have fun guys.

What you forgot to mention is the mathematics that would for this to actually be viable.


You are out because not even you can come up with a way of each spambot making more than 5$. You have nothing to backup your claims with.


Nobody makes 5$ per spambot account, and this will severely hinder spambot creation. This is a fact.. Feel free to try and prove me wrong, because you won't.(and that's why you're out)
 
What you forgot to mention is the mathematics that would for this to actually be viable.


You are out because not even you can come up with a way of each spambot making more than 5$. You have nothing to backup your claims with.


Nobody makes 5$ per spambot account, and this will severely hinder spambot creation. This is a fact.. Feel free to try and prove me wrong, because you won't.(and that's why you're out)

Nah, I'm out because I have better things to do than spent my time arguing over this, while running in circles. You're already judging again.
 
Nobody is denying, that there are cheap and good games on Steam's storefront.
But that doesn't mean one is actually interested in playing them. Some people are contempt with the games they have.

So you don't play any steam games, You don't own any steam games. You have no interest in buying any steam games. You have a system already in place that still lets you play what games you do have. Do I need to go on or can you read the tea leaves on where I'm going with this?
 
So you don't play any steam games, You don't own any steam games. You have no interest in buying any steam games. You have a system already in place that still lets you play what games you do have. Do I need to go on or can you read the tea leaves on where I'm going with this?

Nah dude is totally primarily a chat client.

Obviously.

If this is to fight spam, why not just limit messages to only friends?

The problem isn't that, its them inviting people to be their friends as well, which you can't stop without blocking someone. You can't send messages unless they are your friend anyway.
 

danielcw

Member
Erm, because, you know, there's already millions upon millions of spambots registered on Steam...

Yeah, and those can be handled differently. By looking at how many of their friend request have been blocked, or how often they have been reported.

Again, you can just have the other party add you as a friend.
So if for example 2 friends decide to buy the newest Call Of Duty* to play together, they can not add each other
EDIT: *at retail
 
D

Deleted member 125677

Unconfirmed Member
I'm goin to be feeling a lot less popular now, for a while there I was hot shit, getting 5-6 friend invites a day

Thanks Gaben!
 
People can have a Steam library worth hundreds of $ without having ever spent a single $ on Steam's storefront.
Why is it ok, if those people suddenly lose features?

In those cases, why would they have any trouble with just depositing 5 dollars so they can buy something from Steam next time a game they want comes up?
 

Liseda

Member
Looks like a fantastic idea from this thread.

The only people upset are the people that don't use steam at all in the first place, and the few who somehow thought this meant they couldn't play the games they own.]
Pretty much the people that never been hit by the million fucking spam bots adding you sending phishing/trojans are pissed about it.

Thank god, maybe I'll actually have 90% legit friend invites than 10%.
 
Messages are friends only and have been for years.

What they are fighting is the million spam bot accounts sending out invites to become your friend and trick hapless people into clicking a bad link.

Then limit friend requests to 3-5 or whatever a day and disable any links. Problem solved. Seems like a better option.
 

duckroll

Member
If they bought the game then they've spent over 5 dollars

Not if they bought it at retail. It definitely sucks for them if they never installed Steam before, buys the game at retail, installs Steam as part of it, and can't add each other as Friends. I guess they can buy the Season Pass. Lolz.
 

MUnited83

For you.
People can have a Steam library worth hundreds of $ without having ever spent a single $ on Steam's storefront.
Why is it ok, if those people suddenly lose features?


Oh, come on. it is not that hard to understand

Someone with a steam library worth hundreds of $ won't have problems spending a measly 5$ then.
 

Corpekata

Banned
Then limit friend requests to 3-5 or whatever a day and disable any links. Problem solved. Seems like a better option.

Disabling being able to post website links in the largest PC gaming community sounds like a better option to you?

And they already did limit friend requests. It doesn't help when you can just create another dozen accounts.
 
I honestly can't imagine someone interested in these features wouldn't find how to spend 5 bucks on Steam.

No crocodile tears here.

It's a slippery slope though. If you had made a thread yesterday that Valve should start charging to use their service, you would have been laughed off of GAF.
 
Not if they bought it at retail. It definitely sucks for them if they never installed Steam before, buys the game at retail, installs Steam as part of it, and can't add each other as Friends. I guess they can buy the Season Pass. Lolz.

This is maybe the only use case where I see the current policy being an actual issue. Admittedly the exception for retail Steam keys seems a bit arbitrary unless it's meant to keep out those games which have been cracked open with CD key generators.

It's a slippery slope though. If you had made a thread yesterday that Valve should start charging to use their service, you would have been laughed off of GAF.

The ability to use steam and play steam games is still free. You simply lose community features.
 

MUnited83

For you.
It's a slippery slope though. If you had made a thread yesterday that Valve should start charging to use their service, you would have been laughed off of GAF.

using Steam is still free.


This is maybe the only use case where I see the current policy being an actual issue. Admittedly the exception for retail Steam keys seems a bit arbitrary unless it's meant to keep out those games which have been cracked open with CD key generators.
There's no difference between using a indie bundle key and a retail key.
And you can get keys for close to 10 cents each
 
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