Did anyone else get account restricted for upvoting the most upvoted review from this game?

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Chuck Apr 13, 2023 @ 6:25pm

Did anyone else get account restricted for upvoting the most upvoted review from this game?

WTF steam?

Your account has recently upvoted a user review that was banned for attempting to scam users or other violations of Steam's Rules & Guidelines.

The author of this topic has marked a post as the answer to their question.
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Originally posted by FREEDOMS117:

Hey so got clarification on why it happened here is the response:

Hey thanks for writing in here and first off, apologies for the delay and the overall experience. I've removed the vote ban on all of the affected accounts, and the lock on your account was removed as Tim mentioned previously.

You can disregard the previous message and I will provide a bit more info below.

Our moderators watch for content that describes how to cheat or describes how to tamper with anti-cheat systems. Those are against our rules and it looks like that is what our moderation team incorrectly identified with this case, leading to the banned review. I agree with your evaluation that this review does not fit that criteria.

Furthermore, the mod identified this review as potentially dangerous to other players, due to some of the steps requiring registry edits. This led to the additional lock that was placed on your account and voter accounts. I can see that your review does not contain phishing links, attempts to scam or deceive players, or anything else that warrants a lock.

I'm happy to unban the review, but think it makes more sense to have that complex and detailed troubleshooting within a Steam guide, along with at least some disclosure about how the steps are 'at your own risk'. The guide could then be linked to directly from the review.

We will also be following up with the developer about the behavior described in the review.

If you have other questions or concerns, let me know.

Steam Support

and the screenshot of the response: https://imgur.com/a/VMIWK02

I am going to ask that the review be restored, and then I will add a note about how I believe the issue is most likely fixed as of 4/14/2023 when I retested and tried to reproduce it in a VM. I did not experience the issue like I personally did on Jan 24th.

Also will remove the registry part, it is only there to completely remove every tiny thing related to the anti-cheat. That registry part is what all uninstalled applications leave behind. So its just extra information. The established connections to a japan IP after the game is uninstalled is the important part, and i believe that although the bug is fixed there should be a record of it. Especially due to the shady behavior surrounding it.

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Showing 106-120 of 159 comments

Phoenix Apr 15, 2023 @ 11:19am

I haven't received an email reply from Steam yet, but I can confirm that I can vote on reviews again as normal. :)

#106

Chaz Apr 15, 2023 @ 11:21am

I put in a ticket - my ban is also lifted, I did not get the same 'Don't do it again' answer that others had though.

If you put a ticket in, mention this thread I think it helps. For my peace of mind this game and the devs will be added to my ignore list. I don't think I'll be so free to upvote anything else again, I don't want this kind of hassle to be honest.

Anyway, if your still banned put ticket in - Steam are now aware of the problem and seem willing to help.

#107

FREEDOMS117 Apr 15, 2023 @ 11:35am

Originally posted by Essedus:
Originally posted by 76561197960287930:

So this is not the banned review?
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198128363815/recommended/1675900/

its the same one that was posted in the Slashdot discussions, idk but I would consider a reversal as being the review itself was also un banned too? https://i.imgur.com/wSchkRp.png

The person who posted the review stated that actions against their account (of which they did not specify the nature of) was reversed. But the review itself remains blocked. I can only assume whatever happened to them initially was worse than what the rest of us got.

The action against my account was a lock on all steam community features for 30days. Couldnt post. No reviewing, no upvoting, no awarding. Everything else was intact.

That was all completely reversed however, which is why I am now able to post.

#108

Gandreg Apr 15, 2023 @ 11:36am

I received a reply from Steam support as well saying the ban had been lifted, but warned against up-voting this type of content again.

What content they are referring to is still completely unknown as they seem unwilling to specify.

There is nothing in the Steam guidelines that says you cannot up-vote a review that contains information about an anti-cheat or drm that a game may have.

If the reviewer provided inaccurate information then the reviewer should be the sole person to be punished. Otherwise, every user has to research to 100% accuracy every comment left in a review. That's insanity. You might as well remove the ability to review at all at that point.

Also, the "official response" by the developer I don't buy for a second. It's very carefully worded. Yes, the developer may not have the power to ban a review, but they can certainly influence or put pressure on a Steam moderator to do their bidding, which I'm sure is what happened.

Last edited by Gandreg; Apr 15, 2023 @ 11:49am

#109

Grand-Guignol Apr 15, 2023 @ 11:36am

My ban was lifted after sending in 3 tickets, with the same canned reply "it's your fault voting on that review, take the L and don't do it again". It's like the steam support is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tone deaf on this mass wrongful ban. Been using steam for 10+ years and this is the first time i consider switching.

And hey Warlander dev now i'll download you game, just to leave a negative review.

#110

Wisnoskij Apr 15, 2023 @ 11:50am

Originally posted by P Snaex:
Hello everyone,
I want you to know that we, as developers and publishers, cannot ban you for leaving a review nor can we delete reviews, or change them. This was done by a Steam moderator after reviewing the post, We are investigating the reason for the moderation with valve. We don't know why they concluded what they did. Still, we suspect it was because the reviews had a lot of misinformation about the anti-cheat, which was fixed long before the review was created.
For up-to-date information on the Anti Cheat, please read this article addressing the concerns we've received from the Community: https://playersupport.plaion.com/hc/en-us/articles/10243728906653-Sentry-Anti-Cheat

For more information on how the Steam review system works, you can read the official documentation from Valve here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews

If you have further concerns about the ban, don't hesitate to contact Steam Support, as many of you already have.

Just to weight in on this, I believe the correct way to deal with old potentially outdated reviews is to reply to the review and mention about how the specified issues have been resolved. While I guess you could make an argument that reviews not on the current patch are outdated and potentially unhelpful that is not how any review system I have ever heard of works. It is also why Steam shows pages of reviews and averages out the scores, because while any single review is going to be one sided incomplete and probably misleading in one way or the other all together they help inform customer decisions.

Last edited by Wisnoskij; Apr 15, 2023 @ 11:56am

#111

nwad Apr 15, 2023 @ 3:06pm

The review text is still in the HTML source code. It recommends against the game and explains how to uninstall the anti-cheat once the game is uninstalled. What's "malicious" about any of that?

#112

nwad Apr 15, 2023 @ 3:15pm

Originally posted by glaphen:
Because he has no evidence of anything, he didn't even enable comments, as you can see it's extremely malicious against the game as it got so much attention for complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and half the reviews just parroted it, which his was a parrot in the first place. His review told you how to save like 1MB of hard disk space or less, good job, a worthwhile review, meanwhile I'm sure your Steam folder doesn't contain dozens of times more space used by uninstalled games.

Looks to me like he informed consumers, who can do their own due diligence. Where's the evidence that the review harmed the game?

It's really beside the point. People who interacted with the review have no responsibility for its content. Seeing there was no "attempting to scam users or other violations of Steam's Rules & Guidelines" just makes this debacle all that much worse.

Last edited by nwad; Apr 15, 2023 @ 3:16pm

#113

cib Apr 15, 2023 @ 4:23pm

I won't be buying any more games from Steam until this gets resolved with a proper explanation of what went wrong. The facts in the review are corroborated by news articles at the time. It would take 5 minutes for anyone to fact check this and reinstate the review.

#114

QuickAluminum Apr 15, 2023 @ 4:37pm

Looks like we found (one of) the user(s) responsible for starting the ball rolling on the mass ban lol. Giaphen is a passionate and woefully uninformed individual for sure.

#115

The author of this thread has indicated that this post answers the original topic.

FREEDOMS117 Apr 15, 2023 @ 5:40pm

#116

ザル Apr 15, 2023 @ 5:48pm

Originally posted by FREEDOMS117:
Hey so got clarification on why it happened here is the response:

Hey thanks for writing in here and first off, apologies for the delay and the overall experience. I've removed the vote ban on all of the affected accounts, and the lock on your account was removed as Tim mentioned previously.

You can disregard the previous message and I will provide a bit more info below.

Our moderators watch for content that describes how to cheat or describes how to tamper with anti-cheat systems. Those are against our rules and it looks like that is what our moderation team incorrectly identified with this case, leading to the banned review. I agree with your evaluation that this review does not fit that criteria.

Furthermore, the mod identified this review as potentially dangerous to other players, due to some of the steps requiring registry edits. This led to the additional lock that was placed on your account and voter accounts. I can see that your review does not contain phishing links, attempts to scam or deceive players, or anything else that warrants a lock.

I'm happy to unban the review, but think it makes more sense to have that complex and detailed troubleshooting within a Steam guide, along with at least some disclosure about how the steps are 'at your own risk'. The guide could then be linked to directly from the review.

We will also be following up with the developer about the behavior described in the review.

If you have other questions or concerns, let me know.

Steam Support

and the screenshot of the response: https://imgur.com/a/VMIWK02

I am going to ask that the review be restored, and then I will add a note about how I believe the issue is most likely fixed as of 4/14/2023 when I retested and tried to reproduce it in a VM. I did not experience the issue like I personally did on Jan 24th.

Also will remove the registry part, it is only there to completely remove every tiny thing related to the anti-cheat. That registry part is what all uninstalled applications leave behind. So its just extra information. The established connections to a japan IP after the game is uninstalled is the important part, and i believe that although the bug is fixed there should be a record of it. Especially due to the shady behavior surrounding it.

Thanks a lot!

#117

Chuck Apr 15, 2023 @ 6:58pm

I don't need any arguments because I DO NOT CARE.
And it seems you are the one looking for someone to argue with... on a random steam game community forum which you also don't play/care about... apparently. How sad is that?

I hope you find what are looking for.
Take care, buddy.

#118