Probably because these people understand why it's being done.
Think I've read you can simply log out and still use it (or use another browser that isn't logged in).

That said, buying from a regional store that didn't match the region you were in hasn't been possible for a long time as far as I know, unless you're using a VPN. In which case, there really isn't an issue there to begin with since with the VPN you'd see the apropriate regional store.

This means that instead of any other means of verification, they decided you have to spend money to prove yourself you're not a bot?

what other means would you have suggested?

because that is such a bad thing...

I have a steam account for years with many games (and even played some multiplayer sometimes) and never had any issues with bots, invites, etc. Anti-social rules! :o)

I just got an invite from a lvl0 bot... I guess it's not working as well as intended.
Conspiracy theory: it's all an excuse to force a couple million F2P players to spend 5 bucks on the store and make a load of easy cash.

every private profile shows as lvl 0 btw, if they were truly level 0 they couldn't send anything at all, needed at least 1 or above for that before.

A private profile could be level 100+ and still show as 0.

$5 is a pretty low threshold and will get one a fair number of deep-discount games. Doesn't seem to be an onerous requirement.

Oh, thanks for the tip. :)

I got so many lvl 0 invites spamming me with links I started assuming all lvl 0's were bots. I'll pay closer attention to that next time. :)

Not that I care, but it does sound like a good idea.

Well for me, this is utter bull shit, i do buy games from steam(only for some that i desperately wants to play), but never on steam directly since they dont take paypal, and i'm not willing buy directly using CC even if i can.

That's pretty much why i choose GoG over steam and of course due to DRM free does not make me need to login to play my games.

Honestly, normally I'd recommend ignoring every private profile that tries to invite you unless you're expecting an invite. But then again, people on the GOG forums seem particularly prone to wanting their profiles to be private so that recommendation isn't quite as apt here.

Why do you care then? If you choose GOG, then you clearly don't care about profile levels, trading cards, or any of the other stuff a restricted Steam account doesn't have access to, because let's face it, GOG doesn't have any of these features. You can still play the games, which is, I imagine, what you have a Steam account for. So how does this new decision affect you in any way?

Steam doesn't take Paypal? News to me since I always pay with Paypal.