Rejected Appeal Review for 76561197960287930 (bjorkz)

@-GoV- Gabrielel Do we have a status update?
@Bjorkz At some point SR will step in if they cannot address their issues on their own and it will not be half a years time. In the meantime, such postings are not contributing anything productive and I am going to ask just this once to not continue.

@-GoV- Gabrielel any word yet?

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Hi @Bjorkz

I'm sorry for all the time and hassle it took reach this point. Normally appeal reviews are pretty quick. But when we have to contact another partner community who appears to have gone dark, or is otherwise not giving you a fair shot at appealing, the process becomes a lot slower. That delay includes time our admins spend waiting for their response, as well as sorting out other logistical details.

Unfortunately, at this point your appeal has already been concluded, and the answer is final. It's cold comfort, but since you got strung along through all the hassle here, I think it's only fair that I take the time and provide some insight into our policy on account sharing/transfer. That includes why we have it, and why that led to the unfavorable but inevitable outcome I'd imagine you want an explanation for.

As you know, buying, selling, trading, or otherwise sharing/transferring Steam accounts is a violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement. It's not SteamRep's job to enforce that agreement, of course, as we are not affiliated with Valve or Steam Support in any way. For that reason and others, we do not go around policing this or tagging accounts we think (or know) are purchased, as much as we condemn the practice. But at the same time, it's also not our responsibility to make special accommodations for those such policy violations, and frankly in a case like this it's beyond our ability to properly investigate even if we wanted to. I'll explain that more below.

First off, no matter what your friend may have told you, the original owner of an account can always reclaim it from Steam Support, at any time, no matter how much time has passed. Regardless of what kind of assurances the seller put into place, the original owner is the only legitimate owner that Steam Support will recognize; even after they've given you pictures of CD keys, Steam Guard access for 6 months, email history, and so on as part of the deal, if they prove to Steam Support they were the first owner, it will be taken away from you and returned to them. Or if you're lucky, Steam Support will realize the account was shared and permanently suspend it for ToS violations so that neither of you gets access. Yes, that means all the time and work you claim to have put into this account can be taken away from you in the blink of an eye. Imagine some hijacking victim your scammer-friend didn't mention stealing this account from finds their old Orange Box key, remembers their old email, contacts Steam Support, and BAM - you get kicked out of your CS:GO match as someone you don't know claims ownership over everything you put into this account from here on out. Trading accounts is a really, really, really bad idea, for this and many other reasons, and that's not even a problem specific to Steam.

This account - the 大伟 one you're appealing from - is the one which was used to scam, not an alt. Specifically, it was used to send out multiple fake "____ Steam Wallet will be deposited into your account upon accepting" trade offers to people, and reported to GoV in January of 2015 before Tony Baretta (owner of GoV) ultimately acted on those reports. It looks like your "friend" was a scammer, and he (or whoever he bought it from) used this account to scam multiple CS:GO knife owners. That's why it was banned in our shared database, to protect the community from someone actively scamming at the time. Selling or giving the account away to someone else doesn't excuse that, and neither we nor GoV will give a free pass that could inevitably extend back to the original owner who scammed with it in the first place.

Your response to this scam report was not to address what happened, but instead skirting responsibility altogether and blaming it on your "friend". As far as we know, that friend may or may not exist, so if you're lying then we'd have to deny for that. Meanwhile, any leniency we afford to you would also be extended to this alleged scammer friend, who would get a free pass once he reclaimed the account. So we'd have to deny either way. As to having your "friend" re-appeal as the original owner... within our evidence standards and investigative policy, there is simply no way for us to prove or disprove whether you were actually the original owner, or subsequently whether it's still you or the "friend" we're talking to. All of our existing evidence validation methods and investigative practices rest on the assumption that you were the one in those pictures, and that accounts did not change hands; if they did change hands, that's on you. Screenshots from 3rd-party platforms supporting your claim are trivial to doctor, with obvious incentive to do so in cases like this, and none of our usual methods of validating contested evidence apply once you crossover to other platforms and blur the lines of who owns which account. As such, the original appeal will stand, and neither you nor your friend will get another shot. Other than blanket-rejecting cases where accounts change hands, there is simply no other fair way for us to handle them.

Ultimately, as far as we're concerned, you are responsible for everything that happened on this account. If that sounds unduly harsh, then you shouldn't have accepted someone else's account (and everything that came with it) in the first place. If the account had a VAC ban, trade ban, or community ban, then you would've been stuck with that as well. I guarantee Steam Support would not have been any kinder about it than we're being, to you or the friend you received this account from.