i wish there was a good alternative to steam

[treos]

did you know that if you get a certain number of bans (temp and perma) and warnings anywhere on steam, Valve puts your account into "lockdown mode" for anywhere up to...6 MONTHS or more?

that completely bricks your steam account save for 4 functions:

browsing steam

buying games

playing games in your library

chatting with friends via the steam chat window

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ALL other functions, PLATFORM WIDE, are completely bricked.

posting on forums

posting reviews

commenting on reviews

commenting on people's profiles

rating...anything

you can't add or remove people on your friend list

you can't edit ANY part of your OWN profile and it forces it into full private mode. so, no one INCLUDING your friends can view it.

you can't block anyone

you can't report anyone

you cannot upload pictures in the chat window

you cannot do ANYTHING except those 4 functions!

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and somehow this is LEGAL for VALVE to do this to people.

and on top of this, me and some other people recently caught Valve's moderators (the ones with the valve logo next to their usernames) running a honeypot thread in the starfield steam forum specifically so they can ban anyone who says anything negative about the OP.

what's more, the "steam support staff"? yeah, that whole system is run by bots. there's no humans handling that side of the platform. no matter what you say to them, they just put out canned responses.

how has this NEVER made it out to the public? how is this LEGAL on a platform where people spend IRL MONEY to purchase things?

they don't ban your steam account. they just completely brick it and break all but those 4 functions.

and spare me the "It'S a PrIvAtE cOmPaNy" EXCUSE! because that's all that is. an excuse for them and other companies to get away with things like this.

currently, my account...

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edit: something else worth mentioning. the "steam support staff" are all bots like what youtube and google use for support staff.

the moderators can and will ban you for any reason regardless of the rules and guidelines and due to the support staff being bots, there's no appealing bans.

steam is the worst platform for pc gaming. it's to pc gaming what pre-elon twitter was to social media

[Slacker Magician]

It would've been nice if Steam hadn't took a piss all over computer games. Too bad the masses let the "convenience" win out. On the bright side, at least your account didn't get completely nuked.

[treos]

eh...i dunno...only thing i'd really lose out on if it did is multiplayer (for the games that don't have private servers). i have a number of websites bookmarked. and the MMOs in my library likely all have their own websites. and i'm actually planning to get my last 2 games for this year on ps4. armored core 6 and dragon's dogma 2. i'll uh...i'll get the offline version of mega man x dive for uh...free...at least for now. mainly cause i really don't want to put anymore money into steam after this moderation BS.

it's just really REALLY bad moderation on steam.

oh, and this is the honeypot thread i mentioned if anyone wants to see. https://steamcommunity.com/app/17167...7431878706108/

i have no idea if it's closed for good now or not cause they kept closing it then later opening it after clearing some posts and now the OP's profile is set to private.

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that's not a moderator appointed by bethesda though. that's one of the moderators from the main steam platform forums. they came swooping down and hitting a bunch of threads like this one in the past week or so. banning a whole lot of people who voiced any opposing opinion about what the OP had said. and every one of the had valve's logo by the name like that one. and every one of the threads hit had an OP post going on about transgender stuff and/or woke stuff.

[LeftyGuitar]

I didn't have steam for the longest time. An ex girlfriend of mine talked me into getting a steam account. I kinda regret it. Oh well, I usually get physical games as much as possible. This is why emulation is important it preserves gaming. Epic Game Store is the closest steam has to competition and even Epic sucks. If only PC games had boxed games again.

A game that came with a box/case, the full game on cart/disc, an instruction manual. Now that is what I'd call CIB (complete in box).

[treos]

"Contact Steam Support
Our support staff has indicated that you've recently submitted repeated requests for issues we've already resolved to the best of our ability.

You'll need to wait until September 27, 2023 @ 6:31pm to sumbit further help requests.

Press OK below to review your recent help requests."

you have done absolutely NOTHING to resolve the issue. i want to speak to a human. NOT a BOT spitting out canned scripted responses!

"Sorry, some kind of error has occurred: The settings on this account do not allow you to add comments."

and now they've bricked my steam account even further. can't post comments on my own ban reports.

edit: no...i'm done...any future game i get for pc that's released through steam will be acquired via the free alternative method. any game i pay money to purchase will be acquired via console (except for nintendo. F that hateful company. they now use denuvo in their switch games).

it's no longer worth it to use steam.

gabe, you said piracy was a service problem. you have ruined the service and have made piracy my #1 option for playing pc games!

[Till]

As mentioned Epic games or five finger discount torrents. If you want gaming community you're in the right place.