Valve has now started to knuckle down on cheating by restricting Steam trading. In a post published to Steam’s support page, the restrictions were outlined to include games that specifically use Valve Anti Cheat Technology or VAC. Currently Steam games that use VAC, or other third party anti-cheating software, can only be purchased for your own account or gifted to a friend straight away. You can no longer add these games to your inventory for the purpose of future trading.

“VAC and Game Ban enabled games can either be bought for your own account, or gifted immediately. They can no longer be saved to your inventory for trading purposes. If you directly gift a game to someone who gets permanently banned, you won’t be able to gift that game again. If an account has directly gifted a game to other players who have been VAC or permanently Game Banned, then that account will lose the ability to gift that game.”

The reason for these new regulations come from evidence of previous users stockpiling titles and gifting them to duplicate accounts, in the case of getting permanently banned from a game. This applies to all VAC-enabled games, which include some of Steam’s most popular titles such as Dota 2, Rust, Ark: Survival Evolved and more. If a user is caught cheating, then that account will be banned from multiplayer gaming on secured servers.

In the same post, Valve recognized the effect this would have on fair users:

“We’ve taken these steps to ensure the integrity of the multi-player experience for those participating in online gaming communities. We understand that the restrictions on buying to inventory may be inconvenient for some legitimate users, but we believe that these steps will reduce the number of cheaters you’ll play against. And that’s important in having an online gaming experience that’s fair and enjoyable for everyone.”

Posted: Aug 07, 2016 11:52 am
Related Forum: PC Gaming Forum

Source: http://www.dualshockers.com/2016/08/06/valve-restricts-steam-trading-in-an-effort-to-cut-down-on-cheating/