Im scared.... fucking steam... what could be the solution to this, the way to avoid it? Will you be okay, unbanned? Daaamn... im scared about the gifting, trading thing now.... Origin begins to grow on me more and more as steam keeps fuck uping itself on us...
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To be honest, they might as well just block resale of games now. It's painfully obvious they want to, so they should just get it over with instead of half-assed answers like this. >.<
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The problem is that a lot of people like to buy things at discount, especially in the Russian store, and then turn them around for a number of CS:GO/DOTA 2/TF2 keys after the sale has ended, which they can then sell on the market. While it is true that Valve takes a 5% cut of all sales on the Marketplace, if a Russian 'trader' gets a number of games for incredibly cheap prices and then turns those around for anywhere between 10 to 20 keys is from an international player, they are not getting nearly the amount they lost out on during the sale. This turns into a net loss for Valve, while the Russian trader turns one or two games far more money than they started out with, which they can repeat the process with as many times as they wish, until Valve is effectively paying itself out of its own pocket to give these individuals games.
I personally don't blame Valve if they've decided to take a stand against exploitative cross-regional trading. Steam is a retail outlet first and foremost, and such practices are not conducive to their economic gains.
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You're assuming that every time I buy a cheap game from a Russian trader, I would've paid full EU price if the traders weren't available. I can tell you I wouldn't ;)
This is, to a degree, the same as talking about pirates and assuming that every pirated copy of a game could and should've been a full price purchase.
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Comparing frugality to piracy, however, doesn't make sense at all. With these sorts of trades, it's a 1:1 ratio. The retailer loses out on one potential sale to trade, but still turns a profit because they made money from the initial sale. With piracy, one copy ends up in the hands of many, thus providing the 'free' option and diverting countless potential sales to piracy.
At any rate, that's not the point I was attempting to make. I was pointing out how exploitative of the system cross-regional trading is and how it can be harmful. I know most Russian traders probably don't trade at full retail, but they'd still trade enough to turn a profit.
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The comparison makes at least some sense. Just like not all pirated copies are lost sales, not all games bought from Russian traders are lost sales at Western prices. If my budget is $10, I might buy a single game for that price or 4 TF2 keys to buy games from traders. I won't suddenly decide to spend $20 instead.
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Yep, I wouldn't pay that price. Seeing the sometimes massive price difference, then pondering buying the game at the inflated price...just ain't something I'd do. I know folks love screaming "conversion rates" or "Russians are poor"...well, that I could care less about - I'm not exactly made out of money either.
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I'll be sure to tell the starving children in Africa of your terrible situation regarding lack of funds for your luxury entertainment media. Maybe they can pull together a fundraiser for you.
Also, try considering that the price economically healthy countries pay for games aren't "inflated" so much as the price poorer countries pay for their games is "subsidised" in the sense that given the relative GDP, a little money from them is better than nothing and/or mass piracy.
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I thought a dollar a day was enough for those guys. ;P
Maybe you're into helping other people pay for their games, but I'm not. You want a game, then you buy it. Or get resourceful like I did and get it some other way, not like GMG doesn't pay store credit for reviews anymore.
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There's no arguing that videogames are luxury entertainment media. But that was not the topic.
One may think that games are indeed overpriced in the West and that Russian prices are closer to reason, or one may go with the right/subsidized opinion. I don't think it's a fact that Western prices are right and fair, not in a meaning of perceived value and not in a purely financial way (maximizing profits).
Finally, the logic behind regional pricing, at least in this case, is not to give poorer countries lower prices. Sticking to the old system for simplicity, Brazil and Russia are far from the poorest countries in the world. They are big countries with a lower-than-Western average income and where, crucially, there's good money to be extracted.
Similarly, on an individual level, there's money to be extracted from me through games, but not much at Western prices.
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I'm not sure if Valve is making a loss during sales or when a game is bought in another region, after all it's thr dev/publisher who sets the prices (during sale as well as for regions).
If anything, Valve is making a profit from market transactions.
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This occurs daily in international trade...one company buys a lot of a product when the price is low, waits for the price to rise and then sells it, often to a different region at a profit. The only difference is that in the digital age, the Russian traders do not have to pay to ship it to a different region of the world to sell at a profit. Your methodology where Valve will end up paying for the games sold by the Russian traders is absurd by the way.
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This is highly disturbing if it is indeed a Steam policy. I know a lot of people are probably going to jump on this and go, 'Well, if they're targeting Russian traders, who cares?' Problem is, even if you take that attitude, the phrase, 'willing violation of regional restrictions,' is so mind-bogglingly broad that this could affect all sorts of people.
I live in Canada and have many friends in the US. If we trade, we'd be in violation of this policy, and that's ridiculous.
The counterpoint invariably will be that they're only targeting traders—but if that's true, why use such a broadly-worded policy? I sure as hell don't trust Valve to apply such broad language to only a narrow subset of circumstances. Valve is a corporation, not a person, and it sure as hell doesn't have your interests at heart.
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It's complete bullshit, they're fucking with everyone. If they don't fix this they need to come under fire for their exploitative set up. They receive a huge benefit from cross region trading. Their entire system is set up to encourage it. But they say don't do it, but only if you do it too much. It's all about maximizing profits and increasing complacency in their clientele. For example 4-pack trading, something which is a not very well kept secret on steam. Allegedly you can't do it. Actually you can. If you have a support issue doing it you may talk to a support person about it. They won't tell you that it isn't allowed. They will in fact allow you to do it. However they will offer you no support on it, and if you discuss it in a public place or do it in high volume only then will they condemn you for it. It's doublespeak. Basically, it means nothing other than Valve wants to make money and doesn't want people bugging them.
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thats always how it was, too bad that many people still go asskissing them in the steamcommunity discussions and the old SPUF forums as well (not to call those people on names because of the no calling out rule)
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So what comes next? Cant use ROW-keys cause they were bought in an Indonesian shop? ^^
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Legally, that'd make more sense than banning people, as according to the Agreement "Valve does not recognize any transfers of Subscriptions (including transfers by operation of law) that are made outside of Steam."
So that part is there, but there's not a word about store bans or account termination for trading and gifting within Steam or even reselling games outside of Steam.
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Some of our games are region free, but dont trade it because its not allowed. We create the digital currencies with keys but dont use it for trade. We have 4 packs, but dont trade those too. We built trade screen but your gifts will be untradable before 30 days because we dont want to use this screen.
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Here's also a quote by Gabe Newell:
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
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At least it's apparent that Newell is aware of the term "service problem". I wasn't sure he understood the most basic definition of the term.
The OP and many others have established this many times over.
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The 30 days restriction is perfectly justified. Even if you use the trade window to trade for the game with keys (for example), your gift can still be taken from your account. You can get your keys back, but that means more work for Steam who no doubt have thousands of complaints about revoked gifts. They are simply trying to cut down on the complaints and improve the reliability of trading gifts without any hassle.
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They could however check if funds in your Steam wallet are older than 30 days instead of counting from the purchase date of the gift.
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there's already a wallet fund history on your profile.
example: I've added $10 about 3 months ago and made a purchase for a $4 game in the meantime (sometime between adding the funds and "today"), so I've got $6 left in my wallet.
Now I want to purchase 2 games that are $5 each - after adding more funds, one of the games is instantly tradeble, because it was purchased with the "old" money from my wallet, the other game has a 30 days trade limitation, because the funds where added just recently.
If it matters, which of the 2 games will be tradeable, you would however purchase them in 2 transactions instead of adding both to your cart at the same time.
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I hope valve used protection when they fucked you.
And i hope you get unbanned. Cause well, this sounds incredibly bad and i feel that it bodes ill for anyone outside the US who does trading.
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Steam has never been friendly to its customers. Intentionally useless customer service that frustrates you into giving up, questionable practices like retroactively region-locking and, in your case, banned for utilizing a feature of their own design.
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Yup. See also, thread about Steam falling one day.
Service and consumer rights would be their Achilles heel in that fall, should it happen.
Right now, convenience, selection and price outweigh service for me. But if another provided the same at even slightly higher prices, I'd jump ship in a heartbeat.
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I know traders who got warned by Steam saying they shouldn't sell games to other regions or they will receive a ban. Never heard of a direct ban though.
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Listen, I really don't want to get into a political discussion here, but Obama is worse than Putin (who is still bad don't get me wrong, he's doing to Ukraine what America is doing to my country), and maybe not as bad as Hitler just yet, but the truth is they are all making our world a much worse place to live in than it would be without them, not that it'll be any better when the new guy or gal takes over.
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Yeah, the world under Russia would be happy and great! Tovarishch, zhivo v GULAG!
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Complete different history the Serbia thing, lol.
Putin still 100% worst.
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Oh yeah? So tell me:
This is what Putin is doing. Killing his own citizens, killing citizens of other countries who just want to be free... It is nowhere near drones strikes. (which by the way kill between 4 and 7 civilians for every terrorist killed - Putin's army kills only innocent people, and scores 40 to 50 times more causalities more than USA)
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1 civilian killed per terrorist should be one too many
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"Did Obama attacked an independent country, and annexed a part of it, because he wanted to get even on citizens for not choosing his puppet as a president?"
Yes, my country, like I said in the post you replied to, and he bombed a ton of other countries, just to get their evil president out of his hiding place.
You obviously don't give a crap about what I said in my last post so I won't waste any time answering your post any further, and please don't reply to this one, it'll only lead to us fighting over something stupid, on a gaming forum.
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No way, how did i miss this comment?
Ok, so:
1 - Obama yes and yes, Putin nope and nope.
2 - Obama nope, Putin nope twice.
3 - Obama, no idea honestly. Putin nope.
4 - Obama nope, Mercs (mercs? really? lol) proofs please.
If only Putin did something, but he didnt, all he do is shitty talk.
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1 - Have you ever heard of Crimea? Or Ukraine?
2 - Have you ever heard of School in Beslan? Or Nord-Ost Siedge? They both were engineered by Russian special forces in order to increase popularity of Putin.
3 - Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Pussy Riot... Come on, the list is much longer.
4 - Boeing 777 belonging to Marsylian Airlines in Ukraine was shoot down by accident. Putin's mercenaries were told to go to one village and shoot down airplane (they were told it is military one) but since they were Russians, they went to the wrong village. (with almost the same name) They saw an airplane - and shoot it down. (there is still a copy of this order recorded) If they would be in a right place they would shoot down Russian Tupolew with over 100 Russian citizens on board. Most likely it would be a reason to send Russian regular forces to Ukraine in order to annex entire country.
Check the facts. Putin is an international terrorist. And if someone deserves to get a missile from a drone in a face than he is the one. And only reason he gets away with this is because Russians are brain-washed by his propaganda.
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1 - Yes, and?
2 - Same as 11/9
3 - i am sorry, but LOL @ this examples.
4 - Right... but the facts is only Ukrainian army has assets to do this.
Dont you think if there was Putin mercs, those lands would be already part of Russia?
Ill be happy if Putin actually did something real for those people, but all he does is talking and sending non-military supplies...
So, if Putin is international terrorist why INTERPOL didnt arrested him yet? why he is not in international WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE list? Maybe because he is an a terrorist only in some people brainwashed minds?
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So ill explain it to you. Im from poland. If i havd to choose which country would occupay poland i choose usa. We had russia on our lands for almost 60years and it didnt turn out good. Neither for other communist countries. And on the other side: japan, west germany, and south korea. See the difference ?
I know that serbia is closing to russia but they dont know what they are doing. Ever heard of ppl wanting to migrate to russia ? Would YOU go to russia or to usa ? Where you have free of speech ?
So i think im glad i went on vacation to croatia not to serbia.
good day to u all
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Yes of course you've went to Croatia and not to Serbia. After all, it kind of makes sense, since both your country and Croatia fancied fascist regime during WW2 and you had to be "occupied" and purified after it has ended.
So you'd certainly rather go to another friendly fascist country ;)
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come to Croatia if you like warm weather and beautiful beaches, not because of something that happened 70 years ago
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Russia helps Serbia financially all the time, when we have forest fires during summer, they send us planes to distinguish them more quickly, they sent planes with aid this spring when we had huge floods, their rescuers were jumping into the ice cold water from helicopters to save our people while America is taking a part of our country and giving it to Albania, how can we embargo Russia just because America asked us to? And just so you know, Serbia doesn't support what Russia did to Ukraine, we can't support it if we wanted to as it's almost literally the same thing America is doing to us (the only difference is, Crimea used to be a part of Russia, while Kosovo was always Serbian). So please don't throw insults til you know why you're throwing them.
btw, I know why Polish people don't like Russia, but that has nothing to do with Serbia at all.
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I never trade games, but i'm scare to make GA now.
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I'm from Russia too and just had the same problem. After contacting them I've explained that its actually hard to figure out of ToS that cross-regional trading is prohibited and promised them that I wouldn't do so again since now I'm aware of it. They removed account restrictions as one time exeption and said that next time it will be permanent. I still can't buy anything at Steam store or DOTA2 store, but it's probably a bug and I'm waiting for their reply atm. Sad story...
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:D typical valve support reply, doing stuff they are paid for as "one time exception". It's pretty mind-boggling how the biggest online store has provably the worst support of them all, one can hope that one day they stop saving money on it (as well as saving money on upgrading servers), but its unlikely, unless they get kicked in the ass by customers.
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I wouldn't rly blame Steam support, but Steam in general, for a client without many critical fuctions, for stupid policies, for not-customer orientation etc. They know they are on the top and behave accordingly. And until majority of the users is ok with that, nothing will change.
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This sucks, sorry for you :C
btw are you sure you didn't use a vpn at all (not for steam, generally) ? A russian guy used a vpn for netflix and got banned too, then he realized that maybe he accidently opened steam with the vpn ON and... well gg.
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If one would look up the Steam Subscriber Agreement im sure that person would find one or more paragraphs which would be saying that you are not allowed to sell stuff...like
"You may not sell or charge others for the right to use your Account, or otherwise transfer your Account, nor may you sell, charge others for the right to use, or transfer any Subscriptions other than if and as expressly permitted by this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use)."
"You are entitled to use the Software for your own personal use, but you are not entitled to: (i) sell, grant a security interest in or transfer reproductions of the Software to other parties in any way,"
But there should the persons look them self if anything of the stuff which is written there would fit.
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I'm also in Russia and I've been trading games as well. I got banned in a similar manner on the first day of the exploration sale after having sent gifts to about 60 people within a couple of hours. I have not been able to buy anything for myself or others ever since. The Steam Support has given me the same message, also in Russian despite my original message having been in English. Then I've got another predefined message saying they will not discuss this issue any further with me. I'm sure that means it's a permanent ban and it's against their own agreement, as all my trades have been legit, according to that same agreement. I suppose that's why Valve doesn't clearly state it's a ban but rather gives me an error message, and the message from the Support is worded more like an advice rather than a warning or an explanation, for the same reasons.
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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!
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