Slashdot Mirror
Whoah, Small Spender! Steam Sets Limits For Users Who Spend Less Than $5
As GameSpot reports, Valve has implemented a policy that reduces the privileges of Steam users unless those users have spent $5 through the service. Along the same lines as suggestions to limit spam by imposing a small fee on emails, the move is intended to reduce resource abuse as a business model. From the article:
"Malicious users often operate in the community on accounts which have not spent any money, reducing the individual risk of performing the actions they do," Valve said. "One of the best pieces of information we can compare between regular users and malicious users are their spending habits as typically the accounts being used have no investment in their longevity. Due to this being a common scenario we have decided to restrict certain community features until an account has met or exceeded $5.00 USD in Steam."
Restricted actions include sending invites, opening group chats, and taking part in the Steam marketplace.
I know this sounds off to some people on /. but I get something like 5-10 invites _a day_ from people who are trying to trade scam me. $5 doesn't sound too steep but I'm hoping this cuts it back even to 1 per day or fewer, just so I stop getting annoying notifications.
to those who registered over $100+ value of retail games?
While it is kinda crappy thing to do I cant say as I blame entirely I mean I get several invites a week from level zero or one community members I have never heard of never played a multiplayer session with never traded with. They all end up being begging bots and scams.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Instead of paying nothing they'll just have to buy a cheap game with a stolen credit card? The monthly subscription fee never seemed to be a problem for the gold farmers in WoW or the isk farmers in Eve Online.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If you set the threshold that high, new users will probably be turned off by the price of entry. That's particularly true of people who buy indie games or wait for sales, since that $50 can easily buy a couple of dozen games.
Some of us have a ton of games from non steam retail sources. Making it too high cuts out those of us with large legitimate libraries from sources like the Humble Bundle.
I would say some people may get annoyed due to following limitations:
>Submit content on the Steam Workshop
>Post in an item's Steam Workshop Discussions
Retail games dont give you full account, so if you buy some steam only game with a mod community (eg Civilization 5) you potentially lose quite a bit
Yep. I have a whole bunch of things that I can do. Playing video games is only one among them.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Do you understand that this just blocks accounts from doing certain "spam tasks" until the account has spent FIVE FUCKING DOLLARS? Five is not a lot of dollars. It's not five dollars a week, a month, or a year. It's over the life of the account.
Because Steam accounts can be made in an automated fashion, this will greatly ramp up the effort needed by spammers- they'll have to steal cards or spend money.
This is to shut down spammers. Do you seriously mean to tell me you've been using Steam and have never spent five dollars, ever?
Ack. The post about charging $50 or $100 didn't come up until after I signed in. Naturally, I can't delete the comment I made now.
You do realize that retail games dont count, right? So all the people with several AAA titles bought in their local store (or just somewhere else on the internet) lose their ability to for example participate in mod discussions (workshop). In some parts of the world steam prices for new games (without big sales) are extremely high compared to those in stores.
They aren't kicking out users.. they are kicking out mass botting get it straight.
My issue is that they can't request friends or invite to a game anymore. I understand that scammers are a big deal, so I think that the "unverified" users should still be able to request friends, but be under an "unverified" list that would be wiped every 24 hours. Once they're your friend they should be able to invite you to a game.
bullshit, buy wallet credit from gamestop etc.
Not even that - they are just limiting what the bots can do.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Your comment makes no sense. Valve restricts only invites and such for users who never bought anything IN THEIR WHOLE LIFE.
It doesn't strip them from anything, but being able to spam other users, even if they bought something and Valve would misidentify their spending. So you are simply DUMB LIKE A BRICK.
I mean, I've definitely spent less than 100. I'm not even sure I've spent 50. I'm certainly no heavy user, but GoD Factory: Wingman isn't anywhere else.
Their goal isn't to shit on light users like me, it's to prevent fucking SPAMMERS. At 5 bucks per account, spamming is nowhere near profitable. At 50 bucks per account, they just shit on casuals.
This is not correct. You can pay cash.
Also to spend money you have to hand over your personal information such as your full home address.
Oh, so a private company that has servers and services that you want to access wants your information before giving you access?
Oh the horror!
It doesn't prevent them from playing their games, it just prevents them from hassling other users.
If you want to spend $4.25 on a game on Steam, you can play that game to your heart's content. You just can't start spamming other users.
So no, new users will NOT be probably turned off by the price of entry into the community, even if the threshold is $50. Personally, I think the threshold should be $25 and three months of use.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So instead of actively scanning for malicious users using heuristics that already exist, they're throwing a blanket on all people who spend less than 5$?
Folks using bots that can defeat steams already existing anti-bot measures are likely making money of it in the first place. You don't set up hundreds of accounts and put that kind of thought and resources behind it to not make money. Maybe a couple people will, but that's less by-catch.
If you've only spent $4.50 on games, what they hell are you doing trying to get involved in mod discussions. The last thing those discussion forums need is more spammers.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Not to Steam, you don't. I buy games on Steam using PayPal.
You are welcome on my lawn.
1) greenlight scam game for $5
2) have all bots buy scam game to recoup costs.
They will still lose money, but it will be far less than $5
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
You don't have to make it worse, Valve. We get it: Steam is DRM.
If you set the threshold that high, new users will probably be turned off by the price of entry. That's particularly true of people who buy indie games or wait for sales, since that $50 can easily buy a couple of dozen games.
Turned off by what, limited forum posting, only receiving friend invites, only receiving invites to group chat? Cry me a river.
Yep. I have a whole bunch of things that I can do. Playing video games is only one among them.
If you don't plan on spending any money on the service, and not being able to spam the forums or invite to group chats are a no-go for you, then why does anybody involved give a shit?
Ack. The post about charging $50 or $100 didn't come up until after I signed in. Naturally, I can't delete the comment I made now.
That is why people should quote the parent. It's even a button now. 150% of everything on Slashdot is read out of context, accounting for duplicates.
If you don't plan on spending any money on the service
Read up; they're talking about a hypothetical higher limit as someone proposed, which is certainly a bit more than just "any money."
and not being able to spam the forums or invite to group chats are a no-go for you
Now you're just pulling things out of thin air.
Restricted actions include sending invites, opening group chats, and taking part in the Steam marketplace.
If you get locked out of the Steam marketplace, how do they expect you to spend your $5? The article only mentions "participate" so I assume that just means sell but the article doesn't specify.
If you don't want a banhammer or some hacker to remove your access to ALL "your" games on Steam, or sell them on when done, you have to use multiple accounts, one for each game.
And given Steam insists they're cheaper than normal retailers.
The result is that Steam wants you to STFU if you bought their stuff on sale.
"Hey Small Spender - Spend, a Little Less Time with Me"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I used Steam for 5 years or so without buying anything through Steam, I just played a lot of CS:S and TF2 from the Orange Box. This would have really inconvenienced me at the time since I was using a lot of the social features. It was before I had access to Steam funds via Gamestop. It could be a pain in the ass for people with no method of online payment, from foreign countries. It's a good idea but there has to be an alternate process of validating an account, as to not alienate people in odd situations.
They should at least make retail games count, just exclude keys from Humble Bundles. I mean, even if they hunted bargain bins for old keys it would still create a lot of labor per account.
I agree - I worked at a store and when we started charging $0.05 a bag, the change in behaviour in the customers was dramatic. A token payment achieves the goal but you can't make the argument that it's too expensive.
Honestly I haven't. I play skyrim which uses steam but I haven't purchased anything from steam. I don't have a reason too.
Steam boards are generally not where the real modding discussions take place anyways. Usually that is going on at either the official forums and/or modding sites like nexusmods, or smaller community sites.
I wonder how they account for that $5.00. I'm not really concerned about how the new policy would affect me but I can see that it will affect others.
For example I probably haven't bought a single thing directly through Steam but have 10's of games that I've activated through Steam Keys. Specifically Humble Indie Bundle used to make it really easy to use Perl/wget scripts to automatically download updates for your bundle purchases but it's next to impossible to do that now. (Come on guys, get an API already!) Instead I activated Steam Keys for every HIB game I could and am basically using Steam as an automatic update service. I probably only use Steam's social features (well, the forum anyway) when I have a problem installing or playing a game and am seeking help.
$5 doesn't buy a Big Mac after tax. And you will shit out the Big Mac in 24 hours or less. Steam will last much longer. Everyone who values their Steam access LESS than yesterday's Big Mac turned Pile pretty much deserves to get off the service.
"Not to Steam, you don't. I buy games on Steam using PayPal."
Or not to anyone. I just buy prepaid Steam cards when I see something I want go on sale.
The threshold doesn't have to be high though -- it only has to be higher than the opportunity cost for spamming. Once you hit that point, going further does little or nothing to help your cause but can negatively impact additional legitimate edge cases.
I wish the mindless libertarians here would just go away
I seriously don't even understand what you are asking here. Or confused about?
"Who small spender" implies that Steam is beginning to ramp actions up against players who don't spend money. This is an anti-spam measure, and it's actually pretty sensational to ever phrase it as being about "small spenders".
I seriously don't even understand what you are asking here. Or confused about?
You are clearly the one who is confused, both previously and now. I am not asking anything. I am calling attention to your failure.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
unless you dug the device out of the trash and are also stealing electricity, I think spending $5 at one time or another isn't much to require.
Mostly I'm thinking of a middle school or high school student who received a hand-me-down device for the child's birthday or Christmas. Their parents provide free electricity and often free Internet, restaurants provide free Internet and often free electricity to laptop users, and child labor laws prohibit earning money for anything else.
"Restricted actions include sending invites, opening group chats, and taking part in the Steam marketplace." So people who want to spend $5 to have no restrictions will find that they are restricted from spending $5?
Team Fortress 2, the free-to-play game published by the company that runs Steam, is rated M by the ESRB for "blood and gore" and "intense violence. How does the Steam service comply with the video game industry's self-regulation of sales of M games to minors?
Yeah, you're right. $5 seems like a good threshold to keep out the spammers.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The Steam version has exactly the same features.
I thought retail games were for people on slow or capped Internet connections, and the update was smaller than the full game. Good luck downloading a 10 GB game over a satellite or cellular Internet connection capped at 10 GB per month.
And you don't have to support Wal-Mart.
You still support Walmart if you buy Steam gift cards at Walmart.
I'm the AC parent, just looked into my account store transactions and I've spent a couple dollars shy of $800 in the 10 years I've been on the service. $50 is less than 10% of my total transactions, it seems pretty minuscule. But a post near yours suggested finding the opportunity cost of spamming and charge just over that. I don't know if $5 will get all the spammers or not. Personally, I'd rather get 99.999% of them at a higher $$$ spent vs only preventing say 70 or 80% at $5. Time will tell, I guess.
I'm getting really sick of headlines trying to be cute.
In the past, Steam was full of defects that caused it to often lose the cached receipts* that allow offline mode to work. The earliest versions (in the Half-Life 2 era) wouldn't even try to download these receipts for offline use unless the user chose "Go Offline" while online. Even the current version still has bugs that appear to require the purchase of a UPS according to Valve's page about offline mode:
* "Receipts" are what the OUYA IAP system calls the associations between an item that can be purchased and a user account. Google Play Licensing calls it a cached licensing status. The terminology might differ for Steam.
We made plenty of money when we were young doing things like mowing grass and shoveling snow.
The demand for such services is limited. What steps should a child take to ensure that all the lawns on his block aren't already being mowed either by a resident or by another child on the block? And in winter, how should a child cope with the neighbor who runs a gasoline-powered snow thrower up and down the whole block for free out of 1. altruism and 2. wanting to walk to the bus stop without having to dodge cars in the street? (I am said neighbor.)
Slashdot is read out of context
I'ld set it a lot higher than $5.
The actual support article explicitly says that adding $5 to your steam wallet (which is the only way to buy stuff on the steam community marketplace) will count as $5 of purchases.
Co-incidentally, $5 is the minimum amount you can add to your steam wallet.
You should turn signatures off.
> I am calling attention to your failure.
No, you are calling attention to *yours*.
I said:
"Because Steam accounts can be made in an automated fashion, this will greatly ramp up the effort needed by spammers- they'll have to steal cards or spend money."
This is factual. If each account must spend $5, they must either spend their OWN money, or spend someone ELSE's money.
An AC responded with:
"Also to spend money you have to hand over your personal information such as your full home address."
This is NOT CORRECT. Thus, I responded with:
"This is not correct. You can pay cash."
If you purchase a steam card at best buy, gamestop, etc, you can get money to your account without giving them your actual information. You obviously don't want to actually provide false info if it would change your sales tax, but I doubt that's what AC was talking about. There's also some mainly-euro option to pay as well.
To which, YOU replied:
"Try again."
Quoting only my above, correct, statement.
Deciding that you were probably confused, and apparently have a very tiny upload bandwidth, or maybe a keyboard lined with poison daggers, I asked:
"I seriously don't even understand what you are asking here. Or confused about?"
To which you replied, still not answering what the hell you are confused about, with your little gem about "calling attention to my failure".
So, everything I said has been factual and clear. Everything you have said has been terse and confrontational. I think you've typed three sentences, and all have been incorrect.
I've never had an invite from a scammer, and don't trade anything with some random person. So what are the scams that these free accounts are working on?
Phone lines cost to rent, each month. Phone call plans cost, each month. Telemarketers are getting worse. I don't think reality supports your claims.
All this means is that you now have to pay for "free speech".
Since they got paid or don't get paid (except by the reseller) even if a large number of customers have a huge problem. So tell me why Valve would do this? They COULD. They could also have done this on the offset. They didn't the latter, so why the former?
None of the restrictions are on buying or playing games. So even if you've never spent money (I'm not clear that retail doesn't count but let's say it doesn't) you can still play all the games you've got, and buy more games to play (at which point your account becomes unlocked). So you can do with it the main purpose: Play games, including free to play ones. It isn't like they are demanding money to unlock an account.
Also in the event this really was an issue for someone, they could just buy something cheap. I mean if you've dropped $50+ on a retail game it is not that big a deal to spend another $5 if it comes to that.
I mean it is a really, really minimal legit player base it could possibly effect. You would have to be someone who plays only F2P games, and has made so few in-game purchases that you haven't even spent $5. There are just extremely few people who are like that. Further, even people like that can still play, they just can't participate in some of the other Steam features. The games are still available to them.
Wait, you left this anonymous comment? Because that was really fucking douchey. I assumed, since it was an anonymous comment, that comment was a reply from the same person who left this comment.
Now yeah, I did fail to put the comment together correctly — I failed to include the anonymous comment that would have made it make sense — but you failed to log in for just one comment you made in the thread.
So everything you said was factual, but it was not clear, because it wasn't clear that you said all of it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Was it the store's decision or did the government force you to do that?
I'd prefer a bag rebate instead.
Although, a bag fee is better than banning plastic bags, which has utility when it comes to taking them out in the rain. Better than being forced to buy a canvas bag or use a paper bag in said rain.
New at Steam: We replace people who don't give a fuck with people who really don't give a fuck.
No, don't get me wrong, it's a step in the right direction. But the step itself begs questions. In general, the great firewall is the first cent - people who spend nothing at all and people who spend something, no matter how much. If you don't believe me, try charging 10 cents or something ridiculously small for any free web service you offer, and you'll find your user numbers drop through the floor.
I don't think there's a measurable difference between $5 and $4 or $3 -- the number is entirely arbitrary. A psychological barrier would be $10 (the two digits, the reason almost nothing in any shop in the world costs $10, it will always be $9.99 or $9.95).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I own a LOT of Steam games through key redemptions from Humble Bundle and the like. I've never, however, purchased from Valve. I feel this move unfairly targets those like me.
But Maaa! Everyone else has a
Read the parent again. Particularly the part of
You do realize that retail games don't count, right?
Because these people put down on a AAA title in a retail outlet that isn't counted towards the Steam ecosystem, they have lost the ability to take part in the Mod discussion for the game they just put a good chunk of change on. They've also lost the ability to post Mods they've created to the Workshop. Valve just made the declaration: "Oh...you want to use the features of the game you just paid for? You need to pay us at least an additional $5 for that privilege. Sure we'll give you something from our library in exchange, just to give you some numbing lube so you can't exactly feel how hard we're screwing you"
To give an example, I have Skyrim. I paid $60 for it when it came out. I have not paid a dime into Steam's client. I use the workshop heavily to download mods for my game (some would say to make the game useable)...but now I'm locked out of the discussion to ask for a feature or give praise to a modder because I haven't paid the $5 tribute directly to Valve. I'm a paying customer of Bethesda and I just got dicked over on participation in the community because they chose Steam DRM and my purchase means dick-all to Valve. There's only 2 other games I have on my Steam account, and not a single one of them count as a contributed dime to Valve: Batman: Arkham Origins (acquired as a free gift from NewEgg when I bought my nVidia GTX 760) and the Kerbal Space Program Demo (only thing I got from the Steam Store, but it was free, so no dice).
Because of this small...minor..."harmless" move to reduce spammers, they've now guaranteed that they get none of my money, and my diligence in ensuring I do not purchase any future games that incorporate Steam has just ramped up to Sony Boycott levels. They would have done better if they did an either-or type of thing where you can participate if you have legal games in your library OR you've contributed $5 to Steam in some way. $5 is a small amount, I'll admit...but how much are your individual principles worth? How much can you be bribed for? Everyone has their price; but there's something seriously wrong with a person if that price is a net negative (they're paying other people for the opportunity to break their own principles)
I wonder if this might apply to ragers/trolls as well? On games that are free (DOTA2) etc, there is a system for reporting, but at the moment it just seems to temporarily put you in the "slow queue".
I'm actually had some people say "go ahead, report me, I'll be back" (generally these are not even necessarily trolls, but people who spend the whole game screaming on the mic and spewing vile profanity at team members). If you could have a steam-account perma-banned, that would be nice, but obviously the bigger a-holes/trolls are just going to go from account bob1222 to making account bob1223. A $5 block to prevent them from certain in-game activities might be nice too.
There's been a lot of discussion about the sexist/misogynist/racist trolls online. My personal take is that - in the gaming community - it's not really a particular problem with any of those mentioned categories, but rather a problem with trolls/assholes in general. If we can reduce that issue it'll probably make life nicer for everyone.
I've never bought anything from Steam since I activated the account in 2011. Not. One. Thing. I have however bought 2 games that used Steam DRM, starting with Skyrim. I used to leave feedback and help requests for Skyrim Mods in the Steam Workshop. I also on occasion put up some of my own Mods. While I can still download mods, I can't leave feedback or submit Mods anymore with this setup, because though I've paid $60 for Skyrim and got Batman:AO as a free gift from Newegg, Valve doesn't recognize those purchases for this purpose. So a major functionality, a functionality that was part of the reason I bought the game in the first place, a functionality that has been a staple of the Elder Scrolls series since at least Morrowind, has just been effectively ripped out of Skyrim by Valve (can't even blame Bethesda for this beyond putting Steam DRM into the game in the first place) for the "helpful" purpose of reducing spammers. If they wanted to reduce spammers they should have made it either or; as in you can use Steam services for games if you EITHER purchased at least $5 worth of items in the Steam store OR have Retail Games in your library.
The 5 cents a bag thing is different, because it's a political statement. I switched stores immediately when that happened, as I find it politically offensive (and when my city passed a law requiring it, I moved to a new state - no joke). And I have/use re-usable bags since they work better, but it's a matter of principle.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If you haven't spent 5 dollars, you are either a spammer\scammer, a child, or so new I probably don't care what you think. Steam is a game distribution site (they sell games) if you haven't spent 5 bucks, your leaching.
Wait, people buy games as boxes, in stores? Did you buy the game that way in Ye Olde 20th Century, and haven't bought anything since? Have the Amish started gaming now?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The ISP with the best service cap has a 400GB/month cap to share between 4 gamers and 5 different devices you insensitive clod! The best way to mitigate the cap and ensure that we still have enough bandwidth to do other needed/desired functions is to buy physical games in boxes.
Sigh. "Posted from my iPhone!". Yea, sorry about that. This makes sense if you route the comment to a different point based on assumed source.
Hear hear, great post.
So, you believe Valve should provide those services, the servers, the Mod Workshop to you for free?
Since you already said you expect Steam to give you its service for free, I don't think Valve really cares if they don't get your money.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So, you believe Valve should provide those services, the servers, the Mod Workshop to you for free?
No, I don't expect them for free. I expect Bethesda to have paid a onetime service fee negotiated for bulk sales for extended use of the Workshop servers. Bethesda then has the ability to take the $60 per copy they made on release day and subsequent months and use accounting to allot so much $$$$ per copy sold to cover the cost of services that THEY PROMISED ON THE BOX as part of the features of the game. In paying good money for the game on release, by extension, I have already paid for the time on the server to use the full features of the Workshop.
I don't expect access to the Workshop or its community for free. I already paid for them and your attempt to redirect this to say that I'm expecting something for nothing when it's actually Valve that is now expecting something more for a service it's already agreed to provide is suspiciously painting you as a Steam Shill account. Next thing you know Valve is going to say that if we don't pay a $5 tax to them we will no longer have access to Workshop Items we already use; when that happens, my Skyrim characters will be permanently retired and I'll have only Oblivion and Morrowind for my Elder Scrolls addiction. I see the writing on the wall; Valve has already got my money for two games via what they consider an indirect route and they no longer honor those purchases. This is no better than Comcast. They want both me and the game company I purchase from to pay for access to the same service. I now say, they can die in a fire along with all the other DRM.
It sounds like your beef is with Bethesda and not Steam.
You know they're two different companies, right?
Do you need to borrow $5 so you can play with Mod Workshop on Steam? If that's the problem, just say so. I'm willing to help.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That won't work. There are far too many working key generators available for the spammers to use, and revoking keys later takes far more effort than just making users add $5 to their damn wallet. Think of it like your membership deposit at a credit union. If you want to take full advantage of the services, pay for them.
Do you understand that this just blocks accounts from doing certain "spam tasks" until the account has spent FIVE FUCKING DOLLARS? Five is not a lot of dollars. It's not five dollars a week, a month, or a year. It's over the life of the account.
Because Steam accounts can be made in an automated fashion, this will greatly ramp up the effort needed by spammers- they'll have to steal cards or spend money.
This is to shut down spammers. Do you seriously mean to tell me you've been using Steam and have never spent five dollars, ever?
I used Steam for 5 years before spending a single dollar on steam.
How, I bought games at a store (be it online or physical).
That being said, I never participated in anything Steam offered and realistically still dont (it's just something that updates itself and every now and then refuses to work until I reboot). Also I completely understand why Valve is doing such a thing.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I paid for the services when I plopped $60 on a game that advertised full advantage to Steam Workshop. Also, my credit union doesn't have membership fees/deposits; The only requirement to opening the account is living at an address within a county that they have a branch office in. After that initial opening, you can move to Germany and still have your account with them. Also, I don't care how much more effort it's required to revoke pirate keys, if they want my business in the future they can make that extra effort. I paid for the service already. Give me the choice of paying for it again or walking? I've got good shoes and could use the exercise. Anyone else with a brain on their damn shoulders should do the same, but I forget... we're a nation full of Stockholm Syndrome.
No Dumbass. My beef is squarely on Steam and your attempts to deflect are getting you buried deeper and deeper in the shit you wallow in. Bethesda made a contract with Valve for Steam to provide Bethesda's End Users with access to the Steam Workshop for a modding community. This was done as part of the agreement Bethesda made with Valve for Bethesda to use Valve's DRM (Steam) in their game. The agreement was made, and now Valve is reneging on it and demanding that Bethesda's End Users shell out an additional $5 for services that Bethesda already paid Valve for on our behalf.
To put it a bit more simply: The service was working until Valve dicked with it and now it no longer works as advertised. This isn't Bethesda's fault because Bethesda has no direct control over Valve's servers. As you said, they're two different companies. Bethesda made proposed an agreement with Valve, Valve agreed, Bethesda advertised the service Valve provides for them, everything worked...everyone was happy. Now Valve changed their service agreement after the fact, nullifying the agreement, and expects direct payment and you expect me to be pissed with Bethesda over what Valve did? The only thing I have to be pissed with Bethesda about is that Bethesda used Steam in the first place..which I've always been leery of, and now it's come to fruition.
As for your offer... keep it. You obviously need it more than I do. I mean, it took you 3 and a half hours to get that money in the first place where I crap out a Lincoln almost every 5 minutes. How else would you not be able to recognize when you're getting shafted unless you were stuck in a minimum wage job where that's all you ever get?
I don't understand why gamers are considered such a toxic community. Everybody seems so nice!
You are welcome on my lawn.
So no, new users will NOT be probably turned off by the price of entry into the community, even if the threshold is $50. Personally, I think the threshold should be $25 and three months of use.
Actually, I've had multiple times where I wanted to play a game with some friends but couldn't as they were not able to add me as a friend as they had not bought a game. $25 and three months of use just to be able to add my own friends to play some game that would say, be only $5-10 sounds ridiculous.
for all the people forced to "buy" free games via steam, because there is no normal download. And then the chat does not work without buying something ...
it massively inconveniences them. Yeah, a lot of them are douche nozzles, but a lot aren't. A lot of them work hard to be good members of the community. They've got the time (and their parent's PC) to do it, just not the money.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/