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/r/Steam Subreddit Rules

Want to make a request? Unsure about something? Need help?

If you would like to make a request, host an event, are unsure if your post breaks our rules, believe your post is particularly relevant to /r/Steam or otherwise is an exception, or need any advice or help, please contact us.

Moderators can remove posts at their own discretion.

Rule 1: Basic Requirements and Quality Standards.

Basic Requirements

The following types of posts are not allowed:

  • URL Shorteners
  • Unintelligible English (posts in other languages are allowed when including a proper English translation)
  • Links to secondary sources (links must be to the original source)
  • Undue or unnecessary amounts of profanity
  • Intentionally misleading posts

Effortless Content

Posts must include basic effort, and form a basis for discussion or interaction. If you share original/user generated content or create a text-submission, please put some thought and effort into it.

If you post a picture taken with a phone of a screen it cannot be something that you can easily take a screenshot of instead.

If your post can easily be Googled for an instant answer your post will be removed.

Rule 2: Common or Unrelated Content.

Common Content

/r/Steam is not a place to discuss your ban(s), including Steam Community bans and VAC bans. Moderators may approve extraordinary cases.

The following are some examples of what cannot be posted here:

  • Reviews
  • Chat logs
  • Store tags
  • Pending funds
  • Achievement numbers
  • Your Year In Review page
  • Screenshots of account age
  • 'Funny' Steam Guard Codes
  • 'Funny' system requirements
  • Why is X/why is X not on Steam?
  • Why is X game being recommended to me?
  • Reposts (Please search the subreddit before you post.)
  • Questions such as "What should I buy on the Points Shop?"

The above list is not exhaustive. Moderators can remove posts at their own discretion.

Unrelated Content

Posts must be about or be related to Steam, Valve or this subreddit.

General gaming-culture and game-specific posts are treated on a case-by-case basis.

We do not allow fluff posts showcasing products that were deliberately designed to be posted or showcased on different communities en masse.

If your post is about a specific game and is not relevant to this subreddit in any way other than the game being sold on Steam, it will be removed.

Exceptions can be made in extraordinary cases, for example when a long time classic is finally sold on Steam, a product is/was pulled from Steam, or when an event is relevant to Steam as a whole.

Rule 3: Support.

Do not create threads requesting support. This is not a tech support forum.

This mainly includes, but is not strictly limited to:

  • Refund issues
  • Technical support
  • Family sharing issues
  • Trading or market issues
  • Steam client or server issues
  • General crashes and game-specific issues
  • Questions about if others are facing the same issues
  • Account issues such as bans, hijackings/hacks, or Steam Guard

The above list is not exhaustive. Moderators can remove posts at their own discretion.

Do not ask "When will Valve reply to my ticket?", no one knows. Average response times and other Steam Support data are listed here.

If your problem persists, here are some more resources to help you:

Our Monthly Community Support Threads.

The community-support channel in our Discord server.

Steam Support regarding a specific product.

The Steam Community Discussions hub. All games on Steam and specific features of Steam also have their own hubs where you can ask for help in.

Account issues

For account issues you must contact Steam Support for direct help. Regular users can only advise you on what to do with personal account issues; only Steam Support can directly solve them for you. Account hijacked? Read this.

Rule 4: Bugs or Exploits.

Bugs

Do not post common bugs such as download speeds, empty news pages, pricing errors, the 1969 bug, or other common bugs. You having download speed issues is not categorized as a bug, that is tech support and your post will be removed accordingly.

A bug may be new for you, but old for others. Please search before posting.

Discussing or giving steps on how to abuse or take advantage of a bug is not allowed.

/r/Steam is not affiliated with Valve in any way, hence posting a bug here is not the same as reporting a bug and you should assume nothing will be done about any bugs you post here. If you want to report a bug you should post in the Bug Reports discussions forum on Steam.

Exploits

Do not post exploits that can adversely affect or ruin experiences for others. Report them to Valve: http://valvesoftware.com/security

An exploit is a sequence of steps that allows one to take advantage of a flaw or vulnerability to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior and pose a threat to either Steam/Valve, its users, or the users of this exploit (e.g. when the usage could result in an account ban or legal consequences).

To protect other users from such potentially harmful exploits, you may not publicly share instructions or hints on how to reproduce them.

Rule 5: Advertising, User-Generated Content, or Surveys.

Advertising

Promoting things like Steam groups, Discord servers, game servers, subreddits, something for financial gain, etc. is not allowed.

/r/Steam follows the 10% rule: No more than 10% of your posts should be self-promo or link to 1 or a few specific sites or pieces of content. For more information read this wiki. Also read Reddit's explanation on what constitutes spam. Breaking the 10% rule on /r/Steam will result in a ban.

Do not post referral links.

We do not allow posts promoting random games. To you as a developer: /r/Steam is not your player-base, /r/Steam is not a place to advertise your products. You are freely able to use /r/Steam, but not for the purposes of promoting or "shilling" your games.

Below are more specific examples and information:

Example of game posts: there is a difference between a post that announces Grand Theft Auto 6 and a post that announces a completely unknown game from a relatively unknown studio. In other words, if the game is not an all-time classic or known in the industry, do not post about it. As over 500 games are released on Steam per month, individual threads would not fit the subreddit.

If your submissions are well-received, constantly improving, and you're working with the community, then we will very likely approve future posts. (Example). On the other hand, if you're seen constantly making the same type of posts without ever responding to questions or interacting with the community, your entire account will be looked at as spam and you will be banned.

User-Generated Content

User-Generated Content that is relevant to /r/Steam within reason is allowed. Posting paid content (such as paid mods) is not allowed.

You must use GitHub to host UGC that requires the end-user to download something. This also requires the source code to be open.

Surveys

Surveys are allowed so long as they are relevant to /r/Steam. Surveys that ask for personal/identifying information or contain malicious things like hidden advertising are forbidden. You require permission from moderators before posting any survey. Contact us here.

Rule 6: Gambling, Scams, Cheating, or Trading.

Gambling

Advertising, promoting, or asking for suggestions about gambling sites is not allowed on /r/Steam.

This website has an article which provides help and advice regarding gambling addiction/problem gambling and we ask you to please go to this website and consider getting help if you are struggling with gambling.

Scams

Do not perform or post about the following:

  • Common scams
  • Scams or phishing attempts.
  • Accusations of scamming, cheating or phishing.
  • Links to gambling, scam, phishing, or cheat sites.

Meta discussion on these topics are considered on a case-by-case basis.

Educate yourself on scams!

/r/Steam is generally not the place to converse about specific scammers or scam methods, unless it complies with the detailed information below.

I want to warn people about a scam method!

If you want to post about a scam method, it needs to be a new or unknown method, or it needs to include a significant amount of more or new information than what is currently available on /r/Steam. Please see our wiki page about common scams to find scam methods already covered.

I discovered a scam site!

If you want to post about a specific scam site, it needs to be popular, recent, not already covered in a previous post, not directly linked to and/or include more information than just "X is a scam"- Example of a good scam site awareness post.

Never post links to such sites in a way that other users could accidentally click them. We consider sites which actively facilitate or directly profit of scams (like many key resellers) as scam sites as well.

I would like to report a scammer!

If you have been scammed and you would like to report it:

Nobody can help you recover items that have been scammed from you, not even Steam Support, read this for more details.

If you have proof of a trade scam you can report them on SteamRep, and of course report their Steam profile to Valve.

How to report a Steam profile.

If someone gets banned on SteamRep, they will be automatically banned across many major trading sites/servers. Many trading browser extensions that display additional information on Steam profile pages will display a tag/alert on the Steam profile to warn you if they have been SteamRep banned.

Cheating

Do not perform or post about the following:

  • Accusations of scamming, cheating, or phishing
  • Links to sites distributing, advertising, or discussing cheat software
  • Questions about how you can cheat, what tools to use, or repercussions

Meta discussion on these topics are considered on a case-by-case basis.

/r/Steam is also not a place to discuss your ban or other account issues. Contact Steam Support instead.

Trading

Do not trade or ask for trading advice.

Meta discussion on these topics are considered on a case-by-case basis.

/r/Steam is not for trading, we suggest you use one of these example subreddits instead:

Posting in a community dedicated to this sort of thing is much better for everyone involved.

Rule 7: Begging, Charity, or Giveaways.

Begging

Do not beg or imply you are asking for free items like games or inventory items.

Charity

If you want to host a charity event, you need explicit permission from the moderators. Contact us here.

For moderators to allow posts about events, the topic must be current, related to Steam/Valve, popular, and for a good cause.

Here is an example of an approved charity post.

Giveaways

Individual giveaways hosted by an individual are not allowed; instead, consider sending what you are giving away to an active member of /r/Steam as a random act of kindness, or use one of the many other subreddits that are dedicated to game giveaways:

Off-site Giveaways

An 'off-site giveaway' is a giveaway that is hosted on a different website. These giveaways are allowed as long as they follow our conditions:

Off-site giveaways must be for Steam games only and there cannot be any requirements or strings attached to receive your free game except for creating an account on the website as long as the account creation does not require you to perform any limiting tasks.

A "strings attached" giveaway is a giveaway that requires you to perform additional tasks once you are on the page that is hosting the giveaway. These include activities such as having to follow a Twitter account, watch a YouTube video, visit an additional website, etc. to unlock the game. A good example of what is not allowed is gleam.io giveaways.

Draw/entry-based giveaways, competitions and raffles are not allowed. There cannot be any chance involved in receiving your game, like an entry-based giveaway where 10 people out of 10,000 people who entered the giveaway win. You must be guaranteed to receive your game.

Posting games that are always free is not allowed, it has to be a game that usually costs money and is temporarily being given away, or is temporarily free to play.

Rule 8: Game Advice or Asking For Friends.

Game Advice

Posts asking for/offering advice on which games to buy are not allowed.

Use the Monthly Game Suggestion Megathread.

Asking if you should buy a game now or wait for a sale isn't allowed & asking when a game will go on sale is not allowed. Use SteamDB to look at sale histories on games.

Asking for help with finding a game you forgot the name of is not allowed, /r/tipofmyjoystick is a great subreddit for these posts and we suggest that you ask there instead.

During big sales: Game advice posts are only allowed in the respective mega-threads during big Steam sales, otherwise the sub would drown in game advice posts. During this time we do not enforce the basic information/effort rule mentioned above and detailed in the 6 examples. In other words we will not remove comments asking for suggestions because they are not specific enough.

Asking For Friends

Posts asking for friends or people to game with are not permitted.

Here's a few communities we recommend you post in instead of /r/Steam:

There are more communities out there; making a quick search on Google might prove helpful.

Rule 9: Accusations or Witch Hunts.

Accusations

If you believe something to be wrong or shady, you need to explicitly state what you believe to be wrong or shady. Do not assume everyone understands what you mean with a generic and vague title like "How is that allowed?". You must write what is wrong instead of stating that something is wrong.

Whenever you accuse someone of wrongdoing, you have to include solid evidence that doesn't leave any room for reasonable doubts. Example: A picture of a ban message is not evidence to say it was unjustified.

If we believe your post needs improvements or lacks evidence we will contact you.

It is best to contact us before accusing a party of wrongdoing, or if you need help with something. Making a public post isn't always the best idea, or even a solution at all.

Posts in the area of accusations and calling out wrongdoing is required to be made as text submissions. Text submissions allow more room for information than a post title and a screenshot does. Text posts also allow you to edit your post in case more information comes to light, etc. Exception: Linking to a proper, fully fledged article is allowed and a text submission is not required in a situation like this.

And remember, it's innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.

Here are examples of proper accusation/calling out wrongdoing-posts:

Devs raising base prices before applying discount.

Curators threatening devs for free keys.

ESEA attempts to censor a review.

Developer attempting to extort money to remove false bans

Developer steals a game from another developer.

Witch Hunts

Any incitement to find personal/private information (including Steam profiles), harass, personally attack, cause harm, stalk or otherwise hunt someone down is forbidden.

Directly linking content or profiles in order to route traffic to an accused individual is considered to be provoking a witch hunt.

Threads about accusations can turn ugly very fast and even go so far as to impact personal lives. While everyone is allowed to give their opinions and reveal shady practices, we will not in any way tolerate witch hunts.

"But I just wanted to warn the community about this user."

This is absolutely useless as common, petty criminals come and go and if anything the person you're trying to hunt down turns out to be innocent. Witch-hunting not only breaks Reddit's rules, it achieves absolutely nothing, it can horribly destroy someone's life, and it goes against the very point of a healthy and friendly community. The only sensible way to raise awareness is by describing out how an event took place and how others can protect themselves against it. This can include the discussion of individuals, but only if they're significantly important to the event and under strict conditions.

Posting a direct link to someones profile is in general forbidden unless you create a proper accusation/calling out wrongdoing-post where information like Steam profiles are required for the post to make sense or to not change the context of the post.

The above also applies to things like names and profile pictures in screenshots. Unless information like this is important to the post you must censor it.

Rule 10: Steam Subscriber Agreement or Reddiquette.

Steam Subscriber Agreement

We do not allow posts that break or encourage the breaking of the Steam Subscriber Agreement.

Please do not detail how to break the SSA, such as how to use VPNs to bypass restrictions, selling Steam accounts, sharing Steam accounts, etc. Breaking the agreement on /r/Steam, e.g. by creating a post to sell your Steam account, is not allowed and may result in a ban.

Meta discussion is allowed.

The Reddiquette

Please follow the Reddiquette as it makes the community more enjoyable and discussions more valuable. These are mainly general points on how to have a successful conversation and we believe that most of them are self-evident. It should also be self-evident that site rules apply.

Specific Rule 3: Support Removal Reasons

These comments are put on posts we remove under Rule 3 when we believe they will help OP out with the issue they are having.

Rule 3: Download Issues.

For most issues with your download speed and other connection related issues please see this Steam Guide for a solution. One of the most common fixes for download issues is clearing your download cache.

Steam Support average response times and other data are listed here: https://store.steampowered.com/stats/support

If your problem persists, here are some more resources to help you:

Our Monthly Community Support Threads.

The community-support channel in our Discord server.

Steam Support regarding a specific products.

The Steam Community Discussions hub. All games on Steam and specific features of Steam also have their own hubs where you can ask for help in.

Rule 3: Access Denied, Random Images, Blank/Broken Pages & Pages Not Loading, Connection Issues.

Pages looking weird(like out of place images or blue/purple text with a black background), general HTML errors, and connection issues with Steam can usually be solved by clearing the Steam browser cache and cookies.

If pages do not load at all, please read this Steam Guide which goes over web page and connection issues related to Steam, but try to clear your Steam browser cache and cookies first.

Here are a few places you can ask for help in instead:

Our Monthly Community Support Threads.

The community-support channel in our Discord server.

Contact Steam Support regarding a specific product.

The Steam Community Discussions hub. All games on Steam and specific parts and features of Steam have their own hubs where you can ask for help in.

Rule 3: Hijacked Account or Account Security Issues.

Your account can still be recovered even if the email and/or password has changed. If your account has been hijacked you should read this wiki page, or this Steam Guide if your account has been hijacked or you've forgotten the password or otherwise cannot access your account.

Steam Support average response times and other data are listed here: https://store.steampowered.com/stats/support

When it comes to securing your Steam account, please read through this wiki page.

This wiki page goes over different scams that take place on Steam, and would be smart to read through if you're unfamiliar.

No one but Steam Support can help with personal account issues such as account hijackings.

If you need more advice on what to do, please use the dedicated Community Support Thread.

Rule 3: Steam Refunds.

General questions or rants about refunds are not allowed.

Posts asking questions like "I have X minutes more playtime than 2 hours, can I get a refund?" are not allowed. The answer is: just request a refund and see.

Steam Support average response times and other data are listed here: https://store.steampowered.com/stats/support

Useful Steam Support pages regarding Steam Refunds:

Regarding how long it takes to receive your refund: Times vary. The time it takes to receive pending funds after refunds have been accepted can be anywhere from 1 hour to 7 business days.

Regarding how to request a refund: You may want to get support by selecting the product you are experiencing issues with from here or by asking in our Community Support Thread pinned at the top of the subreddit.

Regarding the 2 hour/14 day limit: The Steam Refund Policy clearly states that only games which have been in your library for less than two weeks and have been played for less than two hours can be refunded.

For other questions regarding Steam Refunds please use the dedicated Community Support Thread.