Purchased and activated a russian steam key. Advice needed,

First of all, don't whine. Wait and see what happens. And never do any stupid shit without prior research.

As far as I know they won't ban your account for activating a game with VPN. You only get into real trouble if you buy games using VPN (from the Russian Steam store for example). At least that's what I've read so far. I guess the worst thing that could happen is that they remove the game from your library and maybe give you a warning. I've never seen any proof that someone had his account banned for using VPN, but apparently lots of people use VPN to activate region locked keys.

I have 2 games I activated with vpn, for over a year ago. They are still there.
The only thing that I think that can happen is that the game gets removed.
You're not gonna lose your account because u vpn'd 1 game.
Just dont do it again is my advice

You are paranoid. I'm not afraid of losing my account, anyways I did like this lots of times.

They dont care if they dont know , as simple as that ^^

That was not a good idea, but I've heard a lot of users get away with it. I personally never tried and probably won't, but I think you should just relax and enjoy your library

while it's here :-P

gaben is too busy farming money with tf2, dota and csgo to care about that...

If you continue doing this, yeah, ull be banned for sure.

You're being paranoid and Steam won't do anything :P

Ok, my previous comment was kinda rude, sorry. I've bought region-locked New Vegas (a key from British reseller), and I was unable to activate it. Funny thing is, there was nothing about region-locks mentioned on the reseller's site, so I thought its ROW, region-free or whatever. Well, I used TunnelBear to change my IP to British, activated the game, and change my IP back to the original one. Nothing bad happened, and it was like 4 months ago.

Many professional game shops in germany are selling keys to uncut-versions which need to be activated with a vpn. They actually give the vpn instructions with the bought game. In my experience the simple activation does not get you banned. Problem could arise if you buy something with vpn or log in all the time with a vpn, or if you add 2-10 RU games to your library every week ;)

Gosh people, you all are being paranoid. There is no proof whatsoever that anyone ever got their account banned. That's all scary little stories so people won't do it. Steam support won't do jack shit except sit in front their PC's, drink some Mountain Dew and scratch their balls while copy-pasting answers to your tickets.
Nothing will happen, don't be a retard and confess you did it. Just sit back, enjoy your game, worst that will happen is they remove it from your account. But guess what, they are definitely not snooping through your account and look vor VPN activated games.

Nothing to be paranoid about as there is no doubt that they're aware of what you did. You didn't travel from the Barbados to Russia and then back within a few minutes like the logs would show.

It seems as though support tends to lock accounts as opposed to disabling them nowadays. If your account is locked, you cannot use any community features or purchase anymore games, but you can still access what you're previously purchased. This answer came up in a thread talking about cheating, but I imagine it'd be a similar consequence. Worst case, they'll just remove the game.

Source

Why would you admit to this in a forum? What's to stop some dickhead from reporting you now?

Putin is coming for you, it's a CRIMEra

I have done the same thing and I too did not know at the time. Just don't do it again and you should be fine like me. There are people that do it much more often that get away with it and publicly encourage it. I would advise not joining those said people since odds are they will be banned eventually, but eh.

I would do nothing. I would wait and see if something happens. While you can get in serious trouble for doing this, I do not hear many reports of things actually happening to people because of it. I would not advise VPN activation, but if you have done it, you probably won't get screwed over for it.

I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure steam would never actually completely ban you. You paid for a lot of your games which are rightfully yours, steam is just the client in which you use to play them. I would assume because of that steam would never delete your account but instead would more likely kick you from certain parts of steam for example trading, or the market place may fail to be possible. I would assume you're no where near the first person to do this though, and if steam banned every single user that did it, there would be quite an outrage even if it is the users fault in a way.

Personally I would leave it and see how it go's, I would imagine steam wouldn't care unless you're a fairly exceptional case, such as doing it all the time, or something that will flag them as being highly suspicious.

... maybe steam support read this all ... all your accounts ar linked whith this site Oo

Nah its fine, don't worry. I would never do such a thing because I don't need to but I've seen many key selling stores where they even gave specific instructions to activate the game with VPN. If I were you I'd rather buy tf2 keys and get the games from tf2outpost or steamtrades for dirt cheap.

Quite banable offence. Meaning even if you were not the one that bought the game (payed for it) - in the result it still comes cheaper for you then the steam-price was set. And noone wants to lose money. If they didn't care - everyone would use russian IP to activate keys (which are much more cheaper anyway. Just to compare - ArmA3 in steam is 60$, when russians can buy it at russians' online store that sells keys - for 10$. And trust me it's completely legit.) and Valve would lose lots of $$$

You certainly are paranoid. A lot of people doning this don't worry about it. So, don't worry about it. If the game you just activated is not region locked. Then just play it.

It is not the kind of thing that I would ever risk doing myself, but the big thing that gets you the ban hammer right away is a charge back. That bans your account forever even if it's by mistake. The thing is for general ToS violations Steam enforcement is just not consistent at all. You can break the rules regarding harassment and get repeatedly reported for it for months and nothing will happen to you, but unwittingly call a Steam admin a bad name during an online game and poof no more account for you. In general I love Steam, I just hate that there's no real support and that there's zero recourse to them just taking thousands of dollars worth of games you legitimately bought. It's why with consoles or PC if I can get physical media that doesn't require something like Steam or Origin, I generally do. Of course, I have a few games in my inventory that weren't gifts that didn't need Steam that I still ended up getting because 70-80% off was worth the risk.

In short, I don't think Steam is generally ban happy. There's just the problem that even a minor violation could cost you your account if it's in front of an admin on a bad day.

You dun goofed. Seriously, at what point did you think that wasn't a bad idea? Even if you didn't know it'd get you banned, just think about what you had to do to get the game. Common sense mate.

As I said it's quite banable offence. And yes - you can get banned. But I still believe that Steam is nice, and their reputation in the eyes of community is more important, then the enjoyment of banning you forever.

So what I'm saying, if you behave nice and had no other offences, even in case they ban you - if you ask nicely, they will unban (I'm sure). Max can happen in result is the removing of that game from your library. So don't worry that much.