Power of Valve/Steam: Your thoughts

Citizen86

Supreme [H]ardness
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There was a discussion going at the forums of notebookreview.com about how someone bought CoD5 off of Ebay for $35, the Steam version. The guy gifted it to him, and a little while later Steam disabled his account, his whole account with all his games he purchased previous.

Not fair or just IMO, especially since he has proof of where he bought it from and it seemed legit at the time. The problem was that Steam's agreement basically says that they have the power to do this, especially since the game he bought was most likely purchased with a stolen/illegal Credit Card. It's tough, but it didn't seem like he was going to get his account.

Later, someone said he was cheating in CS:S only for half an hour and got his whole account banned. I said good riddance to any hacker, and I didn't mind that he got his whole account disabled. Others disagreed with me though, saying that just because he hacked in one game he shouldn't have all his games taken away from him... just that one game.

So what do you think of Steam's power? It is a little frightening what they can do, since you are basically only getting licenses from them which they can revoke at will. For the awesome deals they have though, I'm willing to try and keep my nose clean and keep all these awesome $5 deals. It really doesn't seem that difficult to keep your account. I've had mine since 2003.

BTW I have $600+ worth of games with probably over 50 games on my Steam account.
 
VAC banned for cheating just means you can't play on VAC enabled servers for any of your online games.
My brother was playing with some hacks on our own server (in home server) and forgot to turn off VAC and he got his account banned from online VAC play, but he could still play his games on non-VAC servers, where pretty much everyone was hacking so it wasn't that fun.

I have too many games to risk trying to cheat, since it isn't very challenging cheating.

I don't see how someone claiming him cheating got his account banned.
 
*shrug*, after I told him good riddance he sent me a PM saying he couldn't wait until we played on the same server and he could aimbot me....
 
Just as the previous post said, his games were not disabled. He was just banned from VAC enabled servers. As for the VAC being global rather than just specific to a single game, that is great stuff. There should be a heavy penalty for cheating. Why should an anti-game cheat be limited to just one game?
 
AFAIK VAC bans only effect the game, and all other games that run off of that engine. My account got stolen awhile back because my brother gave out my password, and by the time support came through my CS was banned. All other games that run off of the HL engine are also VAC banned but anything on the source engine or any other game is not.
 
Take a close look at the terms of agreement.

It states that, in the event of some long-term unavailability, Valve has no obligation to grant users access to their games.

IE: If Valve were to hypothetically fold (about as likely as me winning the lottery) there would be no way to get back the games you had purchased.



IMO Steam and reselling games do not mix. If I were into re-selling games, I would make separate accounts. It would be a little insane to make one for every account, but you probably could make single accounts for games that you'd consider reselling (IE Dawn of War 2, but I'm an idiot). That way you could just pass on the login information onto the purchaser and voila!
 
In an interview with Valve, they said that, if Steam were to ever shut down, they would release all the games from the service so that they could be played without Steam.
 
It's easy for them to say "we will unlock all our games if Steam shuts down". When the time actually comes, those words may not be worth the paper they are printed on. They're just words. What an easy way to boost the number of subscribers! Just offer non-binding verbal assurances and let a % of people be reassured by them and spend their money on Steam. Until I see it in a legally binding contract I don't believe it.
 
Valve are a pretty open company really. The lack of corporate greed means they ain't as bad as most.
 
It's easy for them to say "we will unlock all our games if Steam shuts down". When the time actually comes, those words may not be worth the paper they are printed on. They're just words. What an easy way to boost the number of subscribers! Just offer non-binding verbal assurances and let a % of people be reassured by them and spend their money on Steam. Until I see it in a legally binding contract I don't believe it.

+1

Besides, can you imagine how crazy their servers would be if they announced they are shutting down in two weeks, and everyone's trying to just get all of their games downloaded?

Even if they unlock them if Steam/Valve went bust, I have NEVER read anything that says they'll make sure you have access to get everything downloaded...

Make sure you've downloaded everything in your account and have a back-up somewhere!


Besides, if Valve's agreement with third-party devs is already such that a game would be unlocked in the event Steam went under, you'd think the game would already be unlocked now? Why do they need to be locked to Steam at the moment?


I'm only buying the weekend $5 or 50% deals anymore... The uncertainty (and possible resale factor, in the event the game's just gawd awful) in a $50-$60 game isn't worth it to me. For $50+, I want a physical copy I can resale.
 
Hello,

A staff member has replied to your question:

Hello Matt,

Thank you for contacting Steam Support.

We have found activity in your Steam account related to [cheating][piracy][fraudulent credit card use][sharing of accounts and/or CD Keys]. Per the Steam Subscriber Agreement, we have disabled your account and any games contained in it. Your account will not be reactivated.

The Steam Subscriber Agreement can be found at:
http://www.steampowered.com/v/index....iber_agreement

In addition to violation of contract, activities on your account may violate federal law and state law. If such activities persist, Valve reserves the right to refer the matter to authorities.

That's Steam's reply from the mentioned thread.

If they didn't ban accounts that received a stolen game, then it would be too easy to exploit the system. It sounds like the buyer was just unlucky that he ran into a scammer on Ebay.
 
So long as you abide by the subscriber agreement, you really have nothing to worry about. I've seen claims where users have had their accounts disabled despite having done nothing wrong, but I've never seen any proof that such cases exist.

The way the agreement is worded, they don't technically need any justification to disable your account, but that doesn't necessarily mean they actually do disable accounts without justification.
 
You have to wonder at the paranoia to think that gabe newell is sitting there picking deliberately on one individual or even just randomly closing accounts.
 
Steam's stance on selling their licenses games (either their own, or from their business partners) is fairly clear. Not abiding by it, and using THEIR service, is at your OWN risk. You cannot complain when YOU yourself broke the agreement, that YOU signed (or digitally clicked next to).

When your buying a license to play someone else's production, you play by their own rules, simple as that. It's their IP, and they can do whatever the hell they want. The only thing you can do is vote with your dollar, and buying it via 3rd parties to circumvent their methods is idiotic.

Don't pity the stupid, teach them instead.

If you can't afford the pay the price everyone else pays, then wait for a steam deal, or buy a boxed copy if you can. If even the boxed copy is tied to steam, then learn to love it, or move on.

<--- Also I don't explicitly mean you, its just generalization.
 
They need to make a market place to resell games and make it so you can play different games on an account at the same time. There shouldn't be a reason why i cant play games from different developers on two different computers at the same time. As for people getting banned, ignorance it not an excuse... sorry.
 
They need to make a market place to resell games and make it so you can play different games on an account at the same time. There shouldn't be a reason why i cant play games from different developers on two different computers at the same time. As for people getting banned, ignorance it not an excuse... sorry.

I don't have any idea why they would do this... I believe the whole idea of Steam is to allow some degree of freedom: You can install it on almost as many computers as you want, IE as many computers as you own, but you only are able to play on one account per computer, since that is all you bought. It's the same idea as having a CD key to play online, and it only makes sense.

So why should you be able to play the same game on the same account on two separate computers at the same time?
 
I don't have any idea why they would do this... I believe the whole idea of Steam is to allow some degree of freedom: You can install it on almost as many computers as you want, IE as many computers as you own, but you only are able to play on one account per computer, since that is all you bought. It's the same idea as having a CD key to play online, and it only makes sense.

So why should you be able to play the same game on the same account on two separate computers at the same time?

Same game by two different devs?

I don't think you quite read what Ender said?
 
Steam lets you play games on two different comps at the same time as long as it is not online i know that much.
 
I hated steam, now I quite like it and have quite a lot of games on my account.

However now that I have so many games, I kind of feel like I'm putting all my eggs in one basket, steam are a faceless company, they do not allow open conversation between them and their customers, you're forced into some lame email queue where all you can do is get angry in an email to someone.

If your account is banned or hacked or whatever, if the company was more public facing like they had phone lines or offices you could actually go to and confront the employees about stuff like that, then I'd probably feel a bit safer about it all.

The terms of the steam agreement aren't exactly great, I think i'm going to dial back on downloading games through steam, when it's just a few im not so bothered, when I have a large percentage of my games there, that's big deal.

It also seems likely that steam could take a turn for the worst, if they sell out with advertising or add more spyware like bits to steam that monitor usage and habits etc, that I don't like, adn theres nothing to stop them from doing it. Once you have enough games on your account you're at the mercy of the company and thats NEVER a good position to be in.
 
Valve aren't an evil company or at least have cultivated an image as not being evil.

instead of thinking it as one facelss company, remember it is valve's baby, and they are not faceless.
 
While the only means of communications with them (email) remains the only way, which they can completely ignore...in my book, thats faceless.
 
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