what a waste of time they are :/ had my account hacked/stolen between now and 3-4 years ago, didnt use it up until i recently built my pc as my laptop was rubbish for games. so installed steam tried to log in and it said wrong password, so emailed steam.... i now have my account back after a week and a half of emailing them and waiting for replies NOW i cant even play any of my games online. who ever hacked my account tried using cheats on it and has got all the games on my account VAC banned so i cannot play any of the games online which is alot of the reason i buy the games, for the online part and steam are refusing to do anything about it even though my account was stolen! <<<how i feel right now LOL p.s sorry i needed to have a rant not very happy right now
so.... you knew your account got hacked 3 years ago and did nothing about it? I could see it if was a recent occurrence, but you seem to be blaming Steam for something that is your fault.
I fail to see why Steam is a total joke, or am I missing something? It's like having your credit card ripped off... not doing anything about it, and then complaining because the bank will do nothing 3 years later. I understand you wanting to rant... I really do... but this is your own fault.
I'm beginning to feel that services like STEAM need to act like a financial institution to be honest and take a proactive position when fraud is committed on their service. Whenever I have a problem with my credit cards it's the bank that informs me before I even know there is a problem. I think as a paying customer fleck is entitled to a certain level of service to be honest, even in light of the lazy option not delaing with the issue back then!
One slightly positive point in this, surely most of the games that are VAC ones are valve games like CS:S, Team Fortress, DoD etc? If so, they're dirt cheap to buy now anyway, or wait till the Christmas sale when they will be.
Equivalent of- complaining to the police 3 yrs after a robbery and expecting them to crack the case.. Sorry to say but you should have acted faster..
exactly! and also no i didnt know my account had been hacked or stolen untill i tried getting back onto it and realised i couldnt, i havent used the account for around 3-4 years due to not having a good enough pc to run the games.... i didnt know anything until about 2 weeks ago! obviously if i knew someone had hacked into it i would of done something about it straight away and also why should i spend money on more games when i have already paid for them once, i shouldnt have to pay for the games a 2nd time as it wasnt my fault :/
Unfortunately this is exactly a situation where STEAM behaves same as they would have to with boxed games. Imagine buying a game with a CD key. You play with it, then someone steals the game box - but you have the backup of CD key somewhere. Then after 3 years you decide that you want to play your old game, you can't find the old CD box, but you have the key. And you notice that the key is banned because someone was cheating with it. Would a game company lift the ban ? No. And no offense, but it is also clearly stated that bans will not be lifted : https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2347-qdfn-4366 PS: You guys talk like anyone can hack STEAM user accounts. No, they can't. There are only 2 ways to get your STEAM login details : 1. Keylogger on your computer, which means your security is compromised and it is your fault that your account could have been stolen. 2. You entered your login details in some fake steam website to claim your "free games". In this case, it is your fault twice as much. This situation is equal to the case when someone would go to your internetbanking page and would transfer money from it. The bank wouldn't reverse those payments either, because they were authorized by you. Don't compare STEAM account activities with credit cards, compare them to your internet banking direct transfers.
The best thing you can do is report it to steam, and get a new steam account. Sadly, there's not a lot you can do.
+1 on this too. Either that, or you've got a really obvious/un-secure password and someone has managed to guess it.
That is not really a option yet. Especially when he says he got his account back after a week and half. That put his discovery somewhere around 8th November. So while it is possible in theory (hack was AFAIK on Monday that week), there are two problems with that : 1) if they would already have cracked the encryption/hash&salt, then there would be a much more massive problem than this guy. Plus that would mean that OP had same user name & password for both forums and STEAM. 2) getting a VAC ban is not a instant thing. Good luck stealing the account on monday, getting it VAC banned in a day and having a bad luck that a guy who didn't use it for 3 years trying to use it exactly 1 day after the hack occured. In short, it is more likely that his account was probably stolen 3 years ago, when he used it for last time. At that time, he either had a keylogger, a trojan with keylogger capabilities or he entered his steam username and password in some shady form somehwere on web - and the guy later used this info to steal his account. Then played the games and got VAC banned. And then the OP tried to use his account one day after the STEAM forum hacks.
this is true but if they had as everybody keeps saying a key logger they may of only needed the email account to get it if they got the question right
Steam accounts were compromised also - as noted in Valve's email: "...We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information..." The hack was discovered on Monday 7th (when the forums were taken down) but those responsible would have had access for an unknown length of time beforehand. Unless (and until) Valve provides more details, no-one can be sure. I'd agree that it would seem very unlikely to be the cause here, but it can't be ruled out completely either.