Absurd Minds

Ok, half of me feels naive and foolish, the other half is pissed off and outraged.

I had emailed Steam Support a few days ago asking them how I go about withdrawing funds from my Steam Wallet. They just replied telling me that withdrawals are not possible and steam wallet funds are non-refundable and non-transferable. Are you kidding me?

As many of you know, I'm new to Steam. Seeing that you had a "wallet" which you could deposit funds to and then buy and sell items from the marketplace, made me believe it was just like a stock market account, paypal account, online poker account, and/or any number of other accounts where you can deposit and withdraw money freely as necessary. Even the exact verbiage "deposit funds" supports this logical assumption that you are transferring money into an online account, not purchasing a virtual product.

Apparently I made the huge mistake of making liberal deposits to my Steam Wallet thinking that I could buy and use skins for as long as I wanted to and if I at any point decided to, I could simply sell the skins on the market and cash out. Furthermore, I had the intentions to buy skins at good deals when I found them and resell them later for a profit with the long term intention of using these profits to fund my skins collection and eventually pay myself back my initial deposit/investment. Now I'm rather frustrated to say the least to find out that money is forever gone.

I'd like your opinions on this matter please. So if a player had an inventory of skins on Steam worth thousands of dollars, and then one day his computer blew up and he could no longer play, he is just left with nothing? No value? Under these rules, when you sell something on the market, it shouldn't tell you that you are selling it for $5.00, because it's not a REAL $5.00, it's only a "Steam credit" for a $5.00 equivalent.

Why don't they just tell you that you are purchasing Steam Points rather than depositing funds to a wallet? Then have the market buy/sell in Steam Points since this would be much more appropriate and much less misleading than their current system.

Thoughts?

Because then it wouldn't be so easy for people to "deposit" money into their steam account

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Honey Badgers have very tough skin. The skin is very thick and rubbery, which is almost impervious to arrow and spears. Even a blow from machete can't scratch the skin. The skin protects them from bites.

I wonder what would happen of steam randomly stopped working and the devs couldn't fix it. Everyone's money would go to waste

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Since plastic is made from petroleum and petroleum comes from dinosaurs, then that means plastic dinosaurs are made from real dinosaurs

It most definitely would go to waste. The eula says they can stop providing us our games at any point. Not that they will considering how big they are.

I was under the same impression at first jabberwock. I wanted to take that money and use it in real life. Apparently, its only virtual dollars. So that money is linked to your account wherever you go forever.

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I'm so official, like a dealer with a pistol or referee with a whistle.

Yeah, I think the team wallet is so shady. The fact that you can only deposit money in increments of $5.00 even if you only need to buy something that is $0.99, the fact that you can't get any money out of it even if you sell your objects... it's clearly the single biggest money grab that Valve has. But it's also the only way to buy things in Steam.

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They make LOTS of money from the market just with the 15% tax plus 5.00$ minimum

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#FieryDLT

I'm not disagreeing with you, but from a business perspective they basically lose money on any transaction near the $.8-$1 range, so it makes no sense to penalize themselves for this service. That's why they will not allow anything under $5.

It's a smart move to make money for valve but also pisses of the community a bit...but what do they care if they're making money?

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Since plastic is made from petroleum and petroleum comes from dinosaurs, then that means plastic dinosaurs are made from real dinosaurs

Playing Devil's Advocate here,

If companies were in it to make customers happy all of the time, then there would be no company. That's why they enforce rules on their transactions and they decide what you can/can't do.

There are limits to this sort of thing however. For instance, Valve can put taxes on community items in the market. It helps them keep the Steam Community Marketplace up. One thing they won't do however is take 99% of the profits and the other 1% goes back to the seller. (they can, but I don't think it would be the smartest idea...) It's just bad business if they do.

When you purchase a game in a box fully complete with disc, it becomes your property. The code is still theirs of course but the property is yours. When you buy a game of Steam, you do not own shit. You are buying a service from them and they can take it away whenever they want. If you own a physical copy, they cannot enter your house and take the game disc with them.

If Valve went bankrupt (Theoretically) and shut down Steam, they would not have to refund you for all of the games you bought. If they did, then shit, wheres the money going to come from? Thin air?


Whenever somebody says it's a bad move because it hurts the fan-base or community, you have to think from the other side. Sometimes a company has to say "Screw the fan-base" because it might just be a lose-lose situation for them in the end. Society likes to remember the bad things rather than the good things. Just look at Greenlight. Everytime I hear something about Greenlight recently it's about how many shit games came from it (Castleminer Z, 7 Days to Die, Towns, Guise of the Wolf and Guncraft) rather than the good games (Papers, Please, Risk of Rain, Kentucky Route Zero, Bleed and The Stanley Parable).

What I'm saying is, look at it from both sides before complaning. (Sorry about the shitty rant, it's late at night and I should be going to bed)

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i forgot to put a signature when i first joined

so this is my signature now

Lol. What is the correct way to use commas in parentheses if a word already uses a comma

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Since plastic is made from petroleum and petroleum comes from dinosaurs, then that means plastic dinosaurs are made from real dinosaurs

What? Comma's don't have special rules just because they are in parentheses. There's no "correct way" to use a comma because there are many correct ways.

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Honey Badgers have very tough skin. The skin is very thick and rubbery, which is almost impervious to arrow and spears. Even a blow from machete can't scratch the skin. The skin protects them from bites.

No, in sticklys posts he said "(papers, please, risk of rain etc.)

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Since plastic is made from petroleum and petroleum comes from dinosaurs, then that means plastic dinosaurs are made from real dinosaurs

He should have said "papers, please; risk of rain;..." If you have a list that also includes commas, you need to use semi colons to seperate your list entries.

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Of course, a company must consider making money and not only making customers happy. It is a balancing act, you can't take too much in profits and piss everyone off, or you'll be out of business. Nor can you give everything away, or you will likewise be out of business. Steam/Valve are taking 15% off the top of every transaction that takes place in the market place. That is a HUGE fee. It is higher than eBay fees even which is known to have high fees which have alienated many customers. Unfortunately, there are no significant competitors to eBay so they have the market cornered. Point is, the Steam fees are already on the very high end.

My biggest complaint is not the $5.00 minimum purchase or the high fees (although I'm not happy about them). My big complaint is that they are very deceiving by having a "wallet" that you deposit money to which you have no way to ever withdraw from and they are not upfront and honest about this fact. Sure, it's hidden in the fine print, but lets be honest, who ever reads through every long legal users agreement before buying a product? Should I have? Apparently so, and that is my bad, but its rarely practical nowadays to read through every legal disclaimer and user agreement. They could solve this problem one of 2 ways: change their market and transaction method to Steam Points so you know you are purchasing virtual SPs and not depositing money; or they could provide a clear pop up message telling you at the time you try to make a deposit that you are purchasing a virtual product and your money cannot be withdrawn or refunded, not hide it in the fine print.