This guide will talk about all the possible bans that you can get and how you can get them while using Steam. This guide will reference the Steam Support articles throughout the text as well.

Take note that this guide will only explain bans that can be received through violations of Steam's guidelines. Some of the account restrictions that affect new Steam users are a part of your account status — limited accounts, for example, are restricted right after the registration until you spend $5 in the Steam Store.

• buying, selling, trading and the transferring of a Steam account to third parties;
  
  
• attempting to gain unauthorized access to accounts of other people;
  
  
• evasion of regional restrictions for your country store with the help of a proxy, VPN and other tools to hide the real location of a user;
  
  
• unauthorized usage of Steam for the goal of financial gain (online casinos, betting, lotteries, etc.);
  
  
• cases where Steam usage involves illegal activity (storing and distributing child pornography, selling drugs and weapons, advocacy and promotion of terrorism, etc.);
  
  
• fraudulent activity and scamming via Steam Trading.

In the case that Steam Support suspects that an account is not under use by its original owner (the user who has originally registered the account and accepted the Steam Subscriber Agreement) as a result of reports from either the original owner or offendant or as a result from an ongoing investigation, Steam Support will send the following alert in order to find the original account owner:

The account will have restricted functionality until its original owner will provide proof of ownership to Steam Support.

The account owner is the user who has completed the free registration process and accepted all terms of the Steam Subscriber Agreement. If someone has obtained the account by borrowing it from a friend, for example, the borrower will not be considered to be the account owner, even if they have spent their funds and played for any amount of hours.

The "Steam Self Locking Tool" allows you to lock your account and protect it from unauthorized actions if you suspect that the account has been stolen or compromised. When certain Steam account changes are made, a notification will be sent to the email address that is associated with your account. These include the following:

• Password changes
  
• Email changes
  
• Steam Guard code requests

The account owner will receive an email, regardless of who has done one of the aforementioned actions. This message will also include a link to lock the account. If no changes were made to the account by its owner, they should use this button in order to avoid any potential problems. After using it, the following account alert will be shown:

The user must ensure that they have written a recovery code prior to locking their account. This code will allow them to lift account restrictions, when the account is safe and secure.

In most cases, Steam Support does not automatically contact owners of banned accounts. Valve has a zero-tolerance policy of Steam Subscriber Agreement and Steam Online Conduct violations; the support staff will immediately block all accounts that are owned by a user who has performed one or more of the following:

• Piracy or Hacking
  This includes using an unauthorized ("hacked") Steam client to access Steam, attempting to register fake CD Keys or attempting to register a CD Key which has been published on the internet.
  
  
• Account theft or shared usage
  Users may not use accounts that they do not own.
  
  
• Account "Phishing" and Deliberately Deceptive Activity
  This includes contacting other users outside of Steam or over the Friends network under a misleading/impersonating screen name or e-mail address (i.e. "Steam Admin", "VAC Administrator", "You Won Free Game Gift") and requesting password or account information.
  
  
• Buying, selling or trading accounts
  All purchased, sold and traded account will be banned. This includes all accounts that a user is the owner of at the time of purchase, regardless of the fact they were sold or traded, or not.

In the case of a violation, Steam Support will send the following alert to the account:

Please read the Steam Subscriber Agreement and the Steam Online Conduct should you have questions regarding a disabled Steam account.
Quote from the Steam Subscriber Agreement:

A scam occurs when one user fraudulently makes another user willingly perform a trade, buy something on the community market, receive a gift, or etc. Support staff will immediately block all accounts that were involved in:

• Receiving gifts from scammers
  Never accept gifts from strangers. Any account that have activated gifts from scammers can be banned.
  
  
• Fraudulent transactions
  Any fraudulent activity that involves banking cards, charge-backs and refunds through PayPal, regardless of when the operation occurred.
  
  
• Trade scams
  Faking items, using middlemen (imitating/spoofing one), trade checks, etc.
  
  
• Community Market scams
  This can happen when a user offers to send you some money to your Steam Wallet by purchasing one of your cheap items for a high price on the Community Market. The majority of these offers involve money that were obtained by scamming other users.

The following alert will be sent if an aforementioned point is violated:

In rare cases, scammers will hijack an account and use it to commit scams, fraud, or other hijackings. If this happens, Steam Support will lock the account until the rightful owner contacts them.

Steam Support relies on several data points to arrive at a decision to ban or lock an account.
Users intent on committing malicious activity—most often done to other users—are constantly trying to gain this data to use in future scams, fraud and hijackings.

One of the most serious bans on Steam is the ban for a violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement. Every single user must accept its terms during their account registration. Any violation of its terms will lead either to a temporary or permanent ban. The most severe violations are punished with the offending account being completely disabled.

You can find new people with the help of the Steam Community, whom you can befriend, chat with in groups, share screenshots, read news and watch broadcasts. Users who violate the Community Rules and Guidelines will receive bans according to their actions.

A Warning is a message from a user with certain level of authority (a Steam Support member, a Steam Community Moderator, a game developer, or a forum moderator), where an offending user is notified of their inappropriate behavior on the Steam Community Discussions.


Unlike a ban, a warning is merely a reminder there are rules and guidelines in the Steam Community a user needs to abide by. Further violations may lead to a ban.

A post that the user has been warned for may be removed.

Violation of the Steam Discussions Rules and Guidelines will result in a ban from Steam Discussions. This ban, temporary or permanent, makes all Steam forums unavailable to the banned user. They can still participate in a community hub's discussions, however.

If a user is banned, they will receive a corresponding notification. A new link, “Community Moderation Messages”, will also appear beneath “Post History”. This is the only place where a banned user can discuss a moderator's actions and appeal to shorten the duration of their ban, or to lift it all together.

This is what they will see by going to the “Community Moderation Messages” page:

The Steam Community Ban is a ban which restricts access to the Steam Community features for breaking the Rules and Guidelines or as a result of a lock placed on your account.

A Steam Community Ban is generally issued by a Community Moderator or a Steam Support Staff Member. This ban may be associated with, but not limited to the following actions:

• The violation of any paragraph of the Steam Subscriber Agreement and Steam Online Conduct;
  
• The use of graphic or otherwise inappropriate avatars, screenshots, artwork etc.;
  
• Spamming the community;
  
• Inappropriate language;
  
• Harassing other users;
  
• Continuing to post moderated content;
  
• Posting content related to racism or other forms of bigotry.

Steam Support sends an to the offending user:


As well as the account alert, the user will also receive a notification in their “Community Moderation Messages” that details what content was against the rules and what was removed.

The user's profile is hidden without the ”This profile is private” label;

The user is unable to participate in the Steam Discussions;

The user cannot leave comments in the activity feed of their own profile or in that of other users' profiles:

The user will not be able to send group and friend requests, nor will they be able to accept them from other users.

The user is unable to edit their profile, i.e cannot change profile name, country, custom URL, avatar, summary, profile background, showcases, etc.

The user is unable to see the number of common groups and friends with another user.

The user is unable to add other users to the ignored users list.

The user is unable to trade or use the Community Market.

If you are annoying, stalking or harassing users of the Seam Community, you may receive a temporary or a permanent ban for such activity.

Example of a temporary ban for harassment:

User Generated Content (UGC) includes comments, guides, reviews, screenshots, artworks, videos, tags, Workshop items, etc.

In the case that a UGC violates Steam Rules and Guidelines, it can be banned by a Steam Community Moderator or Steam Support Staff.

Here are a few examples of User Generated Content bans for clarity:

Thanks to Steam Reviews, a potential buyer can now make a better decision when purchasing a product on Steam by getting to know another user's experience; having the ability to discover the positive and negative features of a game. In some cases, a review can be offensive or otherwise inappropriate. Such review will be banned and the following message will appear:

User-generated content shouldn't violate Guidelines and Rules of Steam. Everyday screenshots, guides and artworks of completely different nature are uploaded to Steam. If they contain materials that are against the rules, they may be hidden as incompatible in the community hub they were uploaded to, or banned.

An example of a banned guide message (similar messages are sent for other types of content as well).
A message with the following content is sent to an associated email address:

If a user received a ban in a community hub discussion area, along with that they are also restricted from uploading UGC to the said hub.

This restriction has the same length as the forum ban.

If the ban is lifted prematurely, the restriction will be removed as well.

Malicious Steam users often abuse the upvoting mechanism of UGC in order to promote illegal scam links that are targeting for harvesting Steam users' account details or stealing their inventory items. In response to that, Valve implemented the following restriction: if you upvoted content that was banned, you will be banned from posting content (screenshots, guides, artworks, etc.) for one month since the content ban date.

The following message will be sent to an email address associated with the offending Steam account:

The following items are regarded as profile content:

• User profile name;
  
• Avatar;
  
• Profile description;
  
• Custom profile (vanity) URL;
  
• Showcases.

If profile content violates the rules, a Steam Community Moderator or a Steam Support Member may remove such content.

When offending content is removed, a community message is sent to the user, whose profile content was removed.


When all other types of profile content are removed, the user can change/edit them at any time, however further repeated violations will lead to an account ban or a Steam Community ban (see more in section 2.3. of the guide).

For a violation of the group's rules, the violator will be banned. A group ban, temporary or permanent, makes all of that group's forums unavailable to the banned user.

If a user is banned, they will not receive a notification in their profile. While browsing the group again, however, they will see the following red box above the thread list of any subforum:

• If banned permanently:

• If banned temporarily:

The banned user will be allowed to read any thread, however they will not be able to post messages. They will see this message in place of the reply box:

Even though violating group members may be banned from the group discussions, they are still able to join and participate in the group chatroom. Group discussion bans and chatroom bans are separated. This means that the group administrators and moderators will also have to ban the offender from the group the group chatroom to prevent any more violations.

The offender in this case will see a message, which says that “they were banned from the chat by %moderator_name%”. They will also see a popup in their Steam tray with the same message (as you can see on the right side).

Depending on the ban duration, the offender will not be able to join the group chat. Whenever they attempt to, they will be greeted with the following notification:

Violation of the global forum Rules and Guidelines, as well as the local ones, is punishable with a ban. Both temporary and permanent bans in a community hub will result in a banned user not being able to participate in any of the discussions of the said community hub. This ban, however, affects only the community hub where a violation has been committed — the user is still free to post in discussions of other community hubs and the official Steam forums.

If a user is banned, they will receive the following notification.

This is what the user will see by going to the “Community Moderation Messages” page:

If a user violates or ignores the established rules during their trading activity, they will receive a temporary or permanent ban in the Steam Trading System.


Most often, a red notice in a user's profile will appear for soliciting other users to trade for something that is not allowed:

• Trades involving money
  The Steam trading interface does not support the transfer of money in any form. This includes Wallet credits, PayPal, gift cards or any other type of currency.
  
  
• Trades involving CD Keys
  Trading for CD Keys is not supported in the Steam Trading interface. CD Keys that are offered are often for a different game, fake, used or region restricted.
  
  
• Trading items/gifts for nothing in return
  You should complete any trades in a single trade. The trading interface supports an unlimited amount of items to be included with each trade, usually foregoing the need for multiple trades. If you choose to trade an item without receiving anything in return, you will receive a confirmation dialog prior to completing the trade which lets you know the item you are sending is considered a gift.
  
  
• Trades offering Steam Wallet credit
  Steam Wallet credit cannot be traded, moved, gifted or automatically added to accounts by other users. Never accept trades that offer Steam Wallet funds. The only way to add funds to someone else's account, is to buy and gift them a Digital Gift Card.
  
  
• Borrowing Steam items
  If you give a user an item, there is nothing to stop them from keeping it. In most cases, if a user wishes to borrow an item, they will not return it. Do not lend items to other users.

For violation of any points above, Steam Support will issue the following alert to the offender:

Stick to the established rules and use common sense to avoid getting scammed and/or banned.

Trading Basics
Steam Trade Offers
Steam Item Restoration Policy
Recommended Trading Practices
Trade Scam FAQ

Upon receiving a trade ban, the offending account will be placed into probation as well. Probationary status allows other users to see if a user has committed scams in the past so they can make better decisions about whether or not they want to trade with the user.

An account alert can be triggered by a removed (revoked) CD key. This can happen, for example, when the CD Key is intended for a limited time activation, like a Beta, or if the publisher determines that the CD Key itself had been obtained by fraudulent means.

The official Steam Support article states that “Your account will not be restricted; however, the CD Key you received will be removed”. So, users do not need to worry when they see this notification:

When a cardholder or financial institution disputes a purchase made through Steam, this results in a payment reversal and is considered a chargeback.

Chargebacks typically occur when someone identifies unknown charges on their bank account or finds purchases that were made without their consent.

In order to protect users from additional unknown charges, accounts associated with chargebacks are restricted while disputes are reviewed.

In order to remove the restrictions, the user must contact the financial institution associated with the disputed payments in order to close them. Depending on the institution associated with the payments, it may take several weeks to close the dispute. As a result of that, it may also take several weeks after closing a dispute for the content and account features to be restored.

With any chargeback, funds are held from Steam or returned to the cardholder. Since the funds are removed, the product is temporarily locked.

If a dispute is closed and the funds are returned to Steam, the content associated with the dispute will be restored.

Valve has developed a system, that automatically detects and permanently restricts game access to anyone who utilizes cheats or modifies program code on servers that are protected by VAC.

Valve Anti-Cheat is running on all official game servers by Valve and on the majority of user-created servers. VAC can be spotted by its shield icon in the server browser:


VAC automatically detects cheats (modifiers) and programs that are replacing files and interfering with the game process, and otherwise may provide an advantage over other players.

The VAC module is loaded into the client memory and is watching for any 3rd party processes that are interfering with the game executable. This means that any program that is attaching or otherwise tampering with the game process, can and will be recognized as a cheat.

Once an outside interference is detected, the VAC module sends the following information to Valve servers: details about the intrusion type, account information, etc. The process that is injecting into the game executable will be checked against the database, and if there is a similar process that is detected as a cheat, a ban will be issued. Once the account has been flagged, a ban will be placed in a couple of days, or in a few weeks. The user will not be able to connect to VAC-secured servers and a red notice will appear in the offender's profile. The delay is there in order to prevent cheaters from knowing when and why they were banned, slowing down cheaters from creating work-arounds in the future.

A user, who has "earned" multiple VAC bans in different games, will have a corresponding label in their profile.

The Steam Translation Server is a special Valve website where volunteers are allowed to contribute to the translation process of Steam and Valve games (Dota 2, CS:GO, Team Fortress 2 and others). According to the site's frequently asked questions section, users with limited accounts and/or VAC bans, are unable to participate in the Steam translation initiative as they are not allowed to submit an application. Those who are already registered translators that were caught cheating will be revoked the right to continue participating in the initiative as well. Such users will be greeted with the following message:

In order to ensure the best possible online multiplayer experience on non-Valve games, Valve allows developers to implement their own systems that detect and permanently ban any disruptive players, such as those using cheats.

The effects of the game ban are determined by the developer and must be consistent with a VAC ban, such as not being able to play online with other players and/or being able to trade items for that game.

Only permanent game bans are displayed on the user’s profile. Temporary game bans, or suspensions, are not displayed.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works. It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself. In addition, the DMCA heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet.

Valve respects the intellectual property rights of others, and is expected that everyone using internet sites and services do the same. Anyone who believes that their work has been reproduced on any internet sites or services in a way that constitutes copyright infringement may notify Valve's copyright agent using the form below. Be aware that under Section 512(f) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, any person who knowingly and materially misrepresents that material or activity is infringing and may be liable for damages.

For example, once a user has found out that their content was completely copied by another user, they can file an appropriate claim. After that, the offending content will receive a notification (a guide is used in this example):


The claim is then processed by Valve. If it turns out the content in question does indeed infringe someone else's copyright, it will be removed from the Community.

Here is a small sampling of the available features:

• Matchmaking
  
• Steam Inventory Service
  
• Anti-cheat technology
  
• In-game economy with microtransactions
  
• Management of user-generated content
  
• Per-User cloud storage

However, for violations related to the contract between Valve and the developer, as well as the developer breaching the Steam Subscriber Agreement (SSA), appropriate actions may be taken by Valve in order to punish the offending party by restricting access to certain Steamworks features or even terminating the contract.


Uploading inappropriate content may lead to your trading cards eligibility revoked.
Update: Now all developers are not eligible for trading cards since the 16th of May, 2017 until Valve can confirm the game as legitimate.


Developers who abuse their Game Bans feature will have it revoked:

Originally posted by “Banned by Game Developer (Game Ban)” Steam Support Article:

Will Valve review developer requests for banning in any way?

Developers must be approved to use this system, and Valve reserves the right to revoke access to the system if the developer abuses it.

Steam key requests are manually reviewed and the history of your past requests and sales is looked into. This means that if you, for example, have 100 sales on Steam and are requesting 500k keys, your key request will most likely be denied and you will receive the following message:

Your key request may have been denied because the request was for a package that contains a release state override for the included appIDs, which would make the content immediately playable upon activation. Unless a request for testing/promo/press override keys is a small batch and properly tagged for use, it may be denied.

If the Key request is intended for commercial purposes, be sure to use a package that does not override the release state of your app.

For more information on keys, please see our documentation here: https://partner.steamgames.com/documentation/keys

All onboarding Steam partners must agree to a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA); if the NDA has been breached in any form, Valve has the right to terminate the contract and partnership. An example of that can be leaking Steam Sales dates (which are confidential).


Developers are forbidden to manipulate reviews by any means. This includes soliciting reviews by granting players free keys in exchange for a review, posting fake reviews by yourself or using grey-area bot review services.

Developers are not allowed to grant licenses of their games to accounts that are involved in a so-called "trading cards farming", a process where a developer generates thousands of trading cards of practically zero value, and then makes community market transactions in order to have a cut from these "sales".

Removing negative reviews, censoring users on the forums and showing negative behavior towards your customers is not allowed.

Valve will terminate the contract should one of aforementioned violations occur.


When uploading content to Steam, you state that you are either an owner of the content you upload, or you have permission from the legal owner to do so. If it is discovered that you have illegally uploaded someone else's intellectual property without their permission, Valve will terminate your contract.

As long as you use your account with responsibility when it comes to its security, not violate the Steam Subscriber Agreement, abide by the Steam Online Conduct and follow the Rules and Guidelines For Steam, then you will not be affected by any of the bans mentioned in this guide.