Thank you for contacting Steam Support. We have data that you use this account for willing violation of regional restrictions or avoiding prices based on the region. Please, do not sell games to users who are in regions where prices are higher than in your region. Also please don't use proxy or VPN to falsify information about your region.
It's quite clear what the issue ius.
Comment has been collapsed.
Legal is irrelevant. Steam is a privately operated service and you agreed to their rules. Rules that state not to circumvent regional pricing.
Comment has been collapsed.
Bullshit. Law > ToS. ToS never hold up in court. Heck, some companies realise that nobody reads them and put stupid crap in, like "we own your soul now".
Comment has been collapsed.
Yes, but steam openly facilitates trading, and has been aware of 'traders' for the longest time, and even created the marketplace to better support trading in open and public view.
If steam does not provide traders with the tools to check for price differences based on region, nor provides traders a way to check the region of the person they are trading to, they are effectively punishing the legit traders for the crime of not being psychic or perhaps being too trusting of what their 'customer' is telling them.
Hopefully this issue will be given some consideration so that legit traders can continue to operate without fear of random beatdowns.
Comment has been collapsed.
The marketplace specifically doesn't allow the sale of games though and since items such as cards aren't sold directly by Valve there is no regional pricing to crcumb=vent.
Comment has been collapsed.
No, they just magically create all those cards and other entirely virtual items out of thin air (or rather, out of customers playing / idling games Valve has already earned a cut on), then take 5 - 15% of the profit (depending on whether or not the items are from Valve games) of those transactions, earning them multiple tens of thousands (if not hundreds) every day. Magical free money, great! But if you're a trader trying to eke out an extra bit of income selling games (to people looking for cheaper prices for games they'd otherwise not even buy due to lacking funds or a sense of games these days having an inflated price) in an often-times shitty country with a shitty economy, using a system designed and encouraged in use by Valve, that they also make a massive profit out of, shame on you, right?
Comment has been collapsed.
Wow, I never realized that traders who sell other people's work were so noble! I'll be sure to pay half as much as games cost from now on, fuck everyone who made them.
Comment has been collapsed.
You make it sound like traders stole the games that they are trading..
Comment has been collapsed.
Buying a game for half as much as it actually costs and then selling it to people with normal incomes isn't exactly stealing. It does take money from devs and it's against the rules though, so it doesn't have to be stealing.
Comment has been collapsed.
Do not use VPNs or other methods to circumvent region locking or pricing.
Comment has been collapsed.
I see your crusading vigilance hinders your ability to comprehend even the simplest sentences. Let me make it shorter for you: RULES AVAILABLE IN PUBLIC. A support reply to a ticket is not a public rule.
SSA:You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose. If you do this, we may terminate your access to your Account.
The only thing that's partially resembles the line you quoted is using VPN. BUT WHO THE FUDGE WAS TALKING ABOUT USING VPN? OP Certainly isn't, and why would he?
Comment has been collapsed.
I didn't know that traders weren't an other way to circumvent region pricing.
Comment has been collapsed.
I see that you insult people you disagree with because you're arguing over semantics instead of what the issue is actually about. It's not my fault that you can no longer take advantage of region price loopholes, so I'm not sure why you're getting upset with me.
Comment has been collapsed.
gg valve
Hope this gets solved correctly for you though. All this about trading with the new policies is getting ridiculous now.
Comment has been collapsed.
Hold on. Its not a trade, its just a swap games for keys. And why i can't take my money back from steam, I know a lot of guys who have thousands on their steam account and can only trade with 15-20% loss.
Comment has been collapsed.
if you're buying a random amount of games and sent them to random people within minutes, day by day. It's quite obvious, don't you think? I guess it's argueable that they can't prove that somebody is trading games that way, but i think they don't care.
Comment has been collapsed.
Maybe they're thinking that you used VPN/proxy to buy games in Russian price because you wrote the ticket in English instead of Russian. Could be wrong, though.
Still, the "Please, do not sell games to users who are in regions where prices are higher than in your region." part is bullshit.
Why don't they just disable cross region trading and gifting instead of allowing it and then ban people who are doing it? This is possible, they've used the "AllowCrossRegionTradingAndGifting=No" parameter on some games.
I don't get it.
I hope your issue will be resolved.
Comment has been collapsed.
maybe it depends on how many games do you crosstrade. i mean if you, for example crosstrade 50+ games a week it is not realy "trading" in the way valve thought.
if you also see, that there are some people that sell these games via paypal than i can understand, that valve want to stop this.
p.s. this is not linked to the problem of the op
Comment has been collapsed.
Valve is so greedy, banning ppl cos they are making profit on trading games, I now use dispenser.tf most of the time. The bot will get trade banned which does not matter as you can just create another bot.
Comment has been collapsed.
If they start cracking down, I'm sure they'll be able to figure out who the bot belongs to. It's not like that'd be difficult - just look at the account that routinely withdraws dozens of keys.
You can't just create another bot as well. You need TF2 premium to handle the keys, and you need a paid game on your account to not be limited. Also, a paid game with card drops if you want to accept cards.
All things considered it's not much, especially to traders, but Dispenser couldn't operate if all of their bots are constantly getting banned.
Comment has been collapsed.
Amen. Make a goddam policy. PUBLISH it. Make it known. Give a deadline. Then enforce indiscriminately.
But that would require a company with a few things Valve doesn't have:
Comment has been collapsed.
The cut down massively on Russians during the sale. Nearly every single Russian trader I know of had their account restricted. I'm a little worried because I've done a lot of trading with Russians, but during this sale, it was hard to find one who could trade. Or was willing to chance it. I think it's bullshit. Either region lock all the fucking games, or let people cross region trade. People buy what they want at the very cheapest price possible, that's the core of capitalism, Valve shouldn't go around banning people for that. I've seen games 20% cheaper in Northern Ireland than they are in the Republic of Ireland, I would be a fucking mug not to pay the cheapest price possible as far as I'm concerned.
Comment has been collapsed.
20% cheaper I've seen games 75% cheaper in the US it's such a big difference should be the same price everywhere, the only real cost difference are language translations & maybe legal crap
Comment has been collapsed.
No idea why you add the little story of buying a game for a friend. That is fine and won't get you banned. Just high volume trafficking and selling for keys is what steam is picking up, you are undermining their region divided market strategy. Now don't tell me you didn't see this coming, that just sounds really stupid.
Comment has been collapsed.
That's the big problem though. Steam has features that are directly aimed at providing for the traders. That was the aims of the marketplace after all. Not just in letting people sell things quickly without needing external assistance, but to give a centralised Valve-tracked place to run things through.
The problem is that there are no in-built features that automatically warn users of the region/nationality of an account prior to trading. When buying an item or a game it does not underline region restrictions outright, nor when buying or setting up a trade does it give you a pop-up warning you that due to price-differences, you will not be allowed to perform the act.
See, if they can track 'bad activity', why can't they try to implement something that helps traders to stay within tolerable trade boundaries? It's quite possible for a legit trader to simply trigger a false positive by being active enough. It doesn't take much language to facilitate a trade after all, and some native english speakers sound like they're fumbling from another primary language to begin with :P
It's not all as black and white as it at first seems. Sure, there are some who are ignorant to the rules, and some who buy and sell in bulk, but if you create a system, an economy and the features for a trading subcommunity to exist, then doesn't it stand to reason that you help provide a means to stay within the rules? I mean, beyond "Once you go too far we'll just cut you off entirely"?
Comment has been collapsed.
I doubt trading was made to allow people to abuse the living hell out of region prices differences and price glitches. But it's human nature to go and find ways to try to abuse such things (this holds true with MMOs and cheating in them)
Comment has been collapsed.
I never said nor even implied it was.
However the marketplace was made to facilitate easier trading not just on a one-in-a-blue-moon level between close friends, but also between strangers, and on a more 'provider' trading level. Valve has been aware of traders for a long time before they added the marketplace, they have underlined no such countermeasures nor pointed out any direct opposition to high-level trading, nor have they added tools to better stay within the regional/pricing rules. That's the entire point. They're aware, but the tools and information are lacking.
Comment has been collapsed.
AFAIK, Valve suggests regional prices, based on the US store price, but the publisher/dev has the final word and can change the sore prices for whatever region he wants at any time.
A suggestion matrix for RU store pricing has been leaked some time ago
Comment has been collapsed.
This is definitely not a new policy, Steam have been banning people for cross-region trading for years. There's no rule in SSA that says "do not trade with people from outside of your region", but there is the rule that prohibits "commercial use" of Steam, so that's most likely what they are referring to when they decide to ban someone. So basically, you can trade only if you don't profit from it, which is a bit silly, but it's Valve, so there you go ^_^
If you get a reply from Steam support concerning your questions, please post it here, although I really doubt they are going to respond; they will most likely just close your ticket.
Comment has been collapsed.
"A bit silly"? Be realistic. It's simply insane. Trading has never been about exchanging items of the same value. Why would people even do that? It's like trading one dollar bill for another one dollar bill. Whatever and wherever you trade, someone will always gain something, intentionally or not. Take any Steam trading card for any game and compare the market price of that to that of another card of the same game. They will never be the same.
Comment has been collapsed.
I cant see how trading to get steam wallet money is commercial use.
Steam wallet money is no real currency.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, for quite some time people believed that only selling games for Paypal is prohibited by Steam, but recent developments suggest that all kind of trading between regions is apparently forbidden, no matter what currency is involved - Paypal funds, Steam wallet or TF2 keys.
Comment has been collapsed.
That's a really sad story....
If I were You I'd try talking with them and showing my point as long as posible. You should show them that there is nothing specified about "Crosscountry-trading" or anything like that in the TOS and that You are unsure what did You do what made Your account banned or something like that.... Give some examples, ay them that a lot of people trade games within many different countries... From what I've heard and seen, discussing with Steam support (Especially about unbanning account) is a really hard thing but every time I see a thread about a problem with Steam Support, I always try to give hope to that person by reminding him/her that it IS possible to get unbanned after getting VAC ban. I still have the screenshot in my mind with all the replies from support where a person was arguing that he never did anyhing wrong and got VAC./ After plenty of replies both from his and Steam's side, he got an original message and his account was unbanned. I'm saying that so You will know that there is always a hope :)
Good luck!
Comment has been collapsed.
?
1) Who the hell is talking about a VAC ban?
2) That's a faked image, then. VAC bans aren't reversed.
Comment has been collapsed.
It's not a new policy, nor is it even a valid policy. They're just using forceful tactics to discriminate against Russians and bullying them into not using Steam features that everyone else can use freely (the definition of discrimination). It wouldn't hold up in court and the problem is that Valve pretends like everyone sells their soul to them if they decide to use Steam. The actual solution would be to implement it in the code and not to target random traders and scare them into complying.
It's a good thing that Steam doesn't cost any money or we'd have an actual reason to be pissed off at them though. As a free service with thousands of free games, we can tolerate the shitty way they treat us users.
Comment has been collapsed.
You actually gifting the game right?
Why with that nonsense trading policy when your purpose is to gift a game for a friend
Comment has been collapsed.
You have my condolences as you likely had the misfortune of trying to do that during a prime time for RU-store using wheelers and dealers (it's really them that people ought ot be blaming for all this recent crap)
Comment has been collapsed.
9 Comments - Last post 42 minutes ago by OneManArmyStar
1,174 Comments - Last post 42 minutes ago by spodamayn
65 Comments - Last post 3 hours ago by supremeentity
9 Comments - Last post 4 hours ago by OneManArmyStar
54 Comments - Last post 4 hours ago by oldman82
58 Comments - Last post 5 hours ago by nateraade
17 Comments - Last post 5 hours ago by Serale
126 Comments - Last post 3 minutes ago by eldar4k
12 Comments - Last post 4 minutes ago by JMM72
38 Comments - Last post 13 minutes ago by 0ksID
282 Comments - Last post 19 minutes ago by Kouseyz
71 Comments - Last post 37 minutes ago by PlainVanilla
21 Comments - Last post 38 minutes ago by UnbakedBacon
2,505 Comments - Last post 49 minutes ago by JMM72
First of all, I'm one of the Russian traders. I live in Russia, I buy games, I trade them (those that aren't region-locked) for keys, then sell the keys on the community market to buy other games.
During the last sale I was going to buy a copy of Octodad (not for sale this time, I wanted to gift it to my friend who became a father recently) when I found out I cannot do it - "An unexpected error has occurred. Your purchase has not been completed. Please contact Steam Support". I decided this is some sort of temporary glitch of Steam (when the sales start, all kind of glitches happen). The problem didn't perish the next day, so I contacted Steam Support about the matter. I wrote in English, knowing that Russian support is about 5 times slower than the international ones. Curiously enough, the answer was in Russian. I'll try to tranlate it to English as close to the original as I can:
Thank you for contacting Steam Support.
We have data that you use this account for willing violation of regional restrictions or avoiding prices based on the region.
Please, do not sell games to users who are in regions where prices are higher than in your region. Also please don't use proxy or VPN to falsify information about your region.
Original of my talk with Support on pastebin
Obviously, I didn't use VPN or proxy as I reside in Russia (my buyers didn't use it too, since I bough region-free games only), so the problem is in cross-regional trading. Seriously, I didn't know it is prohibited by any Steam rule. I checked trading FAQ and all I could find was "You can trade with anyone in your friendlist". I checked license agreement and found only "You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose.", which also wasn't my case.
Also a little nitpicking, but their requirement - "do not trade with people who live in regions with higher prices" is absurd. I cannot tell for sure where are my buyers from, this would require some sort of IP tracing.
I have told all the above to steam support (this time I wrote in my native language since their answer was in Russian), so now I'm unable to buy anything (both for myself and as gift) and waiting for their answer. But I already suspect that trying to reason Steam support is like trying to reason a policeman - either way you'll be the guilty one.
UPDATE:
I've received an answer from Steam Support today. It says the following (again, my translation):
Steam Support has provided to you all the nessesary information. We will not answer further questions regarding this matter. Just in case, original of my talk with support
So, they didn't answer which steam rule did I break. Curiously enough, I found out that now I can buy again. I will consider this a mistake they didn't have guts to admit and apologise. It looks like there's some automatic system now that places a temporary store ban after buying ~20 gifts per week/day/set period of time. Since I wasn't explained anything, I'll pretend the words about "not trading with people from higher-priced region" was a personal plea from this support manager, but not a new requirement.
I missed half of the sale, but at least everything returned to normal, now I can reopen my trading threads. Again, as with the visit to the police, you're happy when you have your wallet and kidneys intact after leaving.
P.S.: Did I say I'm able to buy again? I've bought AVP 2010 just to test it, so now giving it away. Thanks for everyone who read, commented and cared!
Comment has been collapsed.