Let's talk for a bit...
Well, guys! I’ve been feeling fine for these days, trying to complete games as much as I could (I have yet to list what I have 100%’ed and what do you need to do so)
But now, I want to tell you a story of what happened to me 2 weeks ago…
This is what happens when you do something bad, even though it was all an accident…
It’s all resolved as of now, but I want to tell you what happened and why this happened…
So, my little brother came to me, with a happy face, telling me he got a “20$ gift-card”, I felt slightly suspicious about it, but thought he activated the card via the Steam Wallet option (The option where you activate Steam Giftcards)
I was wrong…
The guy who was giving him such a thing was giving my little brother a stolen card from somewhere (Or it was his own card, after all, but I doubt it, I’ll get to this soon), of course, since this is a criminal offense, and it violates the Steam Terms of Agreement, it made my account perma-restricted.
What does this mean? No trading, no key activation, no gifting, no Market buying, no Steam Store buying (In other words, a general trade ban), which means my SG account will be unusable.
Well, when I got hit by that, I had no idea what was happening, so I contacted Steam Support.
After a day, they gave me a pretty discouraging answer…
They weren’t going to tell me any reason (I was probably put in the folder of “Fraudulent Activity, use canned responses only”, because once you do anything that is fraud, you are pretty much screwed (And this could potentially be an account-ender if scammers know how to do this…).
So I confronted my brother, remembering as well about that “gift-card”, he told me he activated the gift-card via the credit/debit card area while he cried to me when he couldn’t lie to me anymore (He managed to take money from a credit/debit card, even with expiration dates and the secret code… Whoever this guy is, I am glad he got what he deserved, according to my little brother, this was the guy who did it…
Then, I responded again to Steam Support, first part…
I know I might sound corny in the message and pretty cliché or something, but I was genuinely desperate, even I could have disclosed full information about myself, so they see I have nothing to hide and that I was innocent.
I couldn’t sleep that night, I remember well… After the night passed, and in noon (Or around there) they came it with another response… The one that would seal any opportunity for you to get back your account
Yes… for those who don’t know, this response is the last thing you want to hear when you have a problem with your account… You can’t reason with them or negotiate anything (Even if you could see that I tried, even showing all what I had to type to convince them otherwise… It was futile…)
I felt tremendously bad for a couple of hours, I was feeling down for that moment, as if I had no way to get back my account, until an idea struck to me, it was possibly my last resort… I had to contact…
Yeah… Contacting the CEO of Valve and the gaming platform Steam… When I finished the e-mail, I thought to myself… “Are you out of your mind? Do you think he will take his time to read this when he might be developing a game at this very moment?”
I sighed as I went to sleep… When I woke up, my little brother (Who was playing some games in my account at that moment, now he is forbidden to enter my account at all, only me. I’ll make an account for him and use Family Share on him) woke me up, telling me… “Kevin! Kevin! Gabe Newell replied!”, and I was like… “What?” (How did he knew, you ask? Windows 10 links your e-mail, so it appears at the bottom right of the screen as a notification, you know it happens if you do have an e-mail linked)
I quickly went to see the response… He is a man of a few words, haha!
I really was out of words, even for a short response, he actually read the e-mail! So, I told him my story to him as well, leaving the ticket number so he can see it, I saw that he was also part of Support, first part
After writing that big letter for Gabe, I felt a bit stupid… “What if that e-mail wasn’t even his? Did I just sent a letter to a complete stranger that used that e-mail to scam people or something?”… Yeah, it was a possibility, but I had no options left… Everything in that letter and in what I wrote past this is completely true, you never go anywhere by being a liar and by being rude about it. Yes, Steam Support takes time, and you grow desperate, but you need patience. Over time, they’ll answer :)
Next day, around 7 or 8 p.m, my little brother, who was still in my account (He was forbidden later) saw a very strange phenomenom… The red bar dissapeared!
My little brother called me, yelling… “KEVIN! KEVIN! GABE NEWELL DID IT!”. I thought he was joking, so I followed him… “Yeah, yeah! Wow, he did it…” Knowing it was permanent, it was pretty much him playing… But no! It dissapeared!
Momentaneously… The red bar went back again, my little brother and I were confused, but then… Steam Support sent us a message!
HOLY SHIT! We hugged each other, my brother cried to me that he will never activate anything without me watching. Even though I wasn’t mad with him, it was a good lesson he learned that day.
We won a seemingly unwinnable case… There are factors that might have contributed to me having a much legitimate side of the story, which I can explain, if you ask me.
I sent Gabe my “thank you” letter, I was a bit afraid, since he is a busy man, after all…
And he answered me a few hours later!
Awww… No Left 4 Dead 2 Free Weekend, missed chance… :(
Oh, well! This is my story! My account is banned for a month (20 days now), my brother has to use another account, the guy got his Karma destroyed by getting VAC-ations (He made another account… Yeah… He didn’t cared at all on losing it…), and my brother learned a lesson.
I also want to tell you what to do in order for you to not get over this too.
Never, EVER, let your brother/sister/relative to activate something, a code, a string of numbers, etc. Without you watching. Teach them that free things never have existed. In order to get things, you have to buy them with hard word and with your own cash from that hard work!
I would have published this in a much popular site (Reddit), and I would probably get a ton of hits and get myself revered as a god or something xD, but nah… I am an achievement hunter, and you achievement hunters deserve to know what happened to me.
I hope you had a good read and learned something in the way there :)
Have a good day/night!
Oh man, reading this was making me anxious. I’m very glad your account will be OK in a few days!
Oh no! Please don’t be! If you have a brother/sister that plays with your account, make an account for him with Family Share right now!
Tell him never to use “gift codes” or something like that without you seeing his/her activity! And make sure it’s from him/her that owns the code! :)
All those emotions! Nice to know there was a happy ending to it all, thanks for sharing. I’d probably resort to begging too if my account was compromised, just the thought of it scares me!
There’s always a chance that it won’t work… You have to make a good case in order to get your account back. All I used was common sense and logic :)
One heck of a story.
It’s always the “younger brother”, huh? Looks to me that you’re telling the truth, but other people, whenever they get baned, they blame their “younger brother”. Sure… Suuuuure ;D
Anyway, it must have been quite a shock to have your account locked like that, glad you were able to resolve the issue in the end :)
Yeah! But if you don’t believe me, then ask yourself this:
Why would I risk my account, which has a value of over $1000 (From bundled stuff), over just $20?
It would sound completely out of my mind, right?
Also, all my purchases were made by my own debit card (No other card appears in my Steam purchases), it would be odd to find another card being used out of the sudden after 7 years, right?
So yeah, I had to present a lot of “logical” evidence, so they knew I wasn’t lying in my side of the story :)
Indeed, I believe you ;) Great to know GabeN and his guys believed you as well :)
What a story! Glad you got your full account back.
I always monitor my son (8) when he plays games and have taught him to call me if he notices anything unusual.
Great job! Hope your son doesn’t learn a lesson the hard way, though :(
Does he have his own account? You might want to give him an account for himself, though.
He’s only 8 and only plays my LEGO games so he’s fine with my account. However, he’ll get his own eventually …
Oh, please make one for him! You never know when a “friend” of his will say… “Ey, lad… Want some free moneyz? Just gimme your account name and pass, and the Auth code and you’ll get easy $100!”
Small kids fall very easily to this, since they are very impressionable… I don’t want anybody to fall for it, so it’s better if you listen to me :)
If he ever gets banned (for any reason), your main account leaves unaffected, the only exception is with multiplayer games, if he decides to cheat with Family Share on, both of you get the VAC/Game ban :(
I know but seriously, for what he does with my Steam library, there is no risk. However, he could be banned. By me, for playing too much :)
He doesn’t have his own computer (and not any time soon) and like I said, I’m always in the room when he plays.
But when that needs to change, he’ll get his own account.
This means no more confusion of who is currently online from you two? Well, good thing it worked out. But I am surprised because you have to consider that the Steam support is prrobably swamped with sob stories like this which are not true. On the bright side you have a “lesson learned”. ^^
Yes, no more “Isaac30” in my account, haha!
Well, I know they can view your account history to their fullest, and they might have seen things in it that correlates with my side of the story (My 2 “alias” in my account, my account purchase history suddenly changing a card when I used just one card for years, a valuable account that just wanted $20 for free, which makes no sense whatsoever, the fact that I provided my ID card and my little brother’s ID, being coincidental with his username, and also, providing personal information, when they can just arrest me for credit card fraud more easily, now knowing my identity, if I were a criminal, I would be the stupidest guy ever, haha!), so they could have believed it (Thankfully!)
So yeah… I probably was “the one percent” that managed to win against Steam Support hell :(
Oh man, that where quite some days you had going on. Glad it all worked out!
Guess I’m pretty lucky to not have a brother who needs to use my steam acc (and also for having a trusting brother who let me use his acc for testing one or two game he had and I didn’t :] ).
I hope the 20 days pass quick for you :)
Have a nice weekend!
Hehe, I have plenty of games to play with, while I wait!
I’m just playing Mad Max right now! It’s pretty good and I forgot that I had it for a while (I won it on SG, hehe)
This comment was deleted over 7 years ago.
Ha, games sure are a good way to pass time :)
I tried to win Mad Max, didn’t work out. Have fun with it! :)
It’s an amazing story, with an incredible happy ending. I won’t judge if it’s true or not.
If it’s true, it gives hope to any future potential problems that we can have with Steam.
If it’s not true, it’s still a great story. You told it well, it had me hooked till the conclusion :)
It is true. Like I said, I would have been doomed if I lied in any part of my side of my story, since Steam Support knows what you’ve done in your account since the start of it.
Thank you for reading! Glad you liked the story! :)
Awww… :3
Our Gaben, who art in Bellevue
Rotund be thy shape
The half-life (never) come
Thy will be done on earth
as it is in Valve
Give us this day our daily vidya
And forgive us for our pirating
as we forgive those who pirate alongside us
May VAC lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from hacking
For thine kingdom is the VALVe
the Steam, and the vidya
For ever and ever
Gaben
Glad that everything work out for you!
ps: You should definitely post this on the pcmr subreddit those guys will give you more gold than Aztecs gave to spaniards!
Just got on my computer after my day off to see this, haha!
I don’t know… I’ll probably post it on SG later, but not on Reddit… I’m not even sure, though. I don’t want too much attention on my back :(
That’s why I chose a smaller place to add my story :)
This is one of the most incredible things I ever read and it made me hate GabeN less (after the recent gifting changes). I’m really happy you got your account back and shared your story with us, fellow cheevo hunter :)
Well… Gabe means well with the trade restrictions, even less scammers can scam now, and it may affect people living off trading, but you can’t save everybody, I guess… Right? :/
Thank you for reading my story as well :)
I read the whole thing including your links, and what a crazy story! Its frustrating how robotic steam support is but the fact that you got an answer from Gabe Newell himself is a cool accomplishment :P
glad everything got sorted and try not to be to hard on your little brother. We all fall for scams at one time or another :)
Yeah, this scam could be pretty devastating, because not only infringes the Steam Terms of Agreement, it’s also against the law, so that’s why it’s extremely hard to solve one of these, unless you have a pristine record on your profile, or they detect something odd that they can take to dig you deeper in a hole.
I’m really glad that my account will be back, but I was never hard on my brother, I just went hard when he lied that he didn’t know what was going on, then, he told me the truth, after all, so I am not mad at him :)
I meant it as a joke but I’m worried it came off preachy. He definely did a bad thing and I wasn’t trying to insinuate you were to tough :P.
Also props to your perseverance because I would have cried and given up long ago xD
No, pal. Don’t give up when bad things arises.
Whenever it happens, try to take a deep breath and analyze the situation with a clean mind… Search around, find alternative solutions around and don’t lose hope :) (That’s where I saw that Gabe Newell responded to e-mails, so it was an option, although it might have been futile too, but attempting is still acceptable, right?)
And no, I’m probably the most peaceful guy ever, it’s when things happen that I have to go a bit… rough… But hey, my brother got scared straight, and he will not think he is all smarty-pants anymore, since he got caught on the act xD