Not that I really care but that was a smart and much needed restriction. +1 to Steam.

Yeah, it's a good move. As Steam has quite a bit of users, there's always scammers around. And 5 bucks is pretty reasonable amount of purchase if you want the full feature access. GOG would do well to have something similar really, considering the spam bots that at times bombard the forums.

Years (ten+) since had a trial account on Battlenet, but I know you couldn`t receive/send mail, carry over one gold, join/create guilds (I think). Don`t think you could whisper anyone either, but not sure.


P.S. Portal has a free version!? What/where/when?

It's been there for at least past few months, afaik.

Probably a wise move by Valve. The irony here is all of those features are thins I'm not interested in, so I'd be just fine if I never spent any money on Steam. Of course, that ship has long since sailed, so it's moot anyway.

I think its fair, I still have to click an anti bot icon to post here, but I don't mind because I understand why it's there, a "spend threshold" would be nice here imo..

Thank god at last , i must have blocked over 100 spam bots invites by now all of them had zero games , zero levels , private profiles.

Yeah went on steam a week ago and had 177 invites.... all private profiles LOL not going on my steam account in 1 year did a number to my inbox lol thank god steam pulled this

have steam since 2011, never had this problem. just set your profile & everything to privat.

Do you have your Inventory public?
That`ll get all the nabs trying to add/con you.
I`ve only had two randomers try to add me, just ignored them :)

thats what i do
i have zero interest in the social side fo steam i just want to play the fucking games i bought\rented and thats all

whats your steam name, i want to to send you some friend requests :)

I was thinking phone verification but some weirdo was complaining about how people have access to gaming PCs + internet + AAA titles but not to cheap phones. SMS would probably be really big for any retailer than accepts it.

So now when I get another code for bad rats, I can't just start a new steam account to get the cards out with out paying $5? That seems.. a tad harsh?

well, sacrifices for the good of progress