Что такое community ban в steam
Что такое community ban в steam
The most comprehensive guide about bans on the Steam platform. Here we’ll talk about all possible bans that you can get, and why you can get them, while using Steam, as well as provide information on how to avoid getting banned. This guide is available in 🇷🇺 Russian
This guide will talk about all the possible bans that you can get and how you can get them while using Steam. This guide will reference the Steam Support articles throughout the text as well.
This includes using an unauthorized («hacked») Steam client to access Steam, attempting to register fake CD Keys or attempting to register a CD Key which has been published on the internet.
Users may not use accounts that they do not own.
This includes contacting other users outside of Steam or over the Friends network under a misleading/impersonating screen name or e-mail address (i.e. «Steam Admin», «VAC Administrator», «You Won Free Game Gift») and requesting password or account information.
All purchased, sold and traded account will be banned. This includes all accounts that a user is the owner of at the time of purchase, regardless of the fact they were sold or traded, or not.
Never accept gifts from strangers. Any account that have activated gifts from scammers can be banned.
Any fraudulent activity that involves banking cards, charge-backs and refunds through PayPal, regardless of when the operation occurred.
♥♥♥♥♥♥ items, using middlemen (imitating/spoofing one), trade checks, etc.
This can happen when a user offers to send you some money to your Steam Wallet by purchasing one of your cheap items for a high price on the Community Market. The majority of these offers involve money that were obtained by scamming other users.
One of the most serious bans on Steam is the ban for a violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement. Every single user must accept its terms during their account registration. Any violation of its terms will lead either to a temporary or permanent ban. The most severe violations are punished with the offending account being completely disabled.
You can find new people with the help of the Steam Community, whom you can befriend, chat with in groups, share screenshots, read news and watch broadcasts. Users who violate the Community Rules and Guidelines will receive bans according to their actions.
A Warning is a message from a user with certain level of authority (a Steam Support member, a Steam Community Moderator, a game developer, or a forum moderator), where an offending user is notified of their inappropriate behavior on the Steam Community Discussions.
Unlike a ban, a warning is merely a reminder there are rules and guidelines in the Steam Community a user needs to abide by. Further violations may lead to a ban.
A post that the user has been warned for may be removed.
Violation of the Steam Discussions Rules and Guidelines will result in a ban from Steam Discussions. This ban, temporary or permanent, makes all Steam forums unavailable to the banned user. They can still participate in a community hub’s discussions, however.
If a user is banned, they will receive a corresponding notification. A new link, “Community Moderation Messages”, will also appear beneath “Post History”. This is the only place where a banned user can discuss a moderator’s actions and appeal to shorten the duration of their ban, or to lift it all together.
This is what they will see by going to the “Community Moderation Messages” page:
Steam Support sends an to the offending user:
As well as the account alert, the user will also receive a notification in their “Community Moderation Messages” that details what content was against the rules and what was removed.
The user’s profile is hidden without the ”This profile is private” label;
The user is unable to participate in the Steam Discussions;
The user cannot leave comments in the activity feed of their own profile or in that of other users’ profiles:
The user will not be able to send group and friend requests, nor will they be able to accept them from other users.
The user is unable to edit their profile, i.e cannot change profile name, country, custom URL, avatar, summary, profile background, showcases, etc.
The user is unable to see the number of common groups and friends with another user.
The user is unable to add other users to the ignored users list.
The user is unable to trade or use the Community Market.
If you are annoying, stalking or harassing users of the Seam Community, you may receive a temporary or a permanent ban for such activity.
Example of a temporary ban for harassment:
User Generated Content (UGC) includes comments, guides, reviews, screenshots, artworks, videos, tags, Workshop items, etc.
In the case that a UGC violates Steam Rules and Guidelines, it can be banned by a Steam Community Moderator or Steam Support Staff.
Here are a few examples of User Generated Content bans for clarity:
User-generated content shouldn’t violate Guidelines and Rules of Steam. Everyday screenshots, guides and artworks of completely different nature are uploaded to Steam. If they contain materials that are against the rules, they may be hidden as incompatible in the community hub they were uploaded to, or banned.
An example of a banned guide message (similar messages are sent for other types of content as well).
A message with the following content is sent to an associated email address:
If a user received a ban in a community hub discussion area, along with that they are also restricted from uploading UGC to the said hub.
This restriction has the same length as the forum ban.
If the ban is lifted prematurely, the restriction will be removed as well.
Malicious Steam users often abuse the upvoting mechanism of UGC in order to promote illegal scam links that are targeting for harvesting Steam users’ account details or stealing their inventory items. In response to that, Valve implemented the following restriction: if you upvoted content that was banned, you will be banned from posting content (screenshots, guides, artworks, etc.) for one month since the content ban date.
The following message will be sent to an email address associated with the offending Steam account:
When offending content is removed, a community message is sent to the user, whose profile content was removed.
For a violation of the group’s rules, the violator will be banned. A group ban, temporary or permanent, makes all of that group’s forums unavailable to the banned user.
If a user is banned, they will not receive a notification in their profile. While browsing the group again, however, they will see the following red box above the thread list of any subforum:
The banned user will be allowed to read any thread, however they will not be able to post messages. They will see this message in place of the reply box:
Even though violating group members may be banned from the group discussions, they are still able to join and participate in the group chatroom. Group discussion bans and chatroom bans are separated. This means that the group administrators and moderators will also have to ban the offender from the group the group chatroom to prevent any more violations.
The offender in this case will see a message, which says that “they were banned from the chat by %moderator_name%”. They will also see a popup in their Steam tray with the same message (as you can see on the right side).
Depending on the ban duration, the offender will not be able to join the group chat. Whenever they attempt to, they will be greeted with the following notification:
Violation of the global forum Rules and Guidelines, as well as the local ones, is punishable with a ban. Both temporary and permanent bans in a community hub will result in a banned user not being able to participate in any of the discussions of the said community hub. This ban, however, affects only the community hub where a violation has been committed — the user is still free to post in discussions of other community hubs and the official Steam forums.
If a user is banned, they will receive the following notification.
This is what the user will see by going to the “Community Moderation Messages” page:
If a user violates or ignores the established rules during their trading activity, they will receive a temporary or permanent ban in the Steam Trading System.
Most often, a red notice in a user’s profile will appear for soliciting other users to trade for something that is not allowed:
The Steam trading interface does not support the transfer of money in any form. This includes Wallet credits, PayPal, gift cards or any other type of currency.
Trading for CD Keys is not supported in the Steam Trading interface. CD Keys that are offered are often for a different game, fake, used or region restricted.
You should complete any trades in a single trade. The trading interface supports an unlimited amount of items to be included with each trade, usually foregoing the need for multiple trades. If you choose to trade an item without receiving anything in return, you will receive a confirmation dialog prior to completing the trade which lets you know the item you are sending is considered a gift.
Steam Wallet credit cannot be traded, moved, gifted or automatically added to accounts by other users. Never accept trades that offer Steam Wallet funds. The only way to add funds to someone else’s account, is to buy and gift them a Digital Gift Card.
If you give a user an item, there is nothing to stop them from keeping it. In most cases, if a user wishes to borrow an item, they will not return it. Do not lend items to other users.
For violation of any points above, Steam Support will issue the following alert to the offender:
Stick to the established rules and use common sense to avoid getting scammed and/or banned.
An account alert can be triggered by a removed (revoked) CD key. This can happen, for example, when the CD Key is intended for a limited time activation, like a Beta, or if the publisher determines that the CD Key itself had been obtained by fraudulent means.
The official Steam Support article states that “Your account will not be restricted; however, the CD Key you received will be removed”. So, users do not need to worry when they see this notification:
When a cardholder or financial institution disputes a purchase made through Steam, this results in a payment reversal and is considered a chargeback.
Chargebacks typically occur when someone identifies unknown charges on their bank account or finds purchases that were made without their consent.
In order to protect users from additional unknown charges, accounts associated with chargebacks are restricted while disputes are reviewed.
In order to remove the restrictions, the user must contact the financial institution associated with the disputed payments in order to close them. Depending on the institution associated with the payments, it may take several weeks to close the dispute. As a result of that, it may also take several weeks after closing a dispute for the content and account features to be restored.
With any chargeback, funds are held from Steam or returned to the cardholder. Since the funds are removed, the product is temporarily locked.
If a dispute is closed and the funds are returned to Steam, the content associated with the dispute will be restored.
Valve has developed a system, that automatically detects and permanently restricts game access to anyone who utilizes cheats or modifies program code on servers that are protected by VAC.
Valve Anti-Cheat is running on all official game servers by Valve and on the majority of user-created servers. VAC can be spotted by its shield icon in the server browser:
VAC automatically detects cheats (modifiers) and programs that are replacing files and interfering with the game process, and otherwise may provide an advantage over other players.
The VAC module is loaded into the client memory and is watching for any 3rd party processes that are interfering with the game executable. This means that any program that is attaching or otherwise tampering with the game process, can and will be recognized as a cheat.
Once an outside interference is detected, the VAC module sends the following information to Valve servers: details about the intrusion type, account information, etc. The process that is injecting into the game executable will be checked against the database, and if there is a similar process that is detected as a cheat, a ban will be issued. Once the account has been flagged, a ban will be placed in a couple of days, or in a few weeks. The user will not be able to connect to VAC-secured servers and a red notice will appear in the offender’s profile. The delay is there in order to prevent cheaters from knowing when and why they were banned, slowing down cheaters from creating work-arounds in the future.
A user, who has «earned» multiple VAC bans in different games, will have a corresponding label in their profile.
In order to ensure the best possible online multiplayer experience on non-Valve games, Valve allows developers to implement their own systems that detect and permanently ban any disruptive players, such as those using cheats.
The effects of the game ban are determined by the developer and must be consistent with a VAC ban, such as not being able to play online with other players and/or being able to trade items for that game.
Only permanent game bans are displayed on the user’s profile. Temporary game bans, or suspensions, are not displayed.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works. It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself. In addition, the DMCA heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet.
Valve respects the intellectual property rights of others, and is expected that everyone using internet sites and services do the same. Anyone who believes that their work has been reproduced on any internet sites or services in a way that constitutes copyright infringement may notify Valve’s copyright agent using the form below. Be aware that under Section 512(f) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, any person who knowingly and materially misrepresents that material or activity is infringing and may be liable for damages.
For example, once a user has found out that their content was completely copied by another user, they can file an appropriate claim. After that, the offending content will receive a notification (a guide is used in this example):
The claim is then processed by Valve. If it turns out the content in question does indeed infringe someone else’s copyright, it will be removed from the Community.
Uploading inappropriate content may lead to your trading cards eligibility revoked.
Update: Now all developers are not eligible for trading cards since the 16th of May, 2017 until Valve can confirm the game as legitimate.
Developers must be approved to use this system, and Valve reserves the right to revoke access to the system if the developer abuses it.
Your key request may have been denied because the request was for a package that contains a release state override for the included appIDs, which would make the content immediately playable upon activation. Unless a request for testing/promo/press override keys is a small batch and properly tagged for use, it may be denied.
If the Key request is intended for commercial purposes, be sure to use a package that does not override the release state of your app.
For more information on keys, please see our documentation here: https://partner.steamgames.com/documentation/keys
All onboarding Steam partners must agree to a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA); if the NDA has been breached in any form, Valve has the right to terminate the contract and partnership. An example of that can be leaking Steam Sales dates (which are confidential).
Developers are forbidden to manipulate reviews by any means. This includes soliciting reviews by granting players free keys in exchange for a review, posting fake reviews by yourself or using grey-area bot review services.
Developers are not allowed to grant licenses of their games to accounts that are involved in a so-called «trading cards farming», a process where a developer generates thousands of trading cards of practically zero value, and then makes community market transactions in order to have a cut from these «sales».
Removing negative reviews, censoring users on the forums and showing negative behavior towards your customers is not allowed.
Valve will terminate the contract should one of aforementioned violations occur.
As long as you use your account with responsibility when it comes to its security, not violate the Steam Subscriber Agreement, abide by the Steam Online Conduct and follow the Rules and Guidelines For Steam, then you will not be affected by any of the bans mentioned in this guide.