Lost all hope in Steam, this is injustice ...[Update] Still locked :')

Could you ask steam to transfer the funds to a friend? And they gift you?

Change your adress to another location other than your country.
I used to live in China and when I came back to Turkey my steam and my dad's account where shoving different sales.
After I changed my adress to Turkey I managed to buy region locked stuff.

Yeah that is fucked I understand your sentiment. I hope things get better dude.

they will rehash some deals the last day.

if you contact them again ask them what region the account is listed as.
what i gather your account was "free to play" (never made a purchase) and you added the wrong address in the details.

Because they're cheaper in other countries or because Steam has different currencies now. I understand the blocking of steam wallet, but not the "support" they've given him.

If you can buy from the market you could try buying keys and trading them for the games you wanted, though that will be more expensive

I don't know if this helps and it might not...but I read that Steam is supposed to have an encore sale in July (so the games should go on sale again). So hopefully your issue will have been resolved by then?

so you have the money on your account, just cant spend it for 30 days? i think thats usual for first transactions to avoid credit card frauds.

No, the issue comes from the fact that he is trying to get around the the inability to make purchases from his area. From what I can gather there is no Steam sale in his region.

It sucks that you don't have access to the sale, it sucks even more that Steam started region locking and that sweet Russian honeypot was taken from us all. Just because other regions get better prices doesn't mean you're entitled to better prices. I really hate the E word, but this seems like one of those times.

Yes, but as bad as it sounds, Steam don't offer their service to Syria, likely as a result of sanctions on IT software or something (idk).

You told them in the first paragraph of your support ticket that you're from a banned country (BZZT) and you tried to circumvent such a ban (BZZT) by using details of another person's account (BZZT BZZT BZZT), which basically meant they cannot support you.

From what I'm aware wallet funds are region locked just like any game, you would have to use a Saudi VPN to utilize them, then you would need to continue using that VPN whenever you wanted to play those specific games.

A better workaround for your case would've been to send you're friend the money, have them add it to their wallet, then have them buy a cheap item from the market that you listed for $50. You would lose a little to Gaben's lunch fund, but it's better than not being able to use any of it or risk a VPN ban.

steam wallet funds don't have a currency/region till you add them to your account. if i add it i'll get 50dollars, russians get rubbles = to $50, and so on. it should give you your local currency equivalent to the card, in this case 50$. are they saying you don't have a currency there?

Yes, there is. Go to Steam site and fill the form for Gaben. It's there.

http://www.valvesoftware.com/email.php?recipient=Gabe+Newell

gaben@valvesoftware.com

Follow his advice and publish this on reddit's steam subreddit. I shouldn't say this, but use a clickbait title. Take screenshots, this should be made public and huge. As you said, it's your right to try and enjoy these games, you deserve it more than anyone else.

It's sickening.

Does this rule also take into account the regions where Valve pretends that you can use their store and even lets you add funds to your Steam wallet but then refuses to let you use that money on games? There is nowhere said that they can legally do that. They are intentionally misleading their customers and that might be legally challenged.

Valve still get paid for the gift card in the end. Following your example, it's more akin to buying a frozen McCain pizza, discovering that you got sold a box of ice cubes and taking it directly with McCain. (But they won't help you since you live in Mexico and you crossed the border to buy a flavor that's not even sold in your country.)

If he's able to use the market, he could always spend the funds on items/cards /gems to trade for games. As long as there's anything he can do with those funds, he's not completely out cold. But if they're really stuck in limbo, then they could try and be more helpful.

The difference is that despite not offering the ability to purchase games, they still allow the ability to add funds to the account, which they can never use, and offer no assistance when the matter is brought to light.

It's not too much to ask that they work with the person in this instance and try to find a compromise.
The funds are right there in the account.
The account is able to play games.
There is a customer support staff.
There are higher-up staff that can be alerted and requested for extra info.

I work in a form of customer service role, and while I sometimes have to enforce policies that I myself do not agree with (based on regulations, rules and so forth), I also realise when a customer has been trapped in a manner that may have even potentially or partially the fault of my host company, and even where the likely response is "no, we can't do anything", I would still refer the case on to a higher member of staff even if only by email as a low-priority issue. If I still had to go back to the customer and apologise that we were unable to do anything, I would at least try to explain the 'why' of the situation where possible, beyond a deadpan "Nope, I'm terminating this call, bye" response. Digital customer service roles are different, yeah, I get it. If there is an extreme volume to get through, yeah, you sometimes have to be flat and blunt, but this is hardly a normal case as it has just stung somebody's wallet unnecessarily for a substantial sum of money, in an oversight of the host company.

Come on. Stop pretending this was an harmful abuse or manipulation.

You could've tried contacting game devs directly with permission to donate them a few bucks without interfering steam.
Steam made "75% to steam, 25% to author"-cut on paid skyrim mods, I don't think game devs will get any better.

I suppose you could buy some of those games off of steam then. Then at least you can support the games while not supporting steam.

Super shitty? :P

I am wrong yes, but do i not have the right to play games? That was my money and they could've at least stated possible solutions

they did nothing, and sent him an automated/prebuilt message. he has $50 stuck in his account and they don't even care.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/diretide

TL;DR: Users want Diretide event (Dota 2) from Valve and take it as far as posting on Volvo's (because those hip Dolan kids can't write correctly and call Valve -> Volvo) social media sites. Volvo actually replies and suggests that Valve should give the users the Diretide event. Diretide event actually happened.

i guess there's nothing you can do. Steam is US based company and there are restrictions from the government.
I hope Steam is able to refund you the $50 steam wallet some how.

i'm not sure if you ask a friend from another country to create a steam account, add games with it. and use family sharing to share with you. but then again, i'm not sure if there's any restriction that prevents you to play games on family sharing.

Not even Skrill or Google wallet?

That's why sanctions exist. It sucks but that's how governments force other government's citizens to compel their government to change. Hopefully things will calm down there enough so you can play games again. Stay safe.

That's part of the reason why when having issues with Russia, the US didn't call for full on sanctions. They specifically went after things that the richest of Russians wanted/enjoyed and sanctioned those. The world is slowly learning. Sorry it couldn't help you.