Valve gives game developers power to issue Steam bans
Steam bans can now be requested by a particular game developer for Valve to enforce.
Valve has been handing out Steam bans for years now, but the company has revealed it will now allow game developers to hand out bans with Valve enforcing their request.
The Steam Community describes what a developer-based game ban will entail. “In order to ensure the best possible online multiplayer experience, Valve allows developers to implement their own systems that detect and permanently ban any disruptive players, such as those using cheats,” the page says.
Valve wants no part of a Steam user’s rage as it states “the game developer is solely responsible for the decision to apply a game ban. Valve only enforces the game ban as instructed by the game developer.” In other words, a Steam user is going to have to bug the game developer that requested said ban, although if they probably have a good reason why that particular player should no longer play their game.
We have always felt cheaters should never prosper, so passing the buck to game developers could turn out to be a good thing as they will most likely be more on top of its community and its trouble makers. There are some games whose online multiplayer modes are completely unplayable due to cheaters, so having the game developers instructing Valve to do away with them will hopefully finally level the playing ground.
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Daniel Perez posted a new article, Valve gives game developers power to issue Steam bans
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Hello,
Why should this only apply to multiplayer or even to that particular game? IMHO, any game developer should have the power to ban a single user, at their own discretion, for EVERY game, and single player as well as multiplayer. and there should be NO recourse for any banned user.
Using Steam is a privilege, not a right, and if a user has nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about.
Let a user beg a developer for "forgiveness", and if the developer wants the user to "pay up", then so be it.-
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Seriously, trolling over.
I think this could be a good idea so long as there IS recourse for the player, and actions that could be taken towards developers, of ANY size, who try to ban players without a good reason.
Yes, like all of you, I HATE cheaters ruining games, and it's not always possible for Valve to tell if someone is cheating. The developers could know when Valve may not.
But the individual user should be notified when this ban takes place, and for what game and reason, and have the opportunity to respond. Banning someone for a forum post, for example, should be an absolute no-no (without a good reason), and this should only be for that ONE game, only for multiplayer, and only for the protected servers, and could include timed bans as a warning. Maybe something the user is doing might look like cheating when it's not, or there could be situations where someone hijacks an account and tells the original owner if they go to Steam for help they will get all their multiplayer games banned, which I have heard account hijackers like doing. In that case, the original user should be able to go to Steam and get their account suspended until they get it back, with any bans that result immediately removed.
But one thing needs to happen. Steam needs much, much better user support, including phone support and live chat support. I am sick and tired of sending emails for support for something completely different, only to be told to "reinstall Steam". I've sent support emails to tell Valve that parts of Steam were down, backed up by external websites on other computers that verify this, only to be told to "reinstall steam". Also, Valve needs to add more servers to Steam. Parts of Steam are still very slow, such as the Steam store or the profile page.
Hope this helps.
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This is something developers have always had the power to do if they were using their own multiplayer authentication, but I guess not if they were using Steamworks for multiplayer. So this is not really anything new - just Valve giving developers more control over their own games (and their own games alone)
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