What profiles are those?

tbh I can't name one, I've got one or two in my friends list (community ambassador badge), but most of them I only saw through conversations or trade offer forums. Maybe they are gaming, but with less than 1 hour with 99% of all games I'm not sure those profiles are legit.

While annoying however I can respect why Valve and Steam did this. I am good with this because I spent well over $5 bucks overtime that I have been a member of Steam.

5$ seem few, but don't forget that it is 5 day of food in some EU country... in a few you will need to have 5$ in back to breathe air... another pathetic decision from major company (don't know wich is the worse origin, ubi or steam? 🙂 )

Or in one word moneycracy, the world is just for people with the moneyz.

Can you blame them? With these free to play games sprouting up more and more, you get ads for people/bots selling crap, accounts, and other useless junk. After all, Steam was originally a platform for paid games so it makes sense that to use the services you have to buy a game or buy something for a game. I do think they should at least limit the free to play games to their own group at least so they can chat with each other.

If you can only afford a dollar a day for food, you probably shouldn't be spending your time playing games on steam. Why do people think companies should give their services away for free? They are a BUSINESS, not a charity or government-sponsored public service. Also, using money to deter spam scam accounts goes a long way to improving their service. Some people.

I've been blocked from selling CSGO items bcs my last buy was 1year and 2 months before. Now I sell on trading sites... nothing new, it has been working like that for years.

This seems more like it's designed to annoy people that buy Steam keys elsewhere than anything else.

i didnt see anything bad about this $5 first, people that even not spent $5 on steam games = not using steam so they that not using steam service, and they wont even bother with this change... u can write down any reason, but i believe this $5 also works if u buy from key seller / 3rd seller (humblebundle etc. as long u active with steam) second, i am just 20+ lv steam and recently in a month got 4-5 Suspicious Private Friend Request so we can guess how many friend request come to higher lv. people .. not sure what those people will do, but i believe it not far tricking people with false trade

They should require credit card authentication for online gaming, or at least add an option for players to require others to be credit card authenticated. Cheaters use that $5 for their CS:GO over and over again. This solves nothing.

Blizzard did something similar to this with WoW about 4 years ago. Trial accounts and noobs of a certain level couldn't access chat or trading. It was a way to stop gold sellers and account thieves, well meant to stop the chat spam with Chinese con men. It didn't work but it made Blizz a shiite load of extra cash and made the figure hit an all time high of 14 million accounts. If you are making money from Steam then $5 is nothing. It won't help the community but it will help them make even more cash. To me this is just a ploy to garner extra money, that's all.

They should require credit card authentication for online gaming, or at least add an option for players to require others to be credit card authenticated. Cheaters use that $5 for their CS:GO over and over again. This solves nothing.

and why not DNA identification or fingerprint (to let them sell the info to other company...) lol

It won't help the community but it will help them make even more cash. To me this is just a ploy to garner extra money, that's all.

200% agree if you play to free game or freemium game on steam you don't need that... and they don't need it either

Hm, not good. I always purchase games for my little brother on my account (even if it's with his own money that he gives me for it) and gift them to his account, for he has no credit card nor do our parents want to add a credit card to his account so we can control his spending and which games he gets to play. Thus he has an account that hasn't spent any money but uses it alot and now he'll be treated like some malicious user? I imagine many parents would do the same with their kids' account, too. What are the limitations going to be anyway? Is it just the social features or will they be completely unable to play the games they own?

You don't use Steam for games?

I do, but I also have a couple of people in my list who don't. Namely my girlfriend who uses steam to write me instead of facebook or whatsapp so that I can answer easily if she sees that I'm in a game or if it is urgent. Same goes for my brother. "These changes will be very disappointing for users who only use Steam for Free-To-Play games or only has games which were gifted to their account or obtained from 3rd party key resellers. Hopefully this change will have the attended affect on malicious users, as the affect on certain legitimate Steam users will be substantial." From OC3D.net. So they can't use it to play just FTP games or games I've gifted them, in my girlfriend's case for instance, all her games (costing over $100 with discounts). It's just a bit overdone I believe, if they wanted to get rid of only phishing they could've done that with a total of everything valuing $10 or more instead of forcing 1st party purchases of $5. It would effect nearly no actual players then as everybody at least at some point has bought/sold trading cards, or in game items or premium payments through Steam wallet.

Bought 33 games total at least 1000 euro in 8 years time so no much but these are MY GAMES. Thats why i HATE DRM and portals like steam(for this reason i don't have uplay or origin). Already almost dont buy anything anymore on steam fuuk them. Everyday on steam but dont spent money anymore and im only on steam for Skyrim they accomplish nothing with me i wont spent money with this rule i just abandon steam the idiots. GoG.com all my last games DRM FREE 100%

Blizzard did something similar to this with WoW about 4 years ago. Trial accounts and noobs of a certain level couldn't access chat or trading. It was a way to stop gold sellers and account thieves, well meant to stop the chat spam with Chinese con men. It didn't work but it made Blizz a shiite load of extra cash and made the figure hit an all time high of 14 million accounts. If you are making money from Steam then $5 is nothing. It won't help the community but it will help them make even more cash. To me this is just a ploy to garner extra money, that's all.

You're saying you don't think attaching a 5 dollar requirement to an account will not deter any scammers or spammers, none at all?

You're saying you don't think attaching a 5 dollar requirement to an account will not deter any scammers or spammers, none at all?

A lot of the scammers or spammers usually host 100's of accounts to try to get something, so say you have scammer A that has 67 accounts do you think scammer A is going to shell out $335 just to try to scam people?

I do, but I also have a couple of people in my list who don't. Namely my girlfriend who uses steam to write me instead of facebook or whatsapp so that I can answer easily if she sees that I'm in a game or if it is urgent. Same goes for my brother. "These changes will be very disappointing for users who only use Steam for Free-To-Play games or only has games which were gifted to their account or obtained from 3rd party key resellers. Hopefully this change will have the attended affect on malicious users, as the affect on certain legitimate Steam users will be substantial." From OC3D.net. So they can't use it to play just FTP games or games I've gifted them, in my girlfriend's case for instance, all her games (costing over $100 with discounts). It's just a bit overdone I believe, if they wanted to get rid of only phishing they could've done that with a total of everything valuing $10 or more instead of forcing 1st party purchases of $5. It would effect nearly no actual players then as everybody at least at some point has bought/sold trading cards, or in game items or premium payments through Steam wallet.

Sorry to say but I personally have no sympathy for your contact reasons. Steam was never meant to be a contact solution for people, it was made for online sales and community. Like I said, I think they should have put the people who do the F2P games in their own group to contact each other, but I agree with what they did. Honestly I should not look in my inbox everyday and see requests for items, scams, and penises. But you do not have to put in a credit card, you do what I do. I get a Steam gift card and use that. I do not trust my credit card information on any online source anyway.

You're saying you don't think attaching a 5 dollar requirement to an account will not deter any scammers or spammers, none at all?

You have to spend money in order to make money. No i don't think it will stop the PROFESSIONAL types at all. It will stop some spammers and the like most definitely. It will not bother those who use steam to steal, it's like a burglar buying a crowbar to break into a building. The $5 is an investment to them. There's already tools in place to stop spammers, so this must be for scammers.

I have an account I only use as a spare to play the stray co-op game when one of my wife's younger siblings visits on the rare occasion. I think every game on there is free or something I gifted from my main account. I guess we just have to use something other then Steam for voice-chat....

You have to spend money in order to make money. No i don't think it will stop the PROFESSIONAL types at all. It will stop some spammers and the like most definitely. It will not bother those who use steam to steal, it's like a burglar buying a crowbar to break into a building. The $5 is an investment to them. There's already tools in place to stop spammers, so this must be for scammers.

I mean if it cuts down on 60% of spam and only effects the one guy who uses steam to contact his GF but doesn't actually buy anything, isn't that a win for us? I don't see the issue here.

I have an account I only use as a spare to play the stray co-op game when one of my wife's younger siblings visits on the rare occasion. I think every game on there is free or something I gifted from my main account. I guess we just have to use something other then Steam for voice-chat....

That's probably a blessing in disguise. The steam voice chat sounds like it's routing the audio through a chihuahua stuck in a pipe. It's not even usable.

You have to spend money in order to make money. No i don't think it will stop the PROFESSIONAL types at all. It will stop some spammers and the like most definitely. It will not bother those who use steam to steal, it's like a burglar buying a crowbar to break into a building. The $5 is an investment to them. There's already tools in place to stop spammers, so this must be for scammers.

So you're saying that it will help. If that's the case, I fail to see how this is a ploy for extra money when you say, in your post, that it will deter some people from scamming or spamming. Yeah, clearly, this will make steam some additional money, but if you think it's significant, you're crazy. Most people fall into the category that have spent 5 dollars on a game, or whatever, during the entire time they've had steam. So what better idea do you have then, what's the alternative? I think it's pretty universally agreed spam/scam on steam is a big problem, so what else can they do? I just don't understand how you can first say it's a 100% money grab and then say it will have an effect. They're mutually exclusive. Anyway, this is Economics 101 stuff. You make it cost more to scam, and fewer people will do it. If they made the figure 100 dollars per account, scamming would likely end almost entirely. But they can't do that because that will hit a lot more legitimate users. I feel confident the 5 dollar figure was chosen to hit the most spam accounts, and allow most legitimate users to get by. Surely there will be some overlap, but it isn't as if they're locking those users out of steam entirely. Valve has these numbers, they didn't just pick 5 dollars out of the air.