Valve gives developers power to ban Steam users

“Game developers inform Valve when a disruptive player has been detected in their game, and Valve applies the game ban to the account. The game developer is solely responsible for the decision to apply a game ban. Valve only enforces the game ban as instructed by the game developer.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/valve-gives-developers-the-power-to-ban-steam-users/0148807?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mcvuk%2Fstream+%28MCV%3A+Home+Stream%29

Can they ban a player from a game, or ban the entire account with tons of games?

From the OP - game ban, so they can ban you from their game - not ban you from all of the games you own (only Valve can do that, I'd imagine). Well, I guess its a race to see how long DayZ has players, given the developer's fondness of banning people for all sorts of slights - real or imaginary. If I were a betting man, I'd say....30 days, perhaps a little less. :)

If a game ban means you can't play a game anymore then they should give you full refund otherwise it's highway robbery.

Nope. If you break the ToU they can ban you and they don't owe you anything.

The only thing I'm concerned about is that Steam's support is already almost non-existent and I don't think giving them something else to do is a good idea. I do believe that bans should be handled by the developer or anti-cheat program, and not Steam.

Well thankfully that's still the case. Your Steam account is just flagged by the developers. Steam/Valve themselves aren't doing anything other than giving developers more direct access to VAC and such.

Ah, I guess that's somewhat good news. Although I'm confused about the bans. Does it simply ban the player from playing the entire game, or just the online portion of it? The wording makes it sound like the former.

I think the banning rules are a travesty. If they decide that they don't like you for whatever reason, you're shit out of luck. Steam needs much better customer support.

At least I'm not really into MP...

Edit: Also, banning of entire accounts should be an almost impossible punishment, not that that's directly relevant to this.

The article is vague as hell but it sounds like it's pertaining to just the online. They never mention single-player, and it seems more to do with online player interaction. The idea is that developers don't have create their own way of flagging cheaters if their game is exclusively on Steam. They can just limit their access with Steam directly. For example, in the past, if you recorded a video of someone clearly cheating in Chivalry and sent it in to the developers to get them VAC banned, the developers would be unable to do anything unless VAC itself detected the cheats. Now they can just have them banned by issuing one to their Steam ID.

It's possible that this has something to do with Killing Floor 2. In KF2's EULA, Tripwire more or less states that they can ban you if you're being too disruptive, which means you can do something as little as trolling and get banned.

I just don't really understand how this is any different than the developers just banning the CD-Key from their master servers instead of the Steam account. I guess it saves the developers some effort if they don't want to implement these flagging systems themselves.

Guys its time to start pirating all the games you can. steam, or any of its cronies doesn't deserve any more money.

Wut.... just wut....

Meanwhile back in reality....

What happens when an unscrupulous developer bans someone for submitting an unflattering review? Not saying that will happen but it really wouldn't surprise me if it did.

That's exactly what I'm worried about. Who is going to police this and stop developers from abusing their powers?

It'd surprise me - they'd have to ban a lot of Steam users to make any sort of meaningful dent in Steam's review system...

Sounds like it would make for a silly conspiracy.

Just don't act like a fool in games you play on Steam and you'll be fine.

Let's just hope that developers crack down hard on cheaters, trolls, and griefers.

don't play games developed by clown developers. easy. you don't think that Valve wouldn't step in if it happens? you think a legit dev studio can afford to lose their reputation by giving random bans to players? think again.

but yeah, i don't see that any legit studio would EVER "abuse their powers". it's bad business. cheaters, on the other hand, deserve bans. actually, Valve should allow devs to send viruses to cheater accounts.

A good idea, Valve should start with there owns games, specifically Counterstrike.

I'm guessing anonymous reviews will see a rise.

Certain Steam moderators and steam developers (who have moderator level privileges) quite happily abuse the system, Valve does bugger-all. It's a good point, community features and games themselfs are two different things.

If i buy a game the game belongs to me. They can ban me from multiplayer if i cheat for a limited time that is reasonable.. But they have to proof that i cheat. Still doesn't allow them to make my entire game void even if i cheat.

Banning steam account with a entire library of games will result in huge lawsuits that valve will lose in europe in a hartbeat.

They can put whatever they want in there TOS at the end it's my country that decides what's gonna happen and not them.

And the moment valve doesn't agree with that, it's game over for them in europe.

I believe when you sign the terms of service, Valve can pretty much do whatever the **** they want.

As far as moderation goes - which includes developer, who have went off the rails several times -

Please note that Administrators/Moderators reserve the right to change/edit/delete/move/merge any content at any time if they feel it is inappropriate, abusive, or incorrectly categorized.

Do not do any of the following:

Openly argue with a moderator

It's deliberately vague, with an all out "go nuclear" option. Which has allowed multiple greenlight and early access hacks to abuse it happily.