Locked out of Steam/Civ V because of PayPal security

I made the mistake of buying some expansions for Civ 5 from Steam and using PayPal to pay for it. PayPal put a hold on the $12.48 payment for some reason, and Steam locked my account under the classification of fraud.

I pay over $100 for Deluxe Civ V from GameStop, and now I can't play it AT ALL because of a snafu with PayPal over an upgrade payment. How STUPID is that?

What if I lose network connectivity? No CIV 4 U? DUHHH!

I contacted PayPal and released the hold within hours of finding out about it and yet no acknowledgement from Steam a day later.

Steam even says you can't pay them back with another payment method, and if PayPal happened to reverse the charges your account is permanently toast! What kind of crap is that?

Simply put, I'm not a fan of Steam for a number of reasons, and this is one of them.

That being said, have you contacted Steam and Paypal? I would hope that Steam would be able to rectify this - Paypal can be a huge pain to deal with and pull some strange stuff on you, so if Steam allows you to use it to pay, I'd hope they'd have contingencies to deal with some of its oddities.

Also, losing network connectivity... You can set Steam to allow you to play while offline, but you need to go offline to do it. Bloody ******ed in my eyes, forcing a person to have online connectivity to play a single player game, but there it is. Might want to look into how that is done - I've got mine set to offline mode, but I've never tested it if actually lets me play offline. All the Steam nuts assure me it will, but I'm not convinced they're more than rabid fanboys who try and paint the service in as positive a light as possible. All I know is a bit over a year ago when I took a few Steam games on vacation with me and tried to play them at a cabin with no internet, I was unable to play any of my single player games.

Boy do I dislike this service.

Moderator Action: You can disagree with those that support Steam without calling them derogatory names.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

It does work offline (at least for me at least) I just disable the WiFi and have no problem.
I agree, there are a lot of reasons to be wary of buying from Steam (knock on wood haven't experienced anything myself) Installed it only for Civ5 and I don't even play it that much any more.

Just one more example of the danger inherent in exchanging your power.

There are a lot of things I like about Steam, including ease of access to new/old games. And prices are nice most of the time.

The problem is that you give away more and more of your power to a company who can restrict access to content you have bought and paid for, but only 'really' rented. There can come a time when that company decides to use this power in ways you don't like. I can imagine that as DRM's solidify themselves and weed out competition over the years, we could see eventual subscription fees, as one example. Charging per additional installation... more ads... et cetera ad infinitum. Once that ball starts rolling, it will never stop.

Whether or not this particular case is an abuse of power (it sounds like a simple misunderstanding), the fact that our power is lost is the important part. It's not good when everything you "rent" from a company is in their hands to deny or grant access... regardless of because you lost/can no longer afford your internet connection, or if they go out of business... or a misunderstanding like this.

I don't care for the arrangement with Steam either, but it seems there's nothing to do about it. I haven't bought any of the DLC's yet, but I would like to get a couple new Civs to try out. After reading this thread, if I do buy them, I'll give them a credit card number. Pay-Pal is another outfit I don't like dealing with unless I have to.

Solution, don't use Paypal. Seriously, Paypal sucks and does crap like this all the time.

PrinceScamp said:

Solution, don't use Paypal. Seriously, Paypal sucks and does crap like this all the time.

Click to expand...

Really? He informs you of this:

"I contacted PayPal and released the hold within hours of finding out about it and yet no acknowledgement from Steam a day later.

Steam even says you can't pay them back with another payment method, and if PayPal happened to reverse the charges your account is permanently toast! What kind of crap is that?"

And the only thing you can criticize is Paypal, and see *nothing* wrong with Steam whatsoever? Payments go on hold sometimes for legitimate reasons and it's not just paypal that does it. If Steam's reaction to this is to lock an account and accuse the owner of fraud, you really see nothing whatsoever wrong with that? I hope this guy finds some way to appease them, but I get the feeling that as long as Steam has people who will unconditionally support it and repeatedly shuffle any blame that might be directed towards it to other sources they really don't have much reason to bend for their customer base.

wayneb64 said:

Steam even says you can't pay them back with another payment method, and if PayPal happened to reverse the charges your account is permanently toast! What kind of crap is that?

Click to expand...

They do? Can you show us? Not the part about not paying them back with another method, but the part where they say your account is toast and nothing can be done about it. I kinda doubt Steam's policy actually says that if something happens completely beyond your control that gets your account closed for a non-legit reason and you're locked out of all the games you bought, too bad, we just don't give a damn. But if it does say that somewhere I'd like to be aware of it.

And keep talking to their costumer service, be firm about it. Don't be an ass, that probably won't get you far, but don't take a blow-off for an answer either.

Worst, Steam/Valve (the whole corporate structure along with it) gets punched out by a Banking takeover that demands immediate liquidation of all assets.
Online stuff gone within the hour.
Who do we call for instantaneous support, 2K?

Even worst, Steam gets bought by a new kid in town. Deal is off and (to re-use the excellent analogy used by builer680 above) the rental contract you signed on is no longer valid. You receive a mass-distributed eMail that recommends the following;

-- Go to this link to re-activate your brand new account with us. (( Site looks legit, you of all people - Paypal'ed & secur'ed - presume the News at 9 were spreading the truth; Steam collapsed! ))
-- Oh, have we mentioned that there is a Monthly fee of only 1.99$ since we need to maintain our servers too? (( Duh, what have i bought in 2010 from Firaxis? A negative loop into some automated access to [now, it seems] perpetual service fees... yep, i *DO* have a bank account, too! ))

Google away my friends, there are thousand such examples online already where Company X shuts the door and slams it on workers back on their way out.
It's just the tip of the Iceberg.

We're licensing a product DRM'ed to the bones for a reason... it's not owned property. It's leased for limited use.
A game. Not a coffee cup or the metal spoon to spin a liquid mix of milk, beans & sugar. All overtaxed twice in Canada.

Virtually theirs to keep - forever.
Paid in installments, located on your HDs, upgradable for a cost.
And sadly - they can slam the brakes, take the keys off your hands & get away with the Car on their way to your house to grab the PC and dump it in your trunk.
Back to the Future, plate spinning.

There i was, in the Best-Buy store, DVD boxset in right hand, Plastic rectangle in another... staring at the Activation Agreement -- thinking of not the risk but of accidental crooks by magical www_boleans virus'ed & waterwall'ed.

Yep, DVD or downloadable content. Show me the receipt.

Better yet (Steam)... Honor me the privilege of at least respecting the customers with money, such as the OP. Your device, not ours.

Message by Support Tech George on Wed, 23rd Feb 2011 5:33 pm
Hello,

We have recently received notification from PayPal that one of your recent Steam Purchases has been disputed. The Steam account has been locked while the dispute is being investigated by PayPal. It is important for you to contact PayPal or log in to your PayPal account and go to your “Resolution Center” to resolve this dispute.

If the dispute is closed and the funds are released back to Steam, the account will be reactivated. However, if PayPal closes the dispute case by “Reversing the Payment”, meaning they send the funds for the purchase back to you, the Steam account will remain locked and you will lose access to all of the games on the account.

There are no options to resolve a dispute once PayPal has closed the case, so we suggest that you contact them immediately at 888-221-1161.

You said you released the hold (I assume that means the money went to steam and wasn't reversed back to you), so they should reactivate your account. Get on them to do so ASAP. Again, you really have to be firm with costumer service to get things done sometimes.

I love steam so far and have had no problems with it, but I can't defend this. Even if your account is reactivated tomorrow it's still a headache that you shouldn't need to deal with.

That's unfortunate, but it's really more of a cautionary tale about paypal rather than steam. The horse has bolted in this case, but seriously, don't use paypal for anything you care about. If this experience wasn't enough, a few google searches will bring up a colossal amount of horror stories, and if you want other high profile examples theres the problem notch (minecraft creator) had when they froze his account, and of course the wikileaks situation.

They screw people over regularly, whether it's through awful customer service, being slow to respond to fraud, or just deciding to freeze legitimate accounts (withholding the funds) if they so wish. Take a moment to read through the terms of the 'service' they provide, it's pretty frightening.

AfterShafter said:

Really? He informs you of this:

And the only thing you can criticize is Paypal, and see *nothing* wrong with Steam whatsoever? Payments go on hold sometimes for legitimate reasons and it's not just paypal that does it. If Steam's reaction to this is to lock an account and accuse the owner of fraud, you really see nothing whatsoever wrong with that? I hope this guy finds some way to appease them, but I get the feeling that as long as Steam has people who will unconditionally support it and repeatedly shuffle any blame that might be directed towards it to other sources they really don't have much reason to bend for their customer base.

Click to expand...

What else could they possibly do? If someone is fraudulently purchasing games, of course they are going to freeze an account. Paypal made the accusation, not steam.

Think for a second. If this was attempted fraud the steam account would quite probably have been stolen as well, since most people are smart enough to not sh*t where they eat. The alternative youre advocating is that steam turns a blind eye to people having their accounts stolen, since rejected (potentially fraudulent) tractions are a clear warning flag. And for the record, I know many people who have lost accounts either through malware stealing logins, or more often being tricked into using a link from a compromised steam buddy so it *does* happen. And guess what, steam support got those accounts back for them.

If you want to avoid problems like this in the future remove the intermediary, especially if its a company as notorious as paypal.

Feel free to dislike steam, but you're talking utter nonsense.

spider1 said:

I don't care for the arrangement with Steam either, but it seems there's nothing to do about it. I haven't bought any of the DLC's yet, but I would like to get a couple new Civs to try out. After reading this thread, if I do buy them, I'll give them a credit card number. Pay-Pal is another outfit I don't like dealing with unless I have to.

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Very much so. I don't go near PayPal. Of course, I *work for* a credit card company, so I know the rules, and the CC protects me better than PayPal.

Collic said:

That's unfortunate, but it's really more of a cautionary tale about paypal rather than steam. The horse has bolted in this case, but seriously, don't use paypal for anything you care about. If this experience wasn't enough, a few google searches will bring up a colossal amount of horror stories, and if you want other high profile examples theres the problem notch (minecraft creator) had when they froze his account, and of course the wikileaks situation.

They screw people over regularly, whether it's through awful customer service, being slow to respond to fraud, or just deciding to freeze legitimate accounts (withholding the funds) if they so wish. Take a moment to read through the terms of the 'service' they provide, it's pretty frightening.



What else could they possibly do? If someone is fraudulently purchasing games, of course they are going to freeze an account. Paypal made the accusation, not steam.

Think for a second. If this was attempted fraud the steam account would quite probably have been stolen as well, since most people are smart enough to not sh*t where they eat. The alternative youre advocating is that steam turns a blind eye to people having their accounts stolen, since rejected (potentially fraudulent) tractions are a clear warning flag. And for the record, I know many people who have lost accounts either through malware stealing logins, or more often being tricked into using a link from a compromised steam buddy so it *does* happen. And guess what, steam support got those accounts back for them.

If you want to avoid problems like this in the future remove the intermediary, especially if its a company as notorious as paypal.

Feel free to dislike steam, but you're talking utter nonsense.

Click to expand...

This.

When Pay-Pal froze the account, that is the same as "Card Declined" when making a purchase. The reason your account is frozen is because you made the purchase, and you have the game... and you didn't pay for it. They just don't have any other way to protect the property, other than freeze your account.

That said, this situation isn't a Steam-Only occurrence. Regardless of where you go, if you try to make a purchase and your card is declined... you don't get the product. I don't see how this is the store's fault.

I really can't believe that Steams policy is legal in the US.

Windsor said:

I really can't believe that Steams policy is legal in the US.

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If your card gets declined paying for <name your MMO> they'll freeze your account, too.

If you don't pay up, you don't get the game. End of story.

Again, kids, don't use Paypal. It's bad.

As far as 'legal'...you agreed to it by using Steam, or playing WoW, or whatever. You could have said 'no' and not gone for the agreement at all. Your choice.

The law for the most part doesn't try to save you from yourself. It does sometimes, but more often than not, it doesn't. If you agree to it, and the agreement is kept in good faith by the company, then it's your problem if you don't keep up yours.

Collic said:

What else could they possibly do? If someone is fraudulently purchasing games, of course they are going to freeze an account. Paypal made the accusation, not steam.

Think for a second. If this was attempted fraud the steam account would quite probably have been stolen as well, since most people are smart enough to not sh*t where they eat. The alternative youre advocating is that steam turns a blind eye to people having their accounts stolen, since rejected (potentially fraudulent) tractions are a clear warning flag. And for the record, I know many people who have lost accounts either through malware stealing logins, or more often being tricked into using a link from a compromised steam buddy so it *does* happen. And guess what, steam support got those accounts back for them.

If you want to avoid problems like this in the future remove the intermediary, especially if its a company as notorious as paypal.

Feel free to dislike steam, but you're talking utter nonsense.

Click to expand...

First off, if you're going to tell someone to "think for a second," at least take a minute to read the original poster's post. Paypal made the acccusation, not Steam, you say?

"PayPal put a hold on the $12.48 payment for some reason, and Steam locked my account under the classification of fraud.[/B]"

Do you get that? STEAM locked his account under the accusation of Fraud. Not Paypal, Steam. That you start out with an accusation that I'm not getting my facts straight while it's you that's making a blatant factual error doesn't help your case much.

Now to go on, I'm not sure you know what's going on here. This guy payed for something with Paypal, Paypal stopped it, Steam froze his account. Ok, reasonable enough - stuff like this happens. Paypal screwed up, Steam reacted in a justified manner, nothing unbecoming up until this point.

It's after this where it's Steam that is completely letting this poor bloke down. He then contacted Paypal, and he contacted Steam and here are their respective reactions. For Paypal:

"I contacted PayPal and released the hold within hours of finding out about it"

Great. He contacts them, they fix it. Steam's response:

"We have recently received notification from PayPal that one of your recent Steam Purchases has been disputed. The Steam account has been locked while the dispute is being investigated by PayPal. It is important for you to contact PayPal or log in to your PayPal account and go to your &#8220;Resolution Center&#8221; to resolve this dispute.

If the dispute is closed and the funds are released back to Steam, the account will be reactivated. However, if PayPal closes the dispute case by &#8220;Reversing the Payment&#8221;, meaning they send the funds for the purchase back to you, the Steam account will remain locked and you will lose access to all of the games on the account.

There are no options to resolve a dispute once PayPal has closed the case, so we suggest that you contact them immediately at 888-221-1161."

The problem is here, in the event that the payment being returned to him, his Steam account is shot. The latter is a perfectly reasonable response by Paypal - payment is returned to him. Maybe there was some issue with the transfer, whatever - but if payment is returned to him, Steam essentially closes the account on him. No recourse according to the tech support guy. Payment being returned to the purchaser is a perfectly reasonable response on the part of Paypal - but Steam's response?

This is his account with at least $100 dollars worth of games on it being closed because a payment of $12 something didn't go through. Even if the middle-man that is running the payment exonerates him but gives him the money back rather than completing the payment, Steam drops the hammer on him. To quote the Steam tech support fellow, "There are no options to resolve a dispute once PayPal has closed the case." This kind of absolute response is a gross overreaction. Could it be fraud? Sure, and Steam should be wary of it - but doesn't the account owner deserve the right to prove that it's not fraud? According to Steam, no. If Paypal reacts quite reasonably by returning the money to him and closing the case, Steam won't even give this guy a chance to prove he's not doing anything shady.

You ask what could they possibly do? Isn't that painfully obvious? Password re-initilization through e-mail or, heck, if it really is a very far reaching compromise of the user's accounts, I had a similar issue with Blizzard years ago and they actually had me fax official documents proving my identity to resolve the account dispute. THAT is what a company should do when they have something that represents significant time/resources on the line. That Steam just says "Sorry, matter is closed" is something I'm amazed you people are defending. There are options, with the faxing of official documents being the most extreme, but those options SHOULD be available to the user. The fact that Steam isn't giving this guy the chance to prove it's not fraud - how can you honestly defend that?

Paypal can be problematic, I think we all agree on that. But Paypal seems to have worked through the issue quickly and, quite frankly, fairly. It ain't Paypal that is reacting in an absolute fashion here. You're concerned about fraud? Fine - then don't you think that Steam should give this customer a chance to prove he's NOT committing fraud? THAT is the issue. And please, don't accuse me of getting my facts incorrect when you're just not reading the OP very well.

To be fair though, this issue was just presented. Steam may resolve it in a fair manner. But if what that tech guy said is true, I really can't believe you people are defending this type of absolute account ban over something that's actually quite a common issue - and not just for paypal.

Ultimately, though Zyxpsilon's posting tends to give me a bit of a headache (no offense to him, he seems like a brilliant guy - his posting is just much more colourful than the norm around forums), he's hit the nail on the head for an issue which I've long commented concerning Steam and other similar services. It's all good and fine to "buy" things through it, but our continued ability to use these items isn't just contingent on the company in question's good will and willingness to let us use the items without drastically changing the arrangement, but it's also dependent on the company staying in business or not radically restructing. In some of our lifetimes, we've seen superpowers fall, we've seen cornerstone businesses fail, seemingly successful business models peter out in the face of new technology or upstart rivals who get an edge. The idea that the games, movies, ebooks, whatever, that we buy from these companies are really as securely ours as many like to paint it - pure fantasy. A few big backroom deals, a technology like what Onlive has behind it sweeping the industry, whatever - and we could see all of this dry up mighty fast. Ten, twenty years from now, there's a reasonable chance Steam won't be around any more. More likely it will, but it's quite possible - it's out of my hands. Ten twenty years from now, my Civ IV discs will still work just dandy if I take good care of them.

Steam is a good service for a lot of reasons, and I use it, Amazon's Kindle, and some online music services which are precariously tied to format, with some frequency. But a lot of you just seem oblivious to the perils of these things, and far too willing to jump to the defense of these services. They are good, have huge perks, but they aren't perfect - hold them accountable for their shortcomings and don't whitewash them. We'll all be better for it.

I would have less of a problem with this kind of thing if buying through Steam was one option among many. Then you could take on steam as something of an educated risk.

But if you buy a box copy, you still have to activate through steam. I can't imagine how angry I'd be if I tried to buy DLC through steam, there was a payment problem, and the game I bought from my local store suddenly stopped working forever. Cancel the DLC activation, whatever, but losing a license bought from a 3rd party? That would be a deal breaker.

Aftershafter got some good points and I agree.

I've used Paypal for quite a while, and there was only one hiccup which was solved with an email and confirmation of my account, towards the other company. It was fixed within the same day.

But if Steam is using a different approach as in the case above, I would be worried about Steam, and not paypal.

Customer service was once the biggest thrill in companies, real life or digital. I wonder why Steam would find it more prosperous to make it different, and more difficult for their customers to get around?

But Steam for me so far has been pretty harmless, except the very annoying downloading the WHOLE FRIGGING GAME every time it's patched up.

Tokahfang said:

I would have less of a problem with this kind of thing if buying through Steam was one option among many. Then you could take on steam as something of an educated risk.

But if you buy a box copy, you still have to activate through steam. I can't imagine how angry I'd be if I tried to buy DLC through steam, there was a payment problem, and the game I bought from my local store suddenly stopped working forever. Cancel the DLC activation, whatever, but losing a license bought from a 3rd party? That would be a deal breaker.

Click to expand...

I buy my games in box as well, and it is SO wrong that you can't play without some sort of registration. There should be a key that allows you to play this game on a computer offline, and maybe never reap the "awards" from Steam on this game.

Or something.