EPTSteam hacked, valve issues statement - Page 11
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SilverSkyLark
Philippines8437 Posts
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sonobeno
United Kingdom66 Posts
A friend of mine from Australia gifted me a game as a present (perfectly legal). I activated it on my UK account and found my account suspended due to 'suspicious activities' the following day. No other information that that. This meant no access to my entire account with +20 games on it. All I could do was going to the support site and try and recover my account. This meant I had to verify who I was, so I had to find physical copies of some of my games(fortunately I had that), write my account name visible (in ink!) next to the serial codes and scan them... After a week I get a reply from Steam Support, asking my friend to provide his credit card information, billing address and receipt for the game he bought as a gift. No information other than that. Nothing telling me if and when I might get my account back. Again at no point had my friend or I done anything illegal. My friend provided the information within the same hour, yet it took another another week before Steam Support got back to me. I can't explain how infuriating it was, we had done NOTHING wrong, I got no warning, no reassurance that they where looking into the issue and my account would be re-activated in X amount of time. Apparently what had happened was this: The steam system had flagged the gift activation, because the account my friend was using was brand new (he never had one before, as he is a console dude) and the game was gifted from one region to another. How come that justifies suspending THE ENTIRE ACCOUNT? Could they just suspend the one game that was gifted (which would still be a huge pain)? I was told nothing about what have happened, I had to provide a ton of evidence for who I was, and likewise for my friend while all my games where indefinitely unavailable to me. My account was re-activated a week later (total of two weeks), with no excuse or compensation. Thank god I had physical copies of some of the games attached to my account and was able to scan them.. So yeah... Not everyone loves steam. They can based on nothing else but a suspicion suspend your account indefinitely, and there is NOTHING you can do about it should they choose not to activate it again. Just imagine you haven't done anything wrong, and from today you cant access any of your steam games.... feels great doesn't it? | ||
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Bleak
Turkey3059 Posts
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SirMilford
Australia1269 Posts
On November 12 2011 22:39 sonobeno wrote: For everyone saying 'steam is fine, just don't break the rules'. I got a little story. A friend of mine from Australia gifted me a game as a present (perfectly legal). I activated it on my UK account and found my account suspended due to 'suspicious activities' the following day. No other information that that. This meant no access to my entire account with +20 games on it. All I could do was going to the support site and try and recover my account. This meant I had to verify who I was, so I had to find physical copies of some of my games(fortunately I had that), write my account name visible (in ink!) next to the serial codes and scan them... After a week I get a reply from Steam Support, asking my friend to provide his credit card information, billing address and receipt for the game he bought as a gift. No information other than that. Nothing telling me if and when I might get my account back. Again at no point had my friend or I done anything illegal. My friend provided the information within the same hour, yet it took another another week before Steam Support got back to me. I can't explain how infuriating it was, we had done NOTHING wrong, I got no warning, no reassurance that they where looking into the issue and my account would be re-activated in X amount of time. Apparently what had happened was this: The steam system had flagged the gift activation, because the account my friend was using was brand new (he never had one before, as he is a console dude) and the game was gifted from one region to another. How come that justifies suspending THE ENTIRE ACCOUNT? Could they just suspend the one game that was gifted (which would still be a huge pain)? I was told nothing about what have happened, I had to provide a ton of evidence for who I was, and likewise for my friend while all my games where indefinitely unavailable to me. My account was re-activated a week later (total of two weeks), with no excuse or compensation. Thank god I had physical copies of some of the games attached to my account and was able to scan them.. So yeah... Not everyone loves steam. They can based on nothing else but a suspicion suspend your account indefinitely, and there is NOTHING you can do about it should they choose not to activate it again. Just imagine you haven't done anything wrong, and from today you cant access any of your steam games.... feels great doesn't it? It was the activity not the game. And why was your friend from Australia even gifting you games? they cost like double in most cases. I have bought cdkeys from russian websites all the time, And have had no trouble activating them and using them, as such i love steam. | ||
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graph1k
United States97 Posts
On November 12 2011 22:39 sonobeno wrote: For everyone saying 'steam is fine, just don't break the rules'. I got a little story. A friend of mine from Australia gifted me a game as a present (perfectly legal). I activated it on my UK account and found my account suspended due to 'suspicious activities' the following day. No other information that that. This meant no access to my entire account with +20 games on it. All I could do was going to the support site and try and recover my account. This meant I had to verify who I was, so I had to find physical copies of some of my games(fortunately I had that), write my account name visible (in ink!) next to the serial codes and scan them... After a week I get a reply from Steam Support, asking my friend to provide his credit card information, billing address and receipt for the game he bought as a gift. No information other than that. Nothing telling me if and when I might get my account back. Again at no point had my friend or I done anything illegal. My friend provided the information within the same hour, yet it took another another week before Steam Support got back to me. I can't explain how infuriating it was, we had done NOTHING wrong, I got no warning, no reassurance that they where looking into the issue and my account would be re-activated in X amount of time. Apparently what had happened was this: The steam system had flagged the gift activation, because the account my friend was using was brand new (he never had one before, as he is a console dude) and the game was gifted from one region to another. How come that justifies suspending THE ENTIRE ACCOUNT? Could they just suspend the one game that was gifted (which would still be a huge pain)? I was told nothing about what have happened, I had to provide a ton of evidence for who I was, and likewise for my friend while all my games where indefinitely unavailable to me. My account was re-activated a week later (total of two weeks), with no excuse or compensation. Thank god I had physical copies of some of the games attached to my account and was able to scan them.. So yeah... Not everyone loves steam. They can based on nothing else but a suspicion suspend your account indefinitely, and there is NOTHING you can do about it should they choose not to activate it again. Just imagine you haven't done anything wrong, and from today you cant access any of your steam games.... feels great doesn't it? Honestly, the fact that a brand new account buys a game for someone else and not for themselves IS suspicious. Especially from Australia to UK as has been said, games can cost quite a bit more there. Usually in a situation like that if everything checks out steam will give you some sort of compensation or an apology that was not a canned "thanks for cooperating" one. | ||
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Goldfish
2230 Posts
On November 13 2011 10:43 graph1k wrote: Honestly, the fact that a brand new account buys a game for someone else and not for themselves IS suspicious. Especially from Australia to UK as has been said, games can cost quite a bit more there. Usually in a situation like that if everything checks out steam will give you some sort of compensation or an apology that was not a canned "thanks for cooperating" one. Agreed about the suspicious part. It's somewhat reasonable because it is odd. Did your friend buy just the game and gift it without adding or buying any other game on the account? I do agree it is unfair to suspend the entire account and give the no warning (or at the least just prevent the game from being accessed) and they definitely need to work with that in that department. Steam isn't perfect but at least things work for the most part which is good. I do remember having a bad experience with Steam I lost my account, couldn't get it back because no one at the steam forums bothered to really help (back then when there was no customer support I think? Also people were rude back then too >.>) this was back in 2005 or so though (also I did have the CD key + case and everything). (In terms of people being rude - Trust me I was being polite and nice with my request to retrieve my lost account the entire time >.<.) Nowadays they're much better but not perfect especially with how they give no warnings. I got my account back (yep that old one that I lost back in 2005 with Half Life plat pack) and I say their customer service is good for the amount of people I assume they have to deal with everyday. Also a fun fact - the Steam support has some automatic guessing placed in that offers generic replies if you say certain things. If you say "thanks" (for example) after a steam support member replied, it sometimes think you had your problem solved and offers a generic response that says "we're glad your problem is solved!". Well just something to note because they happened to me >.> (in short, don't say thanks until your problem is resolved when dealing with steam support). | ||
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mikell
Australia352 Posts
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John Madden
American Samoa894 Posts
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sonobeno
United Kingdom66 Posts
My friend did it as a surprise, to be nice. It was a present, and he did the way that seemed the most logical to him. He is a console guy and never used steam before, but he thought it was great if I opened my account and got the gift, rather than him sending me money and I could buy it for myself, or sending a hard copy via post. So he creates a new account, buys the game, and gifts it to me. I don't see anything suspicious or illegal about this behaviour, and certainly not something that validates suspending my entire account. Maybe a bit odd that he chooses the MORE EXPENSIVE way to get me the game, but would it not seem more incriminating if he could have gotten it CHEAPER by gifting from Australia? Steam support didn't tell my friend or me anything, only the automatic generated response 'your account has been suspended due to suspicious behaviour' until after I had validated who I was. The response we got then did not hold any information about what have happended, only asking for my friend to give up a lot of personal infromation. We were both very polite throughout the entire procedures.No compensation was given . Let me remind you, that if I did not have any hard copies of games with serial codes connected to my steam account(you need at least 3), I would most likely have lost my account (20+ games) completely. This is the part that really freaks me out. Its bad customer support to leave a falsely suspended account hanging for two weeks, it is borderline fraud to set up a system where the customer can lose all their investment on false accusations, and have no way of retrieving it back. I know this is always the thing that happens to the neighbour, but really imagine you use one of your completely LEGAL Russian keys, and from tomorrow you have no access to ALL of you games for an indefinite amount of time. Good luck if you don't have any hard copies... Goldfish: The part about not writing 'Thanks' is hilarious and scary. My account was suspended automatically as well. I find it quite scary that an automated system can suspend your entire account, and if you have no hard copies it will be close to impossible to retrieve your games. Meanwhile nobody at steam bothers to look into it, before you can validate who you are. I'm glad to see things like Origin pop up. Not specifically they way Origin is right now, but hopefully more competition will give us a better experience from both Steam and Origin services. | ||
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paralleluniverse
4065 Posts
On November 13 2011 10:43 graph1k wrote: Honestly, the fact that a brand new account buys a game for someone else and not for themselves IS suspicious. Especially from Australia to UK as has been said, games can cost quite a bit more there. Usually in a situation like that if everything checks out steam will give you some sort of compensation or an apology that was not a canned "thanks for cooperating" one. I don't see how it is suspicious. Please explain. | ||
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