Valve has restricted access to some of the possibilities offered by its service in order to fight against fraudulent users, phishing and spammers. Some of these restrictions are imposed in popular Steam activities, such as sending friend invites to new users, voting on Greenlight and getting trading card. However, users get back the options after spending at least $5.00 USD within the Steam store. The announcement was made through their support page after a new steam update.
Users who do not spend the money will be locked at steam level 0 account along with other restrictions. Valve explains the move, “Malicious users often operate in the community on accounts which have not spent any money, reducing the individual risk of performing the actions they do. One of the best pieces of information we can compare between regular users and malicious users are their spending habits as typically the accounts being used have no investment in their longevity.“ You get all the options back if you spend just $5 on Steam Store (buying CDs Keys and receiving gifts do not meet these criteria).
Users are mostly divided on this change as people who are invested primarily in PC gaming and have long standing Steam account see this as a good change. Since fake accounts on the platform have long been a nuance with level 0 account sending tons of friends requests spamming promotions or trying to steal user info. It is important to note that the scammers specifically target high level / long term accounts as there is much more to steal from there.
Since the money has to be spent within Steam those who primarily have a Steam account to play free-to-play titles or activate keys bought from other retailers or bundles see this as a bad move. Especially since it will also stop you from earning Steam trading cards and selling them on the market. As a limited user, your account is restricted from adding friends. However, you can still accept friend invites from other non-limited users. This also affects a large number of players who focus on free-to-play titles like Dota 2 or console gamers who have a Steam account to catch up with PC gaming friends. The update however does not limited users from adding friends. Limited users can still accept friend invites from other standard accounts.
If you want to make money on Steam the genuine way, check out our guide about ‘Making money from Steam trading cards’.
Here is the complete list of things that are now unavailable “Limited” users:
- Sending friend invites
- Opening group chat
- Voting on Greenlight, Steam Reviews and Workshop items
- Participating in the Steam Market
- Posting frequently in the Steam Discussions
- Gaining Steam Profile Levels (Locked to level 0) and Trading Cards
- Submitting content on the Steam Workshop
- Posting in an item’s Steam Workshop Discussions
- Accessing the Steam Web API
- Using browser and mobile chat
Now as per the post you can also add the amount to your Steam wallet and then use that to make game purchase. For example, you can add $5 to your Steam wallet and get your account upgraded to standard user and use the said amount to buy a game worth $4.99. You can make use of this page which lists the best rated games within $5.
