The disposable nature of scam accounts on Steam has always been a bit of a problem – roll into town, set up some fakes, spam to your heart’s content then roll right out again. If the account is banhammered? No problem, you can just set up a new one and start all over again.
Not any more.
Many features are now going to be walled behind a $5 cost (for example, purchasing a game) – and there are very specific criteria where and how that money needs to be spent, before your account moves from Limited to Regular. From the Steam support page:
Limited users are prevented from accessing several features on Steam, including but not limited to: Sending friend invites Opening group chat Voting on Greenlight, Steam Reviews and Workshop items Participating in the Steam Market Posting frequently in the Steam Discussions Gaining Steam Profile Levels (Locked to level 0) and Trading Cards Submitting content on the Steam Workshop Posting in an item's Steam Workshop Discussions Accessing the Steam Web API Using browser and mobile chat
They’ve thought about ways people could try to game this system, so – for example – throwing money at a cheap game then reversing payment will remove your freshly gained full account status. Hopefully this move will encourage would-be scammers to move right along and hold fire on phishing / Malware links sent to innocent Steam users. More at the link.
Christopher Boyd
while this is fine and dandy for most, this spells doom for me. as a CONSTANTLY broke teenager (as most are today), i don’t even have 2 bucks, even if i wanted to agree to this.
i JUST faced this “limited account” business not even 4 months ago (oh, and mind you, 4 months ago, just like now, i had no money), so i had to ask one of my parents to take out money out of THEIR pocket, to buy the cheapest game on there. i didn’t want them to spend a cent more on account of me.
so, still as dirt poor as i am now, i’ll have to ask them yet again for them to dig around for even more cash – FOR SOMETHING THAT ALREADY SHOULD HAVE BEEN SETTLED 3 MONTHS AGO.
i just have all the luck in the world…..
P.S…..if this 5 buck change is such an easy thing to do for mostly anyone, how on earth will this stop the spammers and trollers anyway????
Right on glad to see this move, less spam the better, some people that live off spamming and scamming need to get off the couch in the basement and get a real job.
Why dont you get a job, or work around the house? SImple money.
In fairness, there is now a bit of a schism between what is offered and what you have to do to interact with said games. For example Steam offers many free to play games – including their own TF2. But it could be argued that those games are now pay to play in some weird way, given that many features previously available to players are now effectively paywalled (by paying for unrelated titles!)