Jeff’s account for the gaming platform Steam has been disabled, locking him out of Team Fortress 2 and other games he’s purchased. When he asked why, Steam support was tight-lipped, saying only that he was accused of “scamming or hijacking another user’s account,” refusing to elaborate or let Jeff make his case.

Hello, I have had a horrible experience with Steams (Valve) customer service.

On March 10th my Steam account was banned with no reason given to me.

Over the course of this month I have been messaging them back ASAP

attempting to get my wrongfully disabled account back. I have spent

$100’s of dollars on games on Steam, so it was a little shocking to

see that my account was disabled with no reason given.

After 6 Days of waiting they got back to me telling me that my account

was disabled due to an activity in Team Fortress 2, which is a game

owned by Valve that I played on Steam. This still wasn’t a very

specific answer. So I took it upon myself to try to help them

understand that I haven’t broken any rules on Steam.

After responding to their message on March 16th (15 minutes after I

received it), I got word from them almost a week later. Seeing as I

have put $200 – $300 into this account which I have had for maybe 4

months I was pretty upset that I was being shown the door without an

explanation. So once again I asked them to specify why my account was

disabled.

They responded the 22nd, 6 days after their previous response. And

they got a little bit more specific but I still wasn’t sure what they

were accusing me of other then “scamming or hijacking another user’s

account”. Seeing as I have been active in trading items on Team

Fortress 2 and I had heard many stories of Valve wrongly banning Steam

users who traded (unknown to the user) keys or items that were

purchased with a stolen credit card, I explained that I thought this

may be the case. Seeing as I have never attempted to log onto another

Steam users account I realized that well, I’m not sure where they got

the idea I was trying to hijack someones account. I asked them to

check my IP address and see if my change of location was part of the

reason my account was disabled. I was on a trip across the country

when I found out my account was disabled.

After I responded to them, letting them know that I wasn’t guilty for

this and giving them as much information about my situation as I could

possibly think of, I said that I would like to be shown evidence or

informed about the situation that they disabled me over so I may clear

my name. They simply responded with: “Hello Jeff,

The issue is not for discussion or debate. The account will not be

reactivated. Thank you for contacting Steam Support.”

As you can imagine this left me a little confused because I was under

the impression Steam Support was supposed to offer me support or

attempt to help me. Seeing as I had just been ripped off for a few

hundred dollars I was a little frustrated as you could imagine. And

now after having the so called Steam “Support” refuse to help me, I am

a little confused. I am a little confused about why my Steam account

was wrongly disabled, why they will not tell me what the incident I

was disabled over was, why they aren’t trying to help me get my

account back, and why they generally aren’t interested in helping a

customer who was given them $100’s of dollars over the past couple

months.

TL:DR: Steam disables my account without giving me a reason. When I

ask why I was disabled they refused to tell me and state that this is

not for discussion. I’m in awe of how they treat their customers who

have spent $100’s on their products. I end up being a little

frustrated after Steam Support refuses to offer me support.

I really hope you find this all of interest and are interested in

spreading the word. I hope to get my account back from Steam but I

don’t have much hope anymore. If this is published then I feel I may

actually have a chance. I also don’t want other people to go through

what I have and hope that Steam realizes that with 25 Million users,

having about 4 people handling support isn’t quite enough. I have

included a PDF of this whole event and I’m more then happy to send any

additional information you’d like.