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.

Comments

Thank god

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Thank god

[v1]

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.

Re:Thank god

[X0563511]

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.

Re:Thank god

[Anonymous Coward]

History shows this will work. Similar problems plagued the postal system until the invention of the postage stamp. From the article...

"The first adhesive postage stamp, commonly referred to as the Penny Black, was issued in the United Kingdom in 1840. The invention of the stamp was part of an attempt to reform and improve the postal system in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which, in the early 19th century, was in disarray and rife with corruption. There are varying accounts of the inventor or inventors of the stamp.

Before the introduction of postage stamps, mail in the UK was paid for by the recipient, a system that was associated with an irresolvable problem: the costs of delivering mail were not recoverable by the postal service when recipients were unable or unwilling to pay for delivered items, and senders had no incentive to restrict the number, size, or weight of items sent, whether or not they would ultimately be paid for. The postage stamp resolved this issue in a simple and elegant manner"

$5 is a small hurdle if you're going to be spending a lot of time on Steam.

Re:Thank god

[mhkohne]

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.

Re:Thank god

[AmiMoJo]

Google+ is the only social network I use, because it's the only one that isn't a torrent of effluent. If you start by following a few well known people in your area of interest (mine are electronics and retro computing) you can quickly build up a network of interesting people who only post stuff relevant to you. For the most part G+ doesn't suffer from the Facebook/Twitter style "I just wiped my arse!" "updates". It's where the smart kids hang out.

Can't say as I blame them.

[lister king of smeg]

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.

Re:should be higher

[MacTO]

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.

Re:So

[fiore42]

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.

Re:Tired of this from valve

[Anonymous Coward]

bullshit, buy wallet credit from gamestop etc.

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:workshop

[FlyHelicopters]

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.