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Comment by Dylan16807 | Hacker News Reader

Can you explain in more detail? How could you owe steam money if you didn't finish the transaction? Did paypal somehow promise steam the money long enough to complete the transaction and then pull takesie-backsies?

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That is typically exactly what is claimed by the victims, that paypal first completes, and then is later rescinded/charged back for whatever reason; steam then removes access to the account. I've heard a wide enough variety of paypal horror stories in general that I presume it's not all a case of user error.

This isn't a reply directly to you, Winthrowe. But more to this line of thread.

The wrongs of Paypal have been mentioned, but most account blocking happens when a user violates Steam's TOS. Being an abusive jerk online while logged in and playing games. Or cheating.

Now, I think that's bullshit. You still paid for those games. I think you should own them. Completely. At most they should block you from their servers and their online play.

But with Steam you can easily download any title you own as many times as you like. Steam has its own problems, but this they got right. You can even back them up quite easily. (Man, that used to be a broken tool, but even it's good now.)

There's a difference between a VAC ban and a TOS ban. VAC ban means you can no longer play (mostly Valve) games online.

A TOS ban means your account is no longer usable.

Steam was removing access to his account basically because it felt like he didn't pay for some games in it. Which is reasonableish (the ones he had from before really shouldn't be affected. It'd be better if it just removed the games he bought with paypal). It's like if someone has their check bounce on you, they don't get to keep whatever they paid for.

Since the money was a gift to my brother, it wasn't tied to a bank account, which made paypal suspicious.

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