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A support post on SteamPowered.com shows that Valve are planning to restrict Steam account functionality of anyone who's spent less than $5 directly through Steam:
We've chosen to limit access to these features as a means of protecting our customers from those who abuse Steam for purposes such as spamming and phishing.
Limited users are prevented from accessing several features on Steam, including but not limited to: Sending friend invites; Opening group chat; Voting on Greenlight, Steam Reviews and Workshop items; Participating in the Steam Market; Posting frequently in the Steam Discussions; Gaining Steam Profile Levels (Locked to level 0) and Trading Cards; Submitting content on the Steam Workshop; Posting in an item's Steam Workshop Discussions; Accessing the Steam Web API; Using browser and mobile chat
You will need to spend at least $5.00 USD within the Steam store. Some examples of purchases that grant access to these features are: Adding the equivalent of $5 USD or more to your Steam Wallet; Purchasing game(s) that are equal to $5 USD or more from the Steam store; Adding a Steam Wallet card to your Steam account; Purchasing a Steam gift that is equal to $5 USD or more from the Steam store (Receiving a Steam gift from a friend doesn't count)
Using serial keys to activate retail purchases on Steam will not count towards your account value, neither will activating Steam keys obtained from 3rd party websites (e.g. Humble Bundle) or games gifted to you by other account holders.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday April 21 2015, @08:31PM
I don't know who decided it was a good idea to exclude purchases made off steam from being able to use these features. Money's money, and valve gets some of it if you buy it on humble bundles or on their own service.
But other than that, locking out potential ballot stuffing for reviews and greenlight, keeping scammy "trading sites" from trying to make a profit off random steam inventory I have by spamming me, and generally making every potential troll vested in their account are all good ideas.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MrGuy on Tuesday April 21 2015, @08:45PM
I'm guessing here, but what appears to be common to all the transactions that count (and missing from the ones that do NOT count) is that they all involve Valve having a direct interaction with the user - you have to give Valve a valid name and credit card number to buy things directly from Valve. This enables more than just 'we know you have some level of financial stake in this account' - it also allows them some ability to know who these users are.
It also means that someone can't create a large number of steam accounts by taking advantage of a 3rd party site with less awesome fraud detection tools - for example, if a 3rd party site like Humble Bundle was weak to detecting abusive transactions, and someone used a stolen credit card # to buy a ton of keys from it. In theory, you can do the same thing with a stolen card directly on Steam, but at least in that case Valve has enough visibility so they can lock all the accounts when the card turns up stolen and the transactions get reversed - it's hard for Steam to know that Humble Bundle reversed a bunch of transactions for fraud, or that those keys might have been revoked (if revocation is even possible from whoever the 3rd party vendor is...)
Separately, as I understand it (IANAL), contract law tends to only come into force when "consideration" (which is usually money) changes hands between the parties to an agreement. If I purchase something from Steam, their end user agreement comes into force as a contract in a much more straightforward way than it would if I gave "someone else" money, and then used Steam as a service. I'm sure most websites will claim their EULA's are valid enforceable contracts regardless of whether there's a financial relationship, but requiring one seems to make things more iron-clad.
(Score: 2) by danmars on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:53PM
Another possibility is that game developers are making fake accounts, redeeming gift (external) keys to their games, then posting reviews with those fake accounts. The new system would require them to buy $5 worth of stuff on all the fake accounts in order to use them to write fake reviews, which seems likely to be less economical.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Wednesday April 22 2015, @12:39AM
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @10:24AM
But I guess PayPal has your real name, right? So if you were doing bad activity on Steam, there would be a way to find out your identity by getting the information from PayPal. It certainly is possible if the behaviour is bad enough to involve law enforcement, but possibly it works already on a lower level through contractual agreement between PayPal and Valve.
And I'm sure that a prepaid card is also associated with a specific person.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @07:38AM
No you don't. I have put EUR 250 in my Steam wallet over the last year or so, of which EUR 80 is still unspent. I haven't given Steam any personal information other than my e-mail address.
Every few months, I simply walk into GameStop and ask for an EUR 50 Steam gift card, which I pay in cash.
(Score: 3, Informative) by EvilSS on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:51PM
Probably because it's not super difficult to get bulk keys cheap (humble bundle) or just steal them (the Sniper Elite 3 debacle, for example).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Wednesday April 22 2015, @03:53AM
Probably because it's not super difficult to get bulk keys cheap (humble bundle) or just steal them (the Sniper Elite 3 debacle, for example).
Likely, but it's still potentially a problem for legitimate, paying users. I've had a Steam account for years because I bought the Orange Box at retail. Over the years I've acquired other games, but they've all been bought retail (like Deus Ex: Human Revolution), or via Humble Bundles, or given as gifts.
The only reason I'm not going to have my account abruptly locked by their decision to exclude retail purchases is I paid for the early-access Steam release on Krita to help support* development. It's the only time I've actually given Steam any money directly. If not for that it's likely I'd fire up Steam one day and find it neutered, and I would be pissed. If you're going to allow vendors to sell retail boxes of games that still require Steam despite being non-Steam purchases, then they should count, too.
That said, the change itself doesn't really bother me, because I understand the desire to curb spam and scam attempts. I've heard it's already a large problem, and growing daily, though my account's apparently not interesting enough to get targeted.
* Okay, I also wanted to switch from their Krita dev PPA to just updating through Steam, but the promised Linux-Steam release never happened. Caveat emptor. I knew it might happen but still wanted to support them because it's excellent software.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday April 22 2015, @05:16PM
I see what you are saying, but is adding $5 to your account (which you can still spend in the future) really asking too much?
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(Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday April 23 2015, @12:16AM
I see what you are saying, but is adding $5 to your account (which you can still spend in the future) really asking too much?
Of course it's not, but if that's what you got out of my comment, you completely missed my point. By not including retail purchases, there's potential for people that have already exchanged money for goods to abruptly find that they have less than they paid for. Sure, it's easy and inexpensive to reactivate those features, but that won't make a person affected by it feel better. They're going to start out pissed off ("Why the fuck did my account stop working properly?") and then remain so ("What the fuck, I have to give more money to get back what I already had?!"); I mentioned myself because, when I heard the news, I had that exact initial reaction. I'd forgotten about the Krita purchase and fully expected my account to be suddenly limited after using Steam normally for years.
For people like that, it's akin to going to a restaurant and, mid-meal, being told you have to get up and move to a different seat because it was determined that you weren't spending enough on your meal.
Or, for a software example: Autodesk's Sketchbook app for tablets. They had a pretty nice tablet app for a while with a flat rate price. You paid, you got all the features. They also had a free version that served as a trial, basically to up-sell you to the paid version. Worked fine for a while, and a bunch of people (myself included) bought the app because it was good.
Sometime last year, Autodesk spent months hyping up their next major update to the mobile apps and the new features it would have. They'd made updates like that before, improving the paid app, so it just seemed like business as usual.
Then, a few months ago, they released a major update to the free version that moved it to a micro-transaction model. Use it as before, but pay a buck here and there to unlock extra brushes and other features. "What about the paid version?" people wondered. Nothing, that's what. They deprecated that version, took it off the market, and told its users to transition to the free version and buy the features (again) via micro-transaction, because the paid one is unsupported now. (Not only that, but you have to use their stupid "cloud" account BS, too)
It's only a few bucks, just like Steam, but the abrupt change coupled with the "so what, just pay a few bucks" reaction seriously pissed off some hardcore fans of the product.
Which was my point: this has potential to lock out more than just spammers and F2P gamers, and anybody that bought stuff and later finds their account locked down will be outraged. It's only an issue because publishers are selling Steam-tied games in non-Steam channels, but Valve decided that those don't count. Nobody likes paying for something and later having it neutered. Sony's removal of Linux support in the PS3 via firmware update didn't affect many people either, but it sure pissed off the ones it did.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday April 23 2015, @05:38PM
The thing is, you aren't paying extra money. You can spend those $5 any time in the future, and unless you carry your Steam account to the grave, you can then sell or hand over that account with the included $5 to someone else even if you never ever spend them. Hell, you can use them to gift a game to your kids or a friend. Hell, in the extreme case, you can buy a steam item or game with those $5 and sell them online.
Secondly, I have doubts as to the number of people who own Steam accounts with retail purchases and no Steam purchases.
Thirdly, it wouldn't surprise me if the retail restriction only applies in the future going forward (for reasons other people have pointed out), and not to retail purchases made before the announcement.
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(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @03:11AM
Regardless, no one should be using Steam because it is proprietary software and encourages DRM.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday April 22 2015, @03:36AM
I get the proprietary software bit but how does steam encourage DRM?
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(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday April 22 2015, @02:25PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday April 22 2015, @11:16PM
How is steam DRM? I can run my games without it just fine.
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(Score: 2) by Wootery on Wednesday April 22 2015, @04:01PM
I don't know who decided it was a good idea to exclude purchases made off steam from being able to use these features. Money's money, and valve gets some of it if you buy it on humble bundles or on their own service.
I suspect they're worried about giveaways and sales. Steam won't be aware of these.