News Valve limits Steam features to paying customers only

I don't see how Valve justifies "Must spend directly with us" unless they're trying to cut down on people buying cheap steam keys from the discount sellers and activating them on steam.

 

Its $5.

Maybe we should try to turn the debate to:

'Instead of someone spending $5, what else could Valve have implemented to prevent scamming accounts?'

And no, I really don't think that Maki's idea of a filter at my client will stop scammers from opening the accounts and scamming others, then costing Valve money and staff to investigate.

 

Sorry ... but ... are you one of these people who are so blinded by the "majesty" of his Lordship the Master Gaben?

Why are you so quick to defend them? It makes no sense, no word that I have is ever going to change the mind of Valve so what's the point? I have been inconvenienced by this update, that is all. I'm annoyed as it doesn't make sense from any perspective other than as a cash grab.

Why would $5 suddenly change everything? There are plenty of games out there that cost that much or more but are full of scammers, phishers, bots you name it. Clearly putting up a modest pay wall doesn't do much. Hell, look at CSGO as an example. I come across cheaters quite frequently, they almost always end up being reported and eventually VAC banned. They paid for that game, yet they were happy to just pop in, cheat and annoy people all the while knowing they're going to get caught sooner or later. You never know, the pay wall could in theory produce a market for accounts paid for with stolen info, again this is a genuine issue that Valve has faced and tried to solve, it's a large reason for the annoying 7 day trade wait on CSGO items. If that happens, you'll still receive rubbish, people will still get scammed and whatnot.



Why don't gifted games count?

 

They could just make it so that activated gifts count instead? That removes that particular issue (if it's even possible, not sure about that) without really changing anything and is still better than what they've implemented.

 

While this wont affect most (this is $5 spent ever as far as I can tell, not over a given timescale), one group would worry me:

People who aren't really gamers at all (yet) but play one or two games (maybe casual fare) that were perhaps gifted to them by someone for social multiplayer or just show them what gaming is all about.

While the likelihood is the features removed probably won't even be noticed it still sill unfair (and potentially counter productive) to alienate this group. It seems rather heavy handed for what seem basically like an anti-spam measure.

 

First of all, how do you know it will solve bugger all - do you work for Valve? Do you somehow have hundreds of pages of data on their users that we don't have access to? Because unless you do, how did you arrive at that conclusion. Valve have the data, along with some very bright minds, so if they think this will help, then I'll side with them on this one.

Its not a big issue at all is it. I don't know a single PC gamer that hasn't spent £5 on Steam, and if you haven't and its a big deal to you, then, you probably should - Steam provides a hell of a lot of functionality now, in home streaming, chat, all the download servers, Twitch style Streaming etc.

You are talking about incremental changes, but none of that has happened and there is no indication that it will do, so you are taking pure, baseless speculation and using it to arrive at a conclusion that something is a bad thing. Which doesn't make any sense.

 

I've spent hundreds in steam, it's not a problem for my account. The problem arises with accounts like that of my youngest brother where I don't want to have any of my billing info present. As I mentioned earlier all his games are instead gifted to him, it's just an easy way of dealing with everything.

Why should I be happy with being inconvenienced? Even if it's something minor, I don't want to be, simple as that. As I mentioned, I've spent hundreds in the Steam store, it's annoying facing any issues when you support a service so much.

This is exactly how I feel when I don't get the right service elsewhere too, it's not just Valve. Unfortunately they have a very poor track record with me, so I brought that up.

As for why I came to the conclusion it won't make a difference in the long run? Again I'm basing this on experiences within other systems where there is a small pay wall (such as inside the actual games). It doesn't help, people just learn to duck the system and find an alternate way in. All the while it presents a minor inconvenience to everybody else. It's like with DRM on a game, for the most part it makes no difference if you picked the title up legitimately, but every so often it rears its ugly head and presents an annoyance.

 

Its the fact that they've decided upon a solution which covers a wide variety of issues, and decided that the only way that it can be fixed, is to insist that everyone who wants to use those functions has to have given Steam $5 at some point. If you havent opened your wallet and given them money directly, you're untrustworthy.

I agree with Maki, there are other solutions, but this one has the added convenience of ensuring an easier route towards future purchases through Steam.

I've never had the friend spam issue, but arguing steam shouldnt have to waste time dealing with scammers, well Steam should look at implementing solutions to deal with that, such as giving the user the ability to block friend requests or generate friend keys, so the person needs to enter a key to add you.
If this is preventing fraud, $5 isnt going to stop it if its profitable for scammers, is it.

Steam have found a solution thats financial rewarding for them. Not the best solution, not one that'll stop people you dont know sending invites, just one that stops non-paying customers from doing stuff. You know, the people who've bought Steamworks games, and been told their second rate citizens who've contributed nothing, and arent entitled to some basic features. Just how much damage is allowing people to unlocking trading cards (unable to trade them) and gaining Steam ranks??

Its find an issue, and create a solution to monetise it.

@forum_user
For all your rather aggressive attacks on Maki's supposed bias, you realise you come off as the exact opposite with everything you post, except borderline insulting with it all. You've questioned whether he's a scammer for no other reason than to be insulting, told him he needs to sort his head out, and should just deal with it, all because he has a different opinion to yours.
You're singing their praises because presumably for an insufferable amount of time, you've been putting up with Steam ignoring something thats inconvenienced you. He's pointed out a perfectly valid solution, one that doesnt take a genius more than 5min to think up, which i doubt would take more than an hour for someone at Steam to implement. Yet you're more interested in defending the honour of Steam than seeing things from another persons viewpoint.

 

I get most of the restrictions - Valve are a business after all, not a charity, plus they ought to protect their users. If there's been an uptick in scams and account fraud recently, I wouldn't be surprised - with Blizzard ruining the WoW gold seller party in the US, I would expect a bunch of gold farmers to be looking for new opportunities to pull money out of the virtual economy somehow. Of course, Valve would know the figures on that better than anyone else and it's not the sort of thing they'd go talking about in public.

However, no sending friend invitations - that seems a little harsh. But hey, it's not like they're stopping anyone actually playing games they own. Hell, I never even knew there was a group chat facility...

 

I agree I am supporter of Steam, and Valve, and I dont give a rats ass about DRM, etc, etc, etc, etc. Yes I oppose Maki's view. Yes I think he's completely misguided in his posts - and those who try to rally around him with pitch forks pointing at Valve. It doesn't take much to see whatever Valve do that might hit the articles forums, he will be one of a few that grab it and add it to their reasons why Valve sucks. Only it doesn't.

Regarding his genius idea that wouldn't have taken him more than 5 minutes to think up ... and which wouldn't take Valve more than an hour to implement ... it wont solve the issue!

 

true but I feel it could get into a slippery slop.

 

I see how there might be small subsets of people who are affected by this, but I don't really see the big deal. Yeah, Valve is gonna make money off of it, but not that much. Not as much as if they said, "Give us $5 to use Steam," or "Give us $5 a month to use Steam." Lets look at it reasonably, except for the small percentage of real gamers who don't spend money on Steam, like Maki's brother, you're gonna pay $5 for content, ie games, of which Valve will make a small percentage of. The same percentage that they were making before. So now, what 2 out of 100 people will have to spend $5 and buy a game. I don't think they're buying a private island off of the profit there.

Plus, the argument about outside keys is insane. Would you go to McDonald's and buy a burger and fries, and then go eat it Taco Bell??? And then expect to get drink refills??? What kind of people are you?

 

Enjoy your endless friend invite spam since it seems to be the only thing you actually care about?

Scammers do not care how much they need to spend to get onto the service.
Scammers rarely use their own accounts.
Scammers come in all forms.

Deal with it, wise up and move on <your words>.

Steam is dead.

 

Makes sense to me. I like the idea of preventing fake greenlight votes etc. Even a filter wouldn't help with that.

 

It's simple really. You both tell it not to save your CC (uncheck "Save my payment information so checkout is easy next time") info and you turn on Family View (Settings > Family) and restrict his access to the store. Then even if your CC info was saved, he can't get to the store to buy anything anyway. This is what I do with my daughter's account.

The tools are there to solve the issue.

Sure, it is ever so slightly more convenient to buy and gift, but really not by much to get all up in arms over.

 

Just buy one £5 game with your card, don't save the details, job done, forever.

 

People need to stop using the word "force" in their comments. No-one is forcing anyone to do anything, and no-one is losing access to anything that isn't purely additional and wasn't previously given away for free. Lots of people need to get over themselves here.

EDIT: Actually, what really needs to happen is that Bit-Tech need to fix their summary and image caption - they suggest all chat functionality will be lost - it's only *group* chat functionality that will be lost.