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

Why haven't you hired Helen or any of the steamrep admins yet?

Heres my question,
Can Gaben ever make a 3rd installment?

he'll make prequel's first...

1) Could you guys please update hammer editor and update the compiling system?
2) Will you guys be releasing source sdk for MAC OSX?
3) Why does it take so long to connect to a game on a mac? ( it takes around 2 min to start up and takes 5 min to join a server)

i have only an easy question ......... WHY and Repeat why the TRADE BAN isn't FOREVER , and u don't DELETE ALL ITEMS on their BP's ???????????

if u delete all their items u do it a great favor on the community ...... plz DO IT !!

When is the Source Multiplayer Server thing going to be fixed for Team Fortress 2?

Question:

Sometimes when I view Steam while in TF2 (shift+tab), it just flashes and then just exits out. I've tried reinstalling TF2, exiting Steam, but nothing works. This only happens for TF2. What should I do?

Hey, I've been wanting to know this for a long while.
If a previous account has been hacked that you had and you wanted say tf2 items back out of it.
Would it be possible to get them back with the assitance of a Valve Employee? Thanks! I might not be able to see this, so please pm me on steam. For I have more than 30 other questions with endless possibilities.

So I recently got scammed like 3-4 days ago.

And I was wondering why can't steam return item back to the original owner and why can't steam actually ban the person from trading or from tf2?

Q.
Are you planning to a move Steam to a portable and mobile platform . Or keep steam as more of a "camped " System . (Example PC & Home Consoles) . And how do you think the nVidia sheild will impact this ?

OFF TOPIC QUESTION:
I want to know, what's Valve's major opinion on the Halo franchise and how does it compare to other major game series?
I really wanted to know since Team Fortress 2 and the Halo series are my favorites and they've mean a lot to me

Here are a few questions I have for VALVe, not sure they they fit the Steam Support but maybe we can get DerrikG's opinion on these

1. There are many community sites that track item history when items make it into their system. This helps spotting/finding alt accounts of scammers or items that have gone through scammer accounts. Are there any plans to provide an additional Web API that would show the entire history of an item?
2. Steam Market trades are public. We can see the recent sold items which makes it easy to find what items sell for. Are there any plans to provide an additional Web API that would allow us to see recent completed in-game trades so we can do the same with in-game currency?
3. Item makers get a revenu share for getting their items in game. Map makers get revenue from map stamps and strange filters. Dota 2 has special items like NaVi pennant that allow fan revenue for these teams. Are there any plans to create something similar for community sites that could allow players to support the sites they love?

I have no clue how many of these would be in your area, if you can ask around to different people working there or if some can really be answered, but at least I tried. Also some of the thing I have mentioned I have suggested on forums and the like. I have a valve employee's attention(hopefully) so I'm posting everything!

Why can't I login to my steam forums account with my steam account? Sourceop has this type of account linking and other sites have similar or account creation via the steam login API. I find it funny that the company that created it does not even use it. I also don't mean fully replacing the old login system but adding a new method.

Why did it take like 5 days to migrate servers when the steam forums moved over last month?

Do you guys ever plan to add a spellchecker to steam even as an option and not required? I have been asking for this for ages

Why has the recommendations system on steam not had the ability to define what someone is saying into positive and negative? I have written up huge reviews in some cases and someone who is not paying attention might buy a game like Towns which is in development and very rough. Also the damn towns developers need to release that next update already -.-

Has the idea of a unified save location been discussed? It would be nice if all games on steam would put their save data in a single location so it could be easily backed up. There is so many games which put data in app data, steam files, documents and I think some also put it elsewhere.

Why has the trade interface not added a batch list(all items listed out per each side of the trade and same items bulked up eg 100 refined metal or 38 tyrants helms then lists them out)? It would make trading bulk stuff infinitely easier.


Is there any plans to try and change the trading to combat Russian/Ukrainian prices devaluing all the others? The Russians have been buying games in masses for cheap followed by flooding the market with the cheap copies. Most of the games have zero restrictions at all so they are all full games and sorta a cheaper way to find a Russian and have him buy and you pay tf2 keys/items. I know fully well why they get cheaper prices, but I'm not really sure why they get to dominate the game trade market.

Why has the team fortress 2 backpack not seen any enhancements? I would love a way to truly manage my backpack. It's not fun to have to reorder hundreds of items out of a 1100 item backpack.

Why have we not seen any filters yet for steam market? There is 41 pages of items alone and the best way to filter is currently to write the one full word in the name of the item. I would like to see filtering like that used in my backpack which is great.

Is there any plans to add an item for item automatic steam market? I am a trader myself and I am completely sick of all the current trade sites.

Is the fact that you guys haven't already gotten an answer from the IRS about steam market proof you plan to let us cash out steam wallet? In a closed system I would not see how they could claim it as capital since it would be equal to giftcards unless you add a method to bring money out.

Has the idea of adding tags/folders to games on your game list(the one everyone see's on your profile) been considered? I watch anime and have an anime list which lets me categorize all I have watched , dropped, put on hold or plan to watch. It would be nice to have categories like always down for a game, completed, hated, plan to play, play to replay, multiplayer games, etc, etc(could be custom categories) so people other than you can know what you want to do. I like to play magic 2012/13, but it's rare that anyone I know plays it and it's usually me being the one who initiates the game. It could also be beneficial to have pre-made categories so they could be matched too and maybe allow custom ones attached to that.

Were the sale prices of the holidays 2012 a test to see if value can be held and still achieve large sales for a game without having to discount it to the maximum? I saw many games(like Terraria) that were at like 66% vs 75% during the winter sales when they have done 75% multiple times. I have been sorta theorizing that a lot of games might start reaching saturation points where it becomes increasingly harder to find people interested in buying.

Have you guys considered adding a state of game icon on all steam game pages? Like if a game is a continued development game like Dayz standalone will be, Minecraft is, don't starve is and Towns is plus likely more I'm not thinking of. It is definitely a new concept of an ever evolving game(as tf2 has sorta proved is viable), but tf2 itself was a full game at release and some of these games like towns are in a very rough shape and sometimes it's hard to tell what shape they are in.

Has the idea of a bug tracker been considered for steam games? It would be nice if we could submit bugs via steam or even while in game. I would think it could be useful for many of the developers to have more data points too along with reduction in complexity of reporting(not having to manage a forums account for every single game/studio).

Has the idea of tagging games on your wishlist been kicked around either? I try to add all games that I'm interested in to my wishlist so I can track what I want easier and it would be nice to add a message like I'm waiting for this to go to a certain price or to write how interested I actually am in a game.

Another thing I have been wanting for like 2 years is the ability to add a custom message to any invite I send out to a person. I add a lot of people due to trading and some people due to liking playing with them and sometimes they might forget who you are or have no clue who you are. I notice the beta just added the ability for offline messaging so I think it would be easy to make it work so that it could somehow display the reason(if they add one) someone is adding you. I have had thousands of people add me due to trades and at least 60% I usually have to try and dig into why they added me or in the opposite figure out why I added them. I have used tagging to try and help with the why I added them, but I usually forget to tag when I add multiple people.

Is there any plans to increase the friends limit? or adding fractured friends lists(like trading lists etc so I can accept all trades into a separate list without tagging and then having them remove me 5 mins later)? I have been pushing 300 people added constantly since November and and through the winter sales I was maxing at 300 daily even after I remove 20-30 people and sometimes I would even max out multiple times daily.

Question: Is there a chance that the View Steam Players tab in the steam overlay will ever be fixed as the current game tab doesn't / shows maybe one person in the actual server I am playing in and the recently plaid can show people from like a week ago but not the ones you just were with.

Suggestion: On everyone steams profile you see "Trade banned", "trade probation" if they're a scammer.
It would be nice if it was possible to have "steamrep banned"

I would like to know how is valve going to deal with the problem of idling? have they ever thought of disallowing the same person from opening multiple accounts (i.e. identifying accounts using credit card numbers/paypal accounts instead of email address).

also does valve plan to EVER include a 6v6/highlander format into the game itself. including the ability to form groups like in mvm and possibly including separate stats for games played under those competitive formats.

Simple qus: http://puu.sh/1HI1z

When the community market will be implemented;

How does valve steam support will deal with the scammers who will use the market to sell their stolen items ?
Furthermore, will the procedure that can help you get your items back still be possible, even in the item is already sold ?

Hey there, I had heard reports that Valve was going to close all alt accounts that people own for TF2. I understand that scammers use these kinds of profiles, but there's some alt profiles that collectors use to collect old expired items (holiday crates, etc.). Is it true these alt accounts will be closed even with the vast amount of collectors using them and holding old items on them?