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Whoah, Small Spender! Steam Sets Limits For Users Who Spend Less Than $5

Posted by timothy on from the are-you-committed-or-just-involved dept.

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.

8 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. Thank god by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Thank god by v1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It'll sure make a huge cut in the bot accounts that are being used for scamming and spamming. Some of these scammers are probably looking at thousands of accounts used on a given day. Busting their "business model" is the best way to get rid of them.

      --
      I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
    2. Re:Thank god by X0563511 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      While I've been fortunate to have never received any of that junk, I do see this as a good move... and $5 is really low. Recall it's not $5 on any purchase, but $5 over the lifetime of your account. That's... well. If that's a problem for you, how exactly do you afford to have whatever it is you're running Steam on? I'll give you the internet - maybe public wifi (or stealing it)... but 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.

      --
      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...
    3. Re:Thank god by mhkohne · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Doesn't matter - they have to police scam accounts as it is. The biggest attraction to scammers is a zero-cost place to run scams, because most scams have such a low success rate that if it cost the scammer anything, they wouldn't do it.

      If Valve restricts the accounts unless they have SOME money in the game, the scammers can't simply operate at full rate - they'll have to pick and choose the scams and targets more carefully, because there's overhead. That knocks 90% of the bozo population out of the game, and while you'll ALWAYS have scammers, the most annoying ones will go away.

      --
      A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
  2. Can't say as I blame them. by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  3. Re:So by fiore42 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm sure some people will do that, and I'm sure Valve thinks so too. But adding a moderate hurdle like that will certainly cut abuse down, and I don't see it as being a real imposition at all on actual users, so I think this is a brilliant idea. /been getting Steam Spam lately.

  4. Re:So by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you have access to stolen credit cards why would you be trade scamming for TF2 hats?

  5. Re:workshop by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

    That is possible, but how many people are actually active in the Steam community who have never spent $5 on Steam?

    Is there someone, somewhere in the world that is like that? Probably. Many people? Probably not.

    It is what is called an edge case, and a business can't account for all of them. They are trying to get rid of the bot spammers and this is one way to do it.