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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday April 21 2015, @08:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the gabe-needs-our-cash dept.

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.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Dunbal on Wednesday April 22 2015, @10:18AM

    by Dunbal (3515) on Wednesday April 22 2015, @10:18AM (#173901)

    Wow you must live a sad life with no proprietary software. So what BIOS does your computer use? What software does your router use? Your cable modem? Your television? Your microwave? Your car?

    Steam is a pretty good compromise as far as DRM is concerned. Do you have any idea what a pain it is to look for old CD's and better yet - old manuals to look up DRM schemes or to play a game? Have you ever had badly implemented DRM kill your CD drive? I have. With Steam I can download my games to my desktop AND my laptop(s) so when I travel I can still play my games without having to bring a bunch of CD's with me. Steam never gets scratched like my CD's did. I never have to go to a store and choose only from the available stock of games or have to wait for a store to order a game for me. There are many, many advantages to Steam. Saying it's bad because it enforces DRM is kind of silly considering most titles were infested with DRM in the first place.

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  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday April 22 2015, @02:30PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday April 22 2015, @02:30PM (#173986) Journal

    Steam is a pretty good compromise as far as DRM is concerned. Do you have any idea what a pain it is to look for old CD's and better yet - old manuals to look up DRM schemes or to play a game?

    False dichotomy. I get all of the benefits from buying games from GOG.com, and get installers that I can download and install whenever I feel like it, on any machine I want, even if the network is down. I never have issues playing the games when I'm travelling and don't have Internet access and GOG can not revoke my ability to play the games (or to reinstall them after an OS upgrade or purchase of a new computer). DRM doesn't enable these things, these features are just used to try to persuade people to accept DRM.

    --
    sudo mod me up
    • (Score: 2) by Tramii on Wednesday April 22 2015, @04:04PM

      by Tramii (920) on Wednesday April 22 2015, @04:04PM (#174030)

      None of that has anything to do with the original article. If you bought your games on Steam you can still play them. They only things that have been disabled for certain users are services that GOG doesn't even offer.