A huge number ofSteamuser accounts were recently restricted simply for giving a thumbs up to a particular game review. Steam is more than just a digital storefront where people go to buy video games. It’s a hub for all kinds of activities, including writing reviews, chatting with likeminded people in the forums, sharing how-to guides, and evengifting Steam games to friends.
In 2013, the store began to allow people to write reviews about the games they’d purchased, and readers could then vote on whether they found the review helpful or not. Those deemed funny could receive a special nod, and people could even give a variety of awards for a particularly useful or well-written review. The system is also regularly used by some people to express their discontent byreview bombing games on Steam.
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Recently, however, upvoting a review proved to be a bad thing, which many users discovered the hard way. A Steam user named FREEDOMS117 had written a negative review for Toylogic’sfree-to-play multiplayer gameWarlander,explaining the problems with the developer’s use of Sentry Anti-Cheat, how it continued running in the background even after exiting the game, and that it left remnants behind after being uninstalled. Along with receiving hundreds of awards, FREEDOMS117’s review garnered 2,438 upvotes and earned a ranking as Most Helpful.
However, a moderator decided that FREEDOMS117’s review violatedSteam’s terms of service, resulting in its text being hidden and the user’s account being restricted for 30 days. This removed their ability to write further reviews, vote on them, or post on the Steam community forums. Additionally, everybody who’d upvoted FREEDOMS117’s review also had their accounts limited and found themselves unable to vote on any reviews for 30 days. Many received a message stating that this restriction was being doled out simply for “[upvoting] a user review that was banned for attempting to scam users or other violations of Steam’s Rules & Guidelines.”
The problem is that FREEDOMS117’s review did nothing of the sort, and thankfully, the situation has since been corrected. The moderator who carried out the ban had apparently assumed that the review was providing guidance on how to circumvent theanti-piracy software. It was also deemed to be potentially dangerous to other people because it outlined how the user had edited their registry to completely remove the game from their system.
Steam has since lifted all restrictions from FREEDOMS117 and the other affected users, stating that the review might nevertheless be better suited to posting as a guide. Furthermore, Steam’s response to FREEDOMS117 noted that the company would be following up with developer Toylogic about the issues detailed in the review. The game’s publisher Plaion responded by clarifying that Sentry Anti-Cheat did not actually remain running after shutdown, but rather a bug left the software’s icon displayed in the system tray.
