Q&A with Valve's Steam Support - Ask your questions here!

My Question:

I issued a steam support ticket on this as well but why is it that the scorching and burning hazmats have been fixed meaning that the effect comes out of the head instead of the stomach area but none of the other effects have been fixed? i have a sunbeams one which i unboxed and love dearly but cannot wait to see what it looks like when the effect is fixed

Question for Derrick :
I have been trade restricted twice due to coming into contact with hijacked items and eventually unlocked twice (once by you). Both cases were resolved after providing evidence of screenshots and Paypal support phone calls to show that the hijacker took advantage of me.
In the latest ticket steam support also included this bit "Please refrain from accepting stolen items/gifts or your account may be permanently disabled. Valve reserves the right to refer the matter to the appropriate authorities if such activity continues."
I was wondering if this meant there is some sort of system (e.g. 3 Strike system) whereby after a certain number of occurrence, my account will get permanently disabled even if I was innocent in all the cases.

Thanks!

Why does it take you two weeks to reply to my simple question with an automated answer which, most of the time, doesn't answer the original question?

Is it against the rules to have alt. accounts to store expired items?

Hmm might as well

1. How big is the steam support crew?
2. How many support tickets came in last year?
3. What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
4. Is valve going to remove the halloween paints, that are still in the game?

Is it allowed to use an alternative software for item management? (Steam Item Manager)?

I could already answer this.
No it is not against the "rules" to have alt accounts, but is frowned upon by them as it makes their job harder.

My Question: Why haven't you hired Helen yet?

Question with better grammar than Pretender here.

Why haven't you guys at Valve hired Helen yet?
I even made a Steam Group!

Question with better grammar than Scooty Puff.

Why haven't you guys at Valved hired Helen yet?

How does the "Item Recovery" process work? You send your ticket in and then what happens? Does the hijacker get a trade ban and VAC ban? How long does it take to get your items back?

That's exactly what I put?

Will you ever punish sharkers?


This video teaches you how to shark and he tells everyone how you guys don't punish them. This is not fair trading at all.
He got an unusual jefe for basically 10 cents. This jefe could of been anywhere from $30 to $100, maybe more.
He looks for idiots and rips them off to the point where it's like stealing.

Valve's logic is that all trades are final and that since prices are all basically made up and subjective, you can't really punish the "sharker" for having the other guy clicking the accept button. Realistically, it is the person with the item, in this case the el jefe, to know the "value" of the item they are trading.

Hi DerrickG,

My Question is regarding Team Fortress 2. Why there is no update yet to fix the Unusual effects on some of items like The Executioner that were released during Halloween? Some of the effects on Hazmat Headcase got fixed but not all. When can we expect these fixes?

Regards
DX

When I first saw the announcement via Kritzkast (cheap shoutout) about asking steam support questions, I decided to just sit on it for a few days just to see what I would like to needle the most and came up with three questions....as I read the replies since then, it appears that at least 2 have been echoed....nonetheless I will leave my questions unedited. Here's hoping with volume comes those answers.

I would like to know just how many people (maybe just a range) work with steam support (and say, how many of them have it as their primary focus because sometimes I feel as if some of my rather simple support questions take a couple of weeks just to hear a yes or no answer or what I like to call a preplanned response that was likely cut and pasted with various edits for addressing people). Maybe the amount varies just based on topics?

Also would like to know why they value the TF2 wiki so highly even though I state that due to whatever bug I'm experiencing, it already goes against what the wiki says. For example, there were random occurances last year where I'd only get like 2 item drops for the week (happened to me for about a month, scowering the net had some people in other communities affected as well) and then they link me the item drop system wiki page and then say nothing is guaranteed. I mean, I literally said getting 2 drops goes against the wiki page (which says like 5-13 items or whatever) and they'll just respond by linking it back to me and saying nothing is guaranteed.

Finally, would like to know if there's a better solution for when a game doesn't download/run/function properly then to just delete certain (all but 1) files in various steam folders (namely steamapps) and then relaunch steam (and basically have to reinstall it). For all the times I've had problems running games, thats the only answer I get. I mean, I would rather be happy just being told to wait it out (which appears to be the only real solution) or chalk it up as "you are not allowed to play this game" (coughgyromancercough). And while I'm at it, what's the deal with the "game is not available" message? I mean, I can understand multiplayer games that were just patched but how about some of those random single player games? Just because the steam servers may be under a load, doesn't (or shouldn't) mean I can't play games like Zuma or Plants vs. Zombies because its "not available", regardless of any factor such as internet connectivity or steam servers.

I'm almost certain there was an apostrophe in guys the first time.

Of the youngest person of the three of us you met, who was the cutest?

This is a fair question, since no one knows I was the youngest.

Oh shoot.

2 possible solutions, solution 1:

1. Exit steam
2. Go to your steam folder, C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\
3. Delete AppUpdateStats.blob file.
4. Start steam.
5. Verify game cache of problematic games.

Solution 2:

1. Exit steam
2. Go to your steam folder, C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\
3. Delete everything, except:
   1. Steam.exe (re-installation program)
   2. ..\steamapps\ (keep installed games)
   3. ..\userdata\ (saves cloud, client settings)
4. Yes Everything except those 3 in the folder, so files and folders that are not those 3, can be thrown out.
5. Start steam
6. Authenticate with SteamGuard etc via email.
7. Might need a Verify of GCF's.

Solution 3:

1. Exit any Steam game open.
2. Either go to:
   1. C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\Common\ or
   2. C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\*your username*
3. Find the game folder of your choice in these 2 possible locations. (unless game installed on secondary location)
4. Delete all non-custom content within the game's folders.

With 1: the blob file is corrupt, it will recreate it auto
With 2: Steam client is bugged out, just let it re-download by this.
With 3: On occasion old files aren't deleted by steam on updating a game (most often due account switching, the account where the update took place is ok, the other account gets problems, or some like that. Cleaning out the folder will mean that the game has to re-extract them, and updates them at that moment.