Steam limits functionality of users that do not spend money

Seems legit. Am I to assume this $5 is a one time thing?

 

I don't think so ! Until now , if you wanted to sell some items or something you had to do a buy of minimum 2 euro a year or something like this. I usually don't like spending and this kind of affects me ! But it may be a good feature as from january this year I had all kind of ppl add me to steam and try to " SELL " me some stupid thing

 

I never heard about spending 2 euro a year or something like that. If that's the case, I've got that covered easily.
But the change raises a question mark in my head. In order to trade you needed to add money to your steam wallet anyway. The minimum amount you can add is 5 EUR. Not sure what's up with this rule.

 

Got 27 Euros in my Wallet from a Refund, i'm good.

 

I am sure it just adds up the games/wallet in the account and if its more than $5 you are good to go. Even if you have not bought a game in years.

I do wonder what they will limit though, i could not find it in the text.

 

I'm very much ok with this.

Also the steam page you linked to doesn't seem to exist.

edit, got it https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3330-IAGK-7663#

more details

 

Does this take into account all past purchases?

 

"Each Steam purchase total will be tracked in USD. If your Steam store's currency isn't in USD, it will be tracked and converted to USD automatically using daily exchange rates."

Wait, so if I purchase the equivalent of $5 one day in my local currency and tomorrow the exchange rate plummets then I'll have to pay more because the money I had paid in my local currency isn't worth $5 anymore? or will Steam consider that my purchase criteria was met once and will flag my account as good to go?

I appreciate this solution as something against phishing but

 

You don't use Steam for games?

 

While it is OK, it sux too.
Time to time we want to get friend quickly to steam for playing some F2P game which means they do not need to purchase anything as long as one of us give him gift of some cheap game.

Without them having one paid game, their account are in limited mode (nothing new). And they can't do some friends stuff/multi voice chat/...

I hope that this limit works only for new accounts and not retrospectively since I am pretty sure some of gifts I handed out were like $1.5~2.5 (Skyrim/killing floor/terraria/...).

 

Great,now EA also sees another way of making money with Origin.

 

$5 is not enough to deter scammers and fraudsters, especially how much money they can make. It should be at least $50.

 

I do not like this - I only have F2P games in my steam and do not spend any money on them. Will I now be limited because of that...

 

Seems reasonable. In the end Steam is a business for Valve, so it makes sense paying customers are who they prioritise, especially if among the non-paying ones lurk criminals. This is no different from forums often limiting rights until a user has 5 posts or something, in order to curb spambots.

 

Of course it does. I can't see this affecting hardly anyone negatively, to be honest.

 

Most likely not, since the most people looking to have odd profiles have got 1000 games, hardly any playtime with them, and lots of items they sell / trade. I always wonder if it's a 'gold sink' for those nasty credit card fraud hackers.

 

Steam is just preparing you all for the enevatible subscrition fee it will force on everyone.

 

What profiles are those?

I get CS:GO/DOTA 2 scammers all the time. They often have retarded account names with zero games and barely any items. You can tell that these people generate probably hundreds of accounts a day. By forcing them to pay at least $5 it will cut down on it majorly. Honestly I think charging money for lots of things fixes issues. CSGO for example, every time the game is on sale for $5 the number of cheaters for the next 2 months is unbearable. People pay $20 for 4 games and cheat for a few weeks on each account before it gets banned. Makes me wish CSGO was like $100.

Anyway, I think the $5 idea is a good one.