# Valve Restrict Steam Tradings to Deal with Hackers



## pastaconsumer (Aug 5, 2016)

Wow, sounds like a bunch of hoopla! To be honest, it kind of sucks, because it revokes access to gifting the game from EVERYONE. I don't think that's fair, but I see their point.


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## evandixon (Aug 5, 2016)

Froster said:


> If you're purchasing a copy that isn't for the account you're purchasing it with, you'll need to immediately gift it to someone else


I guess that makes sense.  I thought it was cool being able to do this, but I never actually did it.  I guess it helps get rid of abuse, so Steam/Devs get more of the money (so there aren't people buying a game during the sale, and selling it later for profit).



Froster said:


> Additionally, if you gift a copy of a game to someone who then goes on to receive a permanent ban, you'll lose the ability to gift copies of that game to other people.


Why should I have to be punished for someone else's wrongdoings?


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## Froster (Aug 5, 2016)

UniqueGeek said:


> Why should I have to be punished for someone else's wrongdoings?


I actually agree with you! This is totally a wrong move done by Valve.


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## Returnofganon (Aug 5, 2016)

This seems like innocent people could be hurt, but its good to see that Valve is working at stopping hackers


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## Mikemk (Aug 5, 2016)

Well, I'm already not allowed to trade because I only use 2FA instead of 3FA, so it doesn't affect me.


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## evandixon (Aug 6, 2016)

I found the source.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1327-WUJX-5722

Turns out they did this because people stockpile games on one account, then gift them to other accounts under their control so they can continue cheating.  While I still think Valve is going a little far restricting gifting like that, at least they have a real reason.


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## Mikemk (Aug 6, 2016)

This is going to hurt g2a though


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## Deleted User (Aug 6, 2016)

Froster said:


> Additionally, if you gift a copy of a game to someone who then goes on to receive a permanent ban, you'll lose the ability to gift copies of that game to other people.


Now that is _total_ bullshit.


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## Bladexdsl (Aug 6, 2016)

all the guys selling digitally on ebay are fucked


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## marksteele (Aug 6, 2016)

I don't see why there's rage on this thread. If your gifting games to people who hack then you need to rethink who your friends are. I can see why traders are mad but the platform was never intended to be used that way so if you wanna complain go find some other massive game distribution platform.


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## Seriel (Aug 6, 2016)

waaaat I don't get it.
Whats happening?


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## marksteele (Aug 6, 2016)

Jackus said:


> waaaat I don't get it.
> Whats happening?



tl;dr: you can't stockpile game gifts anymore, if you buy a gift you have to send it right when you buy it. If someone you trade to gets a perm ban you can't trade that game anymore

This affects:
Cheaters (can't stockpile games on sale to cheat later on)
Traders (can't stockpile games on sale to make money later on, have to worry about trading to a cheater and getting trade banned for that game)
People who do random giveaways (Risky to give out games now because someone who gets it could hack)


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## Seriel (Aug 6, 2016)

Well all the steam games i've ever given were humble bundle keys so  I guess i'm okay?


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## RemixDeluxe (Aug 6, 2016)

I read over this story twice and I dont fully understand.

For the most part I understand this is suppose to deter cheating and rightfully so, so if a cheater who is perma banned gives a game to a friend is that friend banned from trading? How is that fair especially if they didnt know they were perma banned, unless I'm misunderstanding.


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## marksteele (Aug 6, 2016)

RemixDeluxe said:


> I read over this story twice and I dont fully understand.
> 
> For the most part I understand this is suppose to deter cheating and rightfully so, so if a cheater who is perma banned gives a game to a friend is that friend banned from trading? How is that fair especially if they didnt know they were perma banned, unless I'm misunderstanding.



No. If that FRIEND game the game TO someone who then cheats and gets banned, then that friend is banned from trading that ONE game


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## RemixDeluxe (Aug 6, 2016)

marksteele said:


> No. If that FRIEND game the game TO someone who then cheats and gets banned, then that friend is banned from trading that ONE game


Alright, like someone said before if you have longtime friends then you should know by now how they like to play their games. They should also be honest too about their status, at least thats what a good friend would do.


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## marksteele (Aug 6, 2016)

RemixDeluxe said:


> Alright, like someone said before if you have longtime friends then you should know by now how they like to play their games. They should also be honest too about their status, at least thats what a good friend would do.



Valve Anti-cheat: Now with built-in shitty friend detector!


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## Mikemk (Aug 6, 2016)

Q) Does this affect non VAC games I might want to buy on g2a?


marksteele said:


> I don't see why there's rage on this thread. If your gifting games to people who hack then you need to rethink who your friends are. I can see why traders are mad but the platform was never intended to be used that way so if you wanna complain go find some other massive game distribution platform.


I can't imagine why people on a video game hacking forum might be worried about having hacker friends.


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## marksteele (Aug 6, 2016)

Mikemk said:


> Q) Does this affect non VAC games I might want to buy on g2a?
> 
> I can't imagine why people on a video game hacking forum might be worried about having hacker friends.



Last I checked GBATemp was an independent gaming community (says so rite in their logo)

As for your Q. It would also apply to online games where the devs can ban you. Outside of those and VAC games you're fine.


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## Steena (Aug 6, 2016)

Mikemk said:


> Q) Does this affect non VAC games I might want to buy on g2a?
> 
> I can't imagine why people on a video game hacking forum might be worried about having hacker friends.


You should however be worried about buying games from people who got them by credit card fraud


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## ut2k4master (Aug 6, 2016)

> if you gift a copy of a game to someone who then goes on to receive a permanent ban, you'll lose the ability to gift copies of that game to other people.



wow wow wow, this sucks... Oo


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## DinohScene (Aug 6, 2016)

Froster said:


> if you gift a copy of a game to someone who then goes on to receive a permanent ban, you'll lose the ability to gift copies of that game to other people​



That seems kinda really harsh ._.


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## MrJason005 (Aug 6, 2016)

So now merchants who bought games at huge discounts during sales won't be able to profit from these online games by selling them on sites like tf2op.com, and if even _one _of their customers gets VAC/Other Anti-cheat banned, they won't be able to sell that game anymore.


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## darcangel (Aug 6, 2016)

Where I live: People buy games on the US account while onsale, Wayyyyyyy cheaper, then resell it


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## Froster (Aug 6, 2016)

darcangel said:


> Where I live: People buy games on the US account while onsale, Wayyyyyyy cheaper, then resell it


This is actually to prevent this.


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## darcangel (Aug 6, 2016)

Froster said:


> This is actually to prevent this.


They say its to prevent Hakers, My point it that they are lying and just want to make more sales


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## mgrev (Aug 6, 2016)

Tomato Hentai said:


> Now that is _total_ bullshit.


couldn't be more true. you basically loose all your copies ffs


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## Deleted User (Aug 6, 2016)

overall steam sucks

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

cough pirate games for free cough


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## Sonic Angel Knight (Aug 6, 2016)

For all we know, is a temperary solution, let's hope it is. They know is harming their reputation to not do anything and let bad things happen and risk it getting worst by innocent people, so just be careful for now and hope is temperary. I suggest outsourcing your steam game purchases if you wanna give gifts now, places like humble bundle give steam keys so is very different than steam trading. 

Perhaps is a better time to list alternative places you can receive steam keys to share if you wish to give games as gift.


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## gudenau (Aug 6, 2016)

Guess I'll be getting steam cards instead of gifting games.


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## eriol33 (Aug 6, 2016)

this will hurt individual traders in some countries that resell steam games (because the customer base dont have credit card)

I don't get the logic yet, but this is disappointing because a lot of people in my country, indonesia must buy steam credit through voucher cards, and these cards mark up the price 10-20%. not fair. not fair.


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## osaka35 (Aug 6, 2016)

So in order to combat cheaters, they want to lose a lot of sales and make a decent amount of fans displeased with them. Valve's done worse, I suppose.


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## the_randomizer (Aug 6, 2016)

It's bad enough that Steam filters anything from Google or Google Drive and Mediafire, but I guess they gotta do what they have to do.


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## Deleted User (Aug 6, 2016)

HamodeBu50 said:


> cough pirate games for free cough


That's not such a great idea when pirating online-based games because you can't go online with them unless you own them.
And most of the games I play frequently are at least somewhat online-based.


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## marksteele (Aug 6, 2016)

I'll say this again. Steam was never designed for third party resellers. They have no grounds to be annoyed that valve finally closed the loophole that allowed them to do what they do


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## Burlsol (Aug 6, 2016)

marksteele said:


> I don't see why there's rage on this thread. If your gifting games to people who hack then you need to rethink who your friends are. I can see why traders are mad but the platform was never intended to be used that way so if you wanna complain go find some other massive game distribution platform.


The problem I see comes more from the practice of game trading for ingame items... Such as people who have skins in CS:GO trading those skins for games they want. Granted, killing this kind of trading is also something that Valve wants to do given recent scandals. But there are people out there who buy a bunch of games when they're on sale, then trade those games for other games or ingame items without doing anything necessarily illegitimate. The problem comes in with these people being banned from ALL trading because someone they traded to was caught hacking.

I don't agree with this practice personally, but I'm also someone who is old enough to have a job and have the benefit of disposable income that I can spend on gaming. But, Valve should really only do something if there is proof that the users of the accounts have a meaningful connection beyond that of the trade. No, this wouldn't be as effective as an action since people trying to exploit the system can just share amongst themselves. But it would keep down the number of bans issued to people who are not cheating.


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## Selver (Aug 6, 2016)

Froster said:


> You can no longer purchase copies of these games and then save them to be gifted later.
> If you're purchasing a copy that isn't for the account you're purchasing it with, you'll need to immediately gift it to someone else.
> Additionally, if you gift a copy of a game to someone who then goes on to receive a permanent ban, you'll lose the ability to gift copies of that game to other people.



Have they stopped re-gifting?  In the past, I got a gift I had no interest in.  So long as I left it in my inventory, I could re-gift it.

Without knowing more, I can't see the above steps stopping anything.
Those who buy massive quantities of games on sale can continue to do so, and then:

create a new, temporary account
gift this weeks' purchases to that temporary account
use that temporary account to re-gift to the final recipient
This is a terrible move for their public image, as it affects users who are 100% following the rules.  Can you imagine a business being told that they can no longer sell baseball bats, simply because one of their customers used one to beat someone up?  Or that a kid at school would not be allowed to have recess, because their friend got in trouble?  Or that you'd no longer be able to post about politics on Facebook, because you once had a political argument with a friend that got banned from Facebook?

I can't imagine Valve not considering the bad PR, so this must have been financially necessary.  Ouch.  Makes me wonder how badly their system is broken.


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## Mikemk (Aug 6, 2016)

So...
Hacker [stockpile]
|                     |
Dummy.       Dummy

Becomes
Hacker [stockpile]
|                     |
Dummy.       Dummy
|                     |
Dummy.       Dummy

Everyone else: what do you mean I can't trade!?

This is one of those solutions which solves everything except the actual problem.


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## Armadillo (Aug 6, 2016)

Selver said:


> I can't imagine Valve not considering the bad PR



Valve just don't give a shit. Far as many PC gamers are concerned, Valve can do no wrong. Valve have done worst things in the past

1) Disabled legit orange box purchases, because they were "out of region". If the rule was there before, that would be one thing, but there were no restrictions on buying from X region. The rule was made by valve and applied retroactively. Nothing came of it and people actually defended it

2) Changed the EULA and attempted to force people to accept. Didn't accept=locked out of your account. Eventually a later update changed it to, don't accept=can't buy anything, but still access to your account and current stuff. Was defended again.

No major fuss was made about those, nothing will be made about this.

No where else to go anyway. 90% of games are steamworks.

Origin is near enough EA only
Uplay is just ubisoft
Win10 is just a shitshow and no one cares about it.


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## Nightwish (Aug 6, 2016)

When a monopoly bans you forever, that's always a bit harsh. Fuck cheaters and all that, but one mistake and there goes your money and your rights for ever. Not even prison sentences for much worse things are that harsh.
It doesn't affect me directly, since I don't care those kind of games anyway, but it's just another step in computer code being the law, as Lessig and others warned us.


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## craftsygaming (Aug 7, 2016)

look, i like the anti cheating attempts from volvo (aka vulva if you listen to this one npr podcast), but this is a bit harsh. one mistake = no gifting. if you dont want cheaters/blackmarketers, just restrict giving games for 1 week - 1 year ( 1st gift 1week 2nd 2week 3 month 4 3month 5 6month 6 1year/perma)


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## Kayot (Aug 7, 2016)

Just because someone is defending a bad idea doesn't make it a good idea. I hate Steam. What I really hate are it's fans.

Side note: Recently Stack Exchange has been getting an elitist crowd attitude going that is just making it worthless. Ask a question and either crickets, or five people in ten minutes claiming it's a duplicate of another question. The problem is the other question isn't the same. They didn't bother reading anything other than the title. Heaven forbid you have an opinion that isn't mainstream. That gets several down votes which just kill any rep a new user has. Want to see your rep drop? Ask a question about Microsoft Licensing. It doesn't matter what it it. You can expect at least 10 down votes in the first hour. It's like a bunch of weebs are sitting around in a Starbucks deciding who their going to troll. More annoyingly, answering your own cricket questions has those same asshats jumping in attacking your answer but not giving a counter answer.

But I digress. Steam holds a significant chunk of the market by the balls. I think if a game can be hacked in online play then it's the developers fault. When a game requires a hosted server like gamespy (R.I.P) then it's really the developers fault. Having Steam kill gifting is just stupid. Thankfully I don't gift. I buy the game for my friends on their account in person and make sure my information isn't saved. Simple. This is just another way for Steam to make money. People can't buy a game on discount to gift to a new friend they want in their circle. Steam kills friend building.


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## grossaffe (Aug 7, 2016)

So no more buying a game while it's on sale for purpose of gifting at a later date? (say, someone's birthday)

Bravo, Valve.  Guess I can cross Steam off of my "places to buy gifts" list.


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## Dorimori (Aug 7, 2016)

Bullshit.


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## Bladexdsl (Aug 7, 2016)

fuck you hackers
valve wants all ur moniez!


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## codezer0 (Aug 7, 2016)

Returnofganon said:


> This seems like innocent people could be hurt, but its good to see that Valve is working at stopping hackers


This move has nothing to do with stopping hackers, so much as it is to try and stop bot accounts to regift games for those busted gambling assets.


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## yoyoyo69 (Aug 7, 2016)

codezer0 said:


> try



Very likely. All these gambling sites have have made a VERY large (digital) profit?, did wonder how it would affectvthe market, now they need to move their money.

I'd imagine they'd be prepared to undercut genuine resellers / profiteers and sell at a loss, still moving a great deal of € / £ / $.

This would be vad for the entire market (could be good for customers in a way)


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## Zerousen (Aug 7, 2016)

How often are you going to gift games to random strangers, or even hackers, no less? As far as trading goes, trade games that can be sent to your inventory to be safe, or gift games to people who are reputable. I am not defending Valve, just saying that this probably isn't going to affect the majority of users.



grossaffe said:


> So no more buying a game while it's on sale for purpose of gifting at a later date? (say, someone's birthday)
> 
> Bravo, Valve.  Guess I can cross Steam off of my "places to buy gifts" list.



You can schedule a gift delivery during checkout.


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## Bladexdsl (Aug 7, 2016)

good i hope all them gambling scam sites have to shut down now. scum they are


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## Feeling it! (Aug 7, 2016)

Their statistics showed that this would help solve a problem and it makes sense.


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## linkinworm (Aug 7, 2016)

Seems stupid that you can't gift a game if someone you gave a copy to gets banned. what if you met someone gave them a copy of a game after a few months then they get banned for what ever reason? it's not like you're accountable for someone's else actions. Thats like if i was a car sales guy, I sell a car then some idiots crashes it months later and then I'm not allowed to sell that car to anyone else every again. Or am I missing something here?


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## kuwanger (Aug 7, 2016)

Yep, seems very disingenuous.  And it doesn't sound like it addresses resellers of keys at all.  Honestly, that fact makes me worried precisely because I do trade keys (from bundles) and can only imagine they're going to move towards cracking down on that next.  And yea, might as well plug my gifting/trading thread.  Especially if someone wants to trade me for a shoot'em up or metroidvania I don't have. 

PS - I mean, seriously, this whole issue of gifting vs buying is down to the point that Steam is constantly having these off/on sales and not providing consistent international pricing.  Well, and they keep providing non-officially buyable goods that demand trading to obtain.  Otherwise, the gifting ban would make no sense as cheaters would just keep rebuying the game on new accounts.  Which, I presume, they can now at possibly non-economical prices.


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## Mikemk (Aug 7, 2016)

It won't affect key sales, just steam gifts.


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## Du'Islingr (Aug 8, 2016)

Lol like a guy earlier said this just creates a new loophole. 

Originally

Stockpiler-> Destination

Now

Stockpiler -> Dummy Accounts -> Destination

They can create as many dummy accounts as needed and just re-gift from them until they get banned and then the cycle continues. Basically this created a new annoyance instead of solving anything.


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## Burlsol (Aug 8, 2016)

Nightwish said:


> When a monopoly bans you forever, that's always a bit harsh. Fuck cheaters and all that, but one mistake and there goes your money and your rights for ever. Not even prison sentences for much worse things are that harsh.
> It doesn't affect me directly, since I don't care those kind of games anyway, but it's just another step in computer code being the law, as Lessig and others warned us.



For points of clarification.

- Previously, people who had their accounts banned for cheating (VAC bans, exploits, hacking other users accounts) could just continue their behavior by making another account on Steam and re-obtaining a valid game key for the game they were banned from. 
-- In these cases, it is usually something that the Developer is already aware of or is trying to fix, but is being abused by a handful of users to disrupt servers or skew rankings tables. Correcting these issues is not always easy.
-- The reason the problem exists is because the reality is that it is very hard to actually ban someone from a service, any service. IP addresses can be changed or spoofed easily. Email accounts can be registered by the truckload automatically. Steam accounts can be registered easily without requiring any sort of check of identity (no SSN, no proof of address, no required credit card or phone number). 
-- In these cases, their individual steam accounts are of little consequence since each one is mostly just a throw-away account to use until they get banned and have to switch to a new account, trade themselves another key, and start again. So while the standard user has to worry about being banned because of the hundreds of dollars they have invested into their accounts, for these people, the loss of an account is just part of the way they operate. 

- The ban here is related only to blocking the ability to trade games on the account where the key originated in the case of trading the game to someone who is cheating or being banned after that trade occurs.
-- The intention here is to make it so that people who have the intention of cheating/exploiting cannot buy, in some cases dozens of, game keys when they are on sale to then use later to continue their cheating/exploiting.
-- The effect however is that this ban can end up hurting people who do things like gift trade, run various giveaways, and similar, who are not directly supporting cheaters, but by nature of their activities runs the risk of eventually dealing with a cheater account.

Unfortunately, the alternatives aren't too viable...
- Requiring a credit card registered with the account (easily exploited with prepaid cards) in order to receive trades would close out the ability for parents to have accounts for their children without the real risk (in some cases, to the tune of >$10,000 in CS:GO cases) of being used by those children.
- Requiring a cellphone registered with the account (easily exploited with $20 burner phones) in order to receive trades would similarly make it harder for those who live in more isolated areas of the world.
- Requiring a SSN for a Steam account... May work in Korea, but in the U.S. there is too much fraud related to misuse of SSNs and you would have people boycotting Steam.

The best solution is to just add a penalty to those accounts which are essentially serving as a game key mule.


Du'Islingr said:


> Lol like a guy earlier said this just creates a new loophole.
> 
> Originally
> 
> ...


IIRC, this is already solved for by the way Steam trades work... In that you cannot immediately regift something that was traded to you. But this is also why the ban seems related to blocking trades from the account that purchased the game and all along the trade chain instead of the last person to trade it. This can still be exploited as you mentioned, but technically requires the stockpiler to send out all copies of the game to dummy accounts at the same time,  then have those dummy accounts send them to additional accounts as the destination, all before any of the accounts get flagged as a cheater and lock down the trades. Even though this does not prevent the behavior of continually getting around a previous ban in a game, it does add additional steps to the process (places for people to make mistakes) and create a traceable link between accounts that can pre-flag other accounts as being cheaters where it was not previously possible.


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## SS4 (Aug 8, 2016)

Glad i never used steam and this sure won't encourage me to try it either lol
I've always been against their stance on DRM and now this . . . hopefully they lose lots of customers. Ppl need to wake up and stop letting big companies abuse their right.
Damn when i buy a game i don't wanna be told when or who i can give it or sell it to or how many time i can install it or jump through hoops if i change PC often . . .
Anyways, gonna keep encouraging GOG like i've been doing


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## Mikemk (Aug 8, 2016)

Stream let's you install on as many computers as you want.


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## Deleted User (Aug 8, 2016)

Mikemk said:


> Stream let's you install on as many computers as you want.


By "or jump through hoops if i change PC often" I think he's referring to Steam Guard, and while it is optional, you do need it activated to sell your items on the Steam marketplace.


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## Kishnabe (Aug 8, 2016)

so no more steam giveaways, no more trading. WTF........


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## Nightwish (Aug 8, 2016)

Burlsol said:


> [Wall of text]


I don't disagree with you, I was just saying a ban for eternity is always harsh, especially since software, like the people that make it, isn't infallible.


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## exdeath255 (Aug 8, 2016)

so much ignorance here. This will help block sites like g2a from getting sales.

If you dont agree with it go to origin or buy retail lol


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## Deleted User (Aug 8, 2016)

exdeath255 said:


> If you dont agree with it go to origin or buy retail lol


I could never even get Origin to launch on my computer, and games that are actually available physically cost a lot more when you buy the physical copies.


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## lilaznkilla (Aug 9, 2016)

exdeath255 said:


> so much ignorance here. This will help block sites like g2a from getting sales.


How so? 
G2A works buy selling keys whereas this ban stops you gifting copies of the game via steam store/steam inventory.


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## Deleted User (Aug 9, 2016)

So I could get banned from buying gifts for my friends just cos one does something stupid? This hurts people who get pleasure from pleasing others.


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## Xabring (Aug 9, 2016)

"Additionally, if an account has directly gifted a game to other players who have been VAC or permanently Game Banned, then that account will lose the ability to gift that game."

so, let's see if I understand this part.

I Give a game to someone who is already banned from that game; I can no longer gift that game.
I Give a game to someone who is LATER banned from that game; can I still gift that game?


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## exdeath255 (Aug 10, 2016)

lilaznkilla said:


> How so?
> G2A works buy selling keys whereas this ban stops you gifting copies of the game via steam store/steam inventory.



Im guessing youve never bought a cheap gift trade from them have you?


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## Xexyz (Aug 10, 2016)

While it does suck for people who trade gifts, this is a good thing for CS:GO and TF2, because the amount of cheaters in CS and TF2 is ridiculous.


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## Mikemk (Aug 10, 2016)

Half related Q
How can you tell if someone's hacking in tf2?


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## lilaznkilla (Aug 11, 2016)

exdeath255 said:


> Im guessing youve never bought a cheap gift trade from them have you?


No I have not, haven't made many g2a purchases but only received keys from them.


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## Mikemk (Aug 11, 2016)

g2a has a little icon when they list all their prices that tells you whether it'll be delivered as a key or steam gift.


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