[quote]Steam no longer allows users to purchase copies of VAC or Game Ban enabled games to their inventory.[/quote]
... well that's fucking stupid.
Wait what, we can't gift games that are VAC protected?
Might as well disable gifting completely at this point
[QUOTE=DEMONSKUL;50833353]Wait what, we can't gift games that are VAC protected?
Might as well disable gifting completely at this point[/QUOTE]
only if you gift the game to someone who gets a game/vac ban from your gift
still lets you gift everything else, just not the single app that's been flagged
[QUOTE=DEMONSKUL;50833353]Wait what, we can't gift games that are VAC protected?
Might as well disable gifting completely at this point[/QUOTE]
As I understand it, under the new system you can:
- buy VAC-protected games for yourself immediately
- gift VAC-protected games to others immediately
but you can't:
- store VAC-protected games in your Inventory for trading purposes
- gift VAC-protected games to others immediately IF you've already gifted that game to someone before, and that someone got VAC-banned on it.
So you can still for example gift CSGO during a sale to invite a buddy to play with you. But it screws over people that buy lots of CSGO copies during a sale on their primary account and then keep gifting CSGO to burner accounts on which they can get VAC-banned without risking their primary account. Once one of their burner accounts gets VAC-banned in CSGO, the primary account won't be able to gift CSGO to any more burner accounts.
[QUOTE=Scratch.;50833362]only if you gift the game to someone who gets a game/vac ban from your gift
still lets you gift everything else, just not the single app that's been flagged[/QUOTE]
And you can no longer put them in your inventory to gift later, regardless of the VAC ban.
Edit: aaaaah ninjas.
[QUOTE=Marik Bentusi;50833392]So you can still for example gift CSGO during a sale to invite a buddy to play with you.[/QUOTE]
Actually you can't gift CS:GO [I]at all[/I] :v: Unless Steam was fucking with me during the summer sale.
Why even disable the gifting of these games if people could just buy it directly on a new account?
[QUOTE=Bokito;50833598]Why even disable the gifting of these games if people could just buy it directly on a new account?[/QUOTE]
To stop people stocking up on copies while it's on sale
Why doesn't Valve get a serious anti-cheat instead of trying to work around the idea that VAC sucks. There's no reason for this shit if their anti-cheat wasn't bad.
If they actually focused on anti-cheat they could actually have something decent, like Blizzard's.
[QUOTE=Bokito;50833598]Why even disable the gifting of these games if people could just buy it directly on a new account?[/QUOTE]
IIRC, you can only use a single payment source (credit card, paypal) on two accounts per month. Though this can be worked around using the wallet codes.
But as I understand, the main target is resellers, not cheaters. Resellers will buy a game on sale en masse, then sell cheaper than standard price the rest of the year. This discourages them from doing so for games with cheat protection, which naturally have a larger market as cheaters have to continually rebuy the game.
[editline]5th August 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=Zadrave;50833674]Why doesn't Valve get a serious anti-cheat instead of trying to work around the idea that VAC sucks. There's no reason for this shit if their anti-cheat wasn't bad.[/QUOTE]
And how do you propose they make it better? More invasive? Community would make a big stink about that. Make it guess if someone's hacking? Community already freaks out about false positives.
It's an arms race between two groups. One side is constantly trying to break in, the other is trying to stop it. As long as there is significant profit to be made with cheats, any anti-cheat will be fighting a losing battle.
[QUOTE=Zadrave;50833674]Why doesn't Valve get a serious anti-cheat instead of trying to work around the idea that VAC sucks. There's no reason for this shit if their anti-cheat wasn't bad.
If they actually focused on anti-cheat they could actually have something decent, like Blizzard's.[/QUOTE]
VAC cannot seriously improve without becoming more intrusive, which last time they tried too people had a fit.
Blizzards anticheat is far more intrusive
[QUOTE=Zadrave;50833674]Why doesn't Valve get a serious anti-cheat instead of trying to work around the idea that VAC sucks. There's no reason for this shit if their anti-cheat wasn't bad.
If they actually focused on anti-cheat they could actually have something decent, like Blizzard's.[/QUOTE]
VAC is a competent anti-cheat software, the problem is that Steam also has an entire community system tied to its store and they're not willing to go as far as to literally lock down VAC banned accounts from interacting with any other product or service that Steam offers, which is perfectly understandable on their end.
They are protecting the interests of their own games by removing more and more options for hackers to bypass the cheating system entirely with alt accounts and whatnot.
It's either deal with like fifteen games on the entirety of the steam catalog not being giftable or get no gifting system at all, pick your poison.
All these restrictions are just fucking over the consumer and doing more harm than good.
Like, every few months my friends and I decide to play on a bunch of fun, custom maps in CS 1.6. It's great playing with like 12 people you know and just fucking around. I usually buy like 3-4 spare copies of the game when it's on sale for $2.49 in order to let the people who don't own it join in whenever the time comes around.
I also do the same thing with 100% Orange Juice, a fucking casual board game. Guess I just can't store a copy or two to gift to new friends I meet now. It was always a great way to introduce new people into my group of friends.
This should not encompass every VAC protected game, only the more problematic ones such as CS:GO.
[QUOTE=Zaure;50834294]All these restrictions are just fucking over the consumer and doing more harm than good.
Like, every few months my friends and I decide to play on a bunch of fun, custom maps in CS 1.6. It's great playing with like 12 people you know and just fucking around. I usually buy like 3-4 spare copies of the game when it's on sale for $2.49 in order to let the people who don't own it join in whenever the time comes around.
I also do the same thing with 100% Orange Juice, a fucking casual board game. Guess I just can't store a copy or two to gift to new friends I meet now. It was always a great way to introduce new people into my group of friends.
This should not encompass every VAC protected game, only the more problematic ones such as CS:GO.[/QUOTE]
That's quite considerate of you, but you are one of the exceptions in this case. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the market for reselling games has gotten quite large, [I]especially[/I] for games that use VAC.
Cheating is an ever growing problem. Far more users are impacted by cheating than benefited by situations such as yours, so I'd call this a fair compromise.
[QUOTE=kaze4159;50833602]To stop people stocking up on copies while it's on sale[/QUOTE]
So, what stops them from making all the accounts during the sale? They were going to do it anyways, this is just annoying normal users than cheaters.
This will clearly stop cheaters, it's not like the cheaters can:
1. Buy a VPN (If they're stocking up on accounts anyways, this is not a big cut into their spending)
2. Go to Amazon, buy amazon gift codes, then make new Amazon accounts and apply the some of the gift codes to buy steam wallet cards.
3. Apply all the steam wallet cards to a variety of steam accounts and stock up on games, even buying a bunch of gifts for other steam accounts to use the remaining money if applicable.
For bonus points: Use VMware workstation for your cheating needs to further throw them off.
This is all assuming manual VAC bans are actually a thing. There's no way to prove that there is or isn't so it's always a better idea to just assume that they're gonna try to nail you with a bunch of manual VACs, hence the VPN and Amazon and things like that to prevent tracking.
Good job valve, that was insanely easy to bypass for cheaters while screwing over legitimate users.
[QUOTE=Trymos;50834644]This will clearly stop cheaters, it's not like the cheaters can:
1. Buy a VPN (If they're stocking up on accounts anyways, this is not a big cut into their spending)
2. Go to Amazon, buy amazon gift codes, then make new Amazon accounts and apply the some of the gift codes to buy steam wallet cards.
3. Apply all the steam wallet cards to a variety of steam accounts and stock up on games, even buying a bunch of gifts for other steam accounts to use the remaining money if applicable.
For bonus points: Use VMware workstation for your cheating needs to further throw them off.
This is all assuming manual VAC bans are actually a thing. There's no way to prove that there is or isn't so it's always a better idea to just assume that they're gonna try to nail you with a bunch of manual VACs, hence the VPN and Amazon and things like that to prevent tracking.
Good job valve, that was insanely easy to bypass for cheaters while screwing over legitimate users.[/QUOTE]
They should just give up and remove VAC altogether cause cheaters can bypass that too. What's the point if it screws over legitimate users with things like connection errors and false positives?
But really, here's how you'll be impacted:
You can't store VAC secured games in your inventory, they must be gifted immediately.
If someone gets VAC banned on a game you gifted to them, you won't be able to gift that game anymore.
At most this will result in an inconvenience for you, far from screwing you over. Unless you'd like to enlighten me on how it does?
On the flipside, this is a much larger inconvenience for cheaters and resellers: they have to jump through more hoops and limitations now. Say it's easy all you want, but it'll take a lot more actions and planning ahead for them to get what they want.
The key here is compromise. They explained their motivations pretty clearly:
[quote]We’ve taken these steps to ensure the integrity of the multi-player experience for those participating in online gaming communities. We understand that the restrictions on buying to inventory may be inconvenient for some legitimate users, but we believe that these steps will reduce the number of cheaters you’ll play against. And that’s important in having an online gaming experience that’s fair and enjoyable for everyone.[/quote]
[QUOTE=Blade Rx69;50834914]They should just give up and remove VAC altogether cause cheaters can bypass that too. What's the point if it screws over legitimate users with things like connection errors and false positives?
But really, here's how you'll be impacted:
You can't store VAC secured games in your inventory, they must be gifted immediately.
If someone gets VAC banned on a game you gifted to them, you won't be able to gift that game anymore.
At most this will result in an inconvenience for you, far from screwing you over. Unless you'd like to enlighten me on how it does?
On the flipside, this is a much larger inconvenience for cheaters and resellers: they have to jump through more hoops and limitations now. Say it's easy all you want, but it'll take a lot more actions and planning ahead for them to get what they want.
The key here is compromise. They explained their motivations pretty clearly:[/QUOTE]
If you really wanna go this route, there's a far, FAR easier solution considering that I've only heard of manual VAC bans twice.
You buy the steam wallet code from Amazon or whoever > Redeem it and buy the game on the accounts you want to stockpile.
At worst this forces the cheaters to make their steam accounts immediately instead of waiting until they need it. That solution before is if you're REALLY scared of them vac banning you.
Your analogy about how we remove VAC is an awful one because VACs shortcomings (such as the connection errors and extremely rare false positives) does not even compare to what it brings to the table: An exceptional anti-cheat that remained extremely effective until LMAOBOX and a variety of CSGO cheaters showed their faces.
Then you compare it to this: A system with many similar sized shortcomings (The inventory and gifting things) with a fraction of the benefits: A system that could be easily bypassed just by buying steam cards off of Amazon and making new Steam accounts. I wouldn't consider that a very large inconvenience.
If they officially implement manual VAC bans then due to their small company size, by the time they get to banning them it's probably already too late or have a far, FAR higher % of false positives.
What good does this fucking do? Oh no, I have to buy the game during sales on alternate accounts [I]before[/I] I get one banned.
It seems like between this, trading, gambling, and any other software-related issue, all Valve can offer is nonsensical solutions that do jack fucking shit aside from making it more of a pain in the ass for your average user.
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