$t34md!

[Nappi]

Damn, that sucks. But I guess otherwise all the cheaters would lie about their account being hijacked every time they get caught.. Or something. Unfortunately it seems that you can't give the games you already own as gifts, so you can't just make a new account and transfer the games there either.

Just learned that I should probably use Steam a bit more often. Not because of this but because it's been updating Company of Heroes for 7-8 hours now and I would have really liked to play the game yesterday.

[toblix]

I think the response computer detects the string "hijack" in your email, then just resets the password and sends it to your registered email address.

[SpiderMonkey]

It appears Valve's policy on hijackers getting your account banned is "tough shit".

Please tell me you did not accept that answer.

[Nappi]

Please tell me you did not accept that answer.

http://support.steampowered.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=197

The final paragraph.

[Thrik]

That is clearly bollocks. They should at least look into the IPs that logged into the account and use a bit of classic human judgement to determine the likelihood that two people millions of miles apart are in fact different people. Granted, using a shit password is pretty daft, but not daft enough to deserve potentially being arseholed out of playing hundreds of dollars' worth of games.

I suggest you propose that to them. And possible also gaben@valvesoftware.com.

[toblix]

I'm too old to fight these battles.

[Nachimir]

Note: In the event that a hijacked Steam account is banned by the Valve Anti-Cheat System, we will not be able to reverse the ban. Please choose a strong password and safeguard your account login information to avoid being hijacked.

Sucks!

[Cigol]

Come get your WoWz Golds here folks.

Did you even try and contact them? It's not uncommon for them to be more accommodating when approached directly. It would certainly put my mind at rest if you just admitted you're a dirty little cheat and you couldn't be bothered coming up with a half-decent cover story.

All the games I have bought and am going to buy on STEAM are just a vindictive little 'haxor' away from being invalidated. If someone is inclined to hijack an account then they aren't beyond being a huge wanking shit and getting it banned either.

Bonus points for it seemingly being a dead end in the investigatory process!

[toblix]

I'm not sure I understand your post, Cigol, but I think I will contact them. Most likely it's too late, but at least I tried.

[toblix]

On second thought, I won't bother. They've made it perfectly clear my ban won't be lifted. Ever. No matter where I go on their support pages, huge letters tell me THE BAN WILL NOT BE LIFTED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES! WE ARE NOT GOING TO LIFT THE BAN! THE BAN WILL NEVER BE LIFTED!

Fuck Steam. If they're not willing to provide a way, however work and time-consuming, for me to be able to play the games I've bought online, I'm not going to buy their games.

I'm astounded that there hasn't been a huge fucking uproar over this policy. Obviously I'm to blame for having too simple a password or whatever (although there's no way to prove their system is unhackable), but they should at least have some way of "proving" my innocence or something. I could even pay fucking dollars to have the ban lifted. This is so inconsistent with my impression of Valve I've gotten from their games, commentaries, etc. Gabe always saying his email address and being really friendly and BAM! fucking Valve Nazi slam down their leather gloved fists on my balls.

[DanJW]

The answer is in there! Send an email to Gabe Newell! He'll fix up for you. Offer him dinner or something.

[Cigol]

What I mean is that they may say one thing publicly (on their website for example or in their first emailed response) but if you press them they tend to take it more seriously. It's kind of an unwritten rule in my experience, and although I've never had a problem with STEAM (touch wood) I have had issues with other online services (such as iTunes, Trymedia, Sprocket, etc) that have required a few emails to sort out.

The idea that someone can hijack your account, purposefully invalidate it by cheating and then leave you without any solution isn't exactly comforting... so yeah my question was; did you push them. Did you give them a reason to check it out? Because if you did, and they still weren't interested, then that's worrying to say the least

[toblix]

I'm no good at this, how you say, letter writing, but here went:

Hello, Steam Support

In December last year my Steam account was hijacked. The person who did this used my account to play 97,5 hours of Condition Zero, change my SteamID nickname to "cA$h_/", and add a lot of friends to my friends list. I don't know when he did this, since I discovered the situation after not having used Steam for a period of time. I got the password reset and undid the changes the hijacker had made (save for the image, which I found hilarious). A while later I discovered he had also gotten me banned with VAC for cheating. If you have records of this, and check them, you will find that the ban happened during the period the account was hijacked. Indeed, if you have detailed records of my activities you will see that I have played very little online multiplayer games at all, except fort the almost hundred hours clocked in during the hijacking.

I've seen your very clearly stated policy on lifting bans, and I expect you may already have stopped reading this, deducing quite correctly that is an request that you lift the ban. The reason I have not sent this request sooner is that I didn't know about Left 4 Dead back then, and online gaming never interested me much. It does now, however, and think it's sad that I would be unable to play Left 4 Dead on the VAC-secure servers because of the hijacking incident.

I know that it is my responsibility to prevent people from hijacking my account, by creating a secure password and not having a keylogger installed, and that I have nobody to blame but myself. You give me no chance at redemption, though. The way I understand your policy is that I will never ever, not in five or ten years, or a million, be free of my cheater mark. That's not right. It's impossible to protect oneself one hundred per cent against account hijacking, and it takes but one single event like this to brand me a cheater and lock me out of these servers for the rest of my life.

I think that's harsh. I think you should have some way of getting the ban lifted from my account. However inconvenient, it would be better than this eternal judgment you're currently handing out. Surely you don't expect me to pay for an online service that has branded me a cheater and has no way of removing that brand, even though the fact that the account was hijacked is obvious.

I hope that, even though your web page says there's no chance I'll ever ever get the cheater tag removed, you'll consider my case, and reconsider your policy on this. I hope I can regain my standing as an honest person and be able to purchase and play Left 4 Dead, TF2 and any other online games on the same servers as everyone else.

If you read this, thank you very much.

[Wrestlevania]

Nicely put, toblix. Hope you get some satisfaction.

[vimes]

awwww, not a single 'blahblah ? more like BALAHABLA!' in this? I'm disappointed.

Good luck anyway.

[Nachimir]

I hope this works Toblix.

[Scrobbs]

Good luck toblix, hope it gets sorted. If that fails however, and they refuse, how about asking them nicely to re-instate the games that you purchased on your old account on your new account?

[Wrestlevania]

That's a fucking good "worst case" suggestion actually...

[toblix]

Big fucking surprise:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Steam Support.

This ban applies to a Steam account (regardless of who was using the account at the time the infraction occurred) and any games registered under the account. The use and security of your Steam account is your responsibility.

We cannot move game subscriptions from accounts which have been banned by VAC.

Please do not register retail products or purchase new Steam subscriptions on a VAC-banned account. If you choose to purchase a new copy of the game, please register it or install it with a new Steam account. Remove all cheats from your system before you install (if you do not know where the cheats were installed, you may want to consider reformatting the machine and starting over with a new installation of your operating system).

You are able to create a new account and purchase new subscriptions on that account and be able to play online.

Basically, I'll have to juggle around multiple Steam accounts. Fuck that. At least I'll never have to pay for Steam games again.

[Nappi]

Remember to let them know as well.

Shame this had to go like that.

[toblix]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'm sure you understand Steam has gotten much less interesting for me as a platform to spend my money on, knowing that the games I purchase could without warning be tagged as a cheater, and that I have no option but to just abandon these and buy them over again. As I said earlier, and as I hope you're aware, there's no way to protect oneself 100% against things like these. It astounds me that this is in fact your policy, and I suggest once again that you reconsider. If you really wanted to provide a way for banned customers to "prove their innocence" you could. I never installed any cheats. Some guy from some other place (most probably a completely different part of the world, which would be obvious from any IP logs you might have) brute-forced my password (I've never had a key logger on my computer) and used it to have fun for as long as he could get away with it.

Until you change your policy regarding this I obviously won't spend any more money on your service. I think it's unreasonable of you to expect me to keep multiple accounts and purchase games more than once, and I think my expectation of a way to have the ban lifted is very reasonable. I'm not going to pay for software that's in principle being held hostage by the threat of password theft. I know losing my business is no great loss for you, but at least I've spoken my mind.

I know they're probably in tears about this.

[toblix]

And finally:

I can appreciate your frustration in this matter; however, our system has confirmed that the ban was applied legitimately. A VAC ban applies to the account regardless of who was using the account at the time.

It does not matter if you let someone use the account, or if the account was being used without your knowledge. It is your responsibility to safeguard your account against such activities.

I am sorry, the VAC ban on the account will not be removed.

At least they responded in under five minutes.

[elmuerte]

does this mean you have to update your signature

[toblix]

Yes!

[miffy495]

Pending what?