Steam support is just a chat bot

[The Nameless]

Not even a scary one like ChatGPT. I'm convinced it is in fact a cleverbot clone that can only post minor variations on form replies.

The following is a copy-paste of my conversation with Steam support. Anyone who cares, please take a copy of this quickly as I wouldn't put it past them to do the D-move and ban me to try and silence this.

After you read, tell me if YOU think I ever got a reply from an actual staff member (despite the, I believe, dishonest "assurance" that I did)


Message from you on Oct 4 @ 3:17am | 23 hours ago
I think your automated system gave me a really absurd spam warning.

How is asking moderators to remove a thread I started a form of spam? Please explain.

Message from Steam Support on Oct 4 @ 4:10am | 22 hours ago
Hi there,

Thanks for contacting Steam Support.

The content was removed by our staff based on an investigation of reports from other Steam users. I have confirmed that the content is not a good fit for the Steam community based on our Global Rules & Guidelines.

The page linked above also explains the reasoning behind these content decisions in greater detail.

As with everything on Steam, we rely on feedback from our community to calibrate our decisions. I have forwarded this report to other members of Valve to be a part of our conversation as we continue to improve our service.

Steam Support
Clement

Message from you on Oct 4 @ 4:45am | 22 hours ago
That response is completely unrelated to what I actually asked. I can only assume I'm still dealing with an automated system.

I would like an actual human staff member to read my question and respond please.

To reiterate: How does asking a moderator to delete a thread qualify as spam? That makes no sense at all. I will keep repeating this question until I receive an answer that actually makes contextual sense.

Message from Steam Support on Oct 4 @ 8:11am | 18 hours ago
I'm sorry to hear that. I assure you that you are talking to a real human.

I checked and found out that this account was given a warning from the community hub due to a violation of our Global Rules & Guidelines. I have confirmed that the warning was applied correctly.

Please ensure you are following the Steam Discussion rules when using this hub in the future.

We use these guidelines along with reports from the community to identify when content or posts need to be removed.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to get back to us.

Steam Support
Perevell

Message from you on Oct 4 @ 8:20am | 18 hours ago
You still didn't answer my question.

PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY A REQUEST TO DELETE A THREAD IS CONSIDERED SPAM. Or, if the wrong post was quoted, please quote the post that actually inspired you to send me this warning.

Please stop sending formulaic replies that have nothing to do with my question, and actually answer me. These evasions are unnecessary and absurd.

Message from you on Oct 4 @ 8:21am | 18 hours ago
And if you send another non-answer, I will keep asking until someone actually does answer.

Message from Steam Support on Oct 4 @ 9:26am | 17 hours ago
Hello,

Thank you for contacting Steam Support.

I took a look at the warning in question, and I can confirm that it was applied correctly.

Please keep in mind that warnings are simply reminders to follow the rules. They do not impose limitations on an account's ability to post. We try to make discussions on Steam as constructive as possible. Warnings help with this and do not prevent an account from making use of the forums.

Please make sure to review Steam's rules to know what content isn't allowed in the Steam Community:
Steam Subscriber Agreement
Steam Community Rules
Steam Online Conduct

If you have any further questions, please let us know - we will be happy to assist you.

Steam Support
James

Message from you on Oct 4 @ 10:53pm | 4 hours ago
I am convinced that I am dealing with an automated system, because you're not answering my question. An actual staff member would be able to actually read my question and reply appropriately. It makes no sense at all that "please delete this thread" could constitute spam, so your repetitive statements that it was applied correctly simply make no sense at all.

Please refer this to an actual staff member. I will never be satisfied with automated replies from a Cleverbot clone.

Message from Steam Support on Oct 5 @ 12:11am | 2 hours ago
Hello,

Thank you for writing back to us. Apologies for any confusion and please know that this is not an auto response, let me look into this for you.

As mentioned, this account was given a warning from this community hub due to a violation of our global rules and guidelines. You can review how we moderate content by reading through our Steam Discussion rules. For your reference, the said content or comment was already deleted due to spamming and will not be restored.

Please keep in mind that warnings are simply reminders to follow the rules. They do not impose limitations on an account's ability to post. We try to make discussions on Steam as constructive as possible. Warnings help with this and do not prevent an account from making use of the forums, please feel free to write a new one.

If you have any further questions, please let us know - we will be happy to assist you.

Steam Support
Vhan

Message from you on Oct 5 @ 12:30am | 2 hours ago
And again, a repetition of the same reply. Does Steam support even have any human personnel, or do you use this same chatbot program to answer every reply and pretend you actually pay attention?

Once again: Please have a human staff member actually read my question and give me a REAL answer, not this formualic nonsense.

Message from you on Oct 5 @ 1:01am | 2 hours ago
Seriously. I'm not trying to get out of it. I just want you to tell me, specifically, what you're taking issue with. I want a human staff member to tell me, and I am severely disappointed in your reliance on a chatbot program to pretend I am receiving customer support when, in fact, no human attention has been paid to the issue at hand.

Message from Steam Support on Oct 5 @ 1:30am | 1 hour and 36 minutes ago
We understand your concern and appreciate your feedback.

I reviewed the content once more and confirm that this post contains content that is off-topic.

All moderators follow Global Rules & Guidelines to identify violations.

The page linked above also explains the reasoning behind these content decisions in greater detail.

As with everything on Steam, we rely on feedback from our community to calibrate our decisions. I have forwarded this report to other members of Valve to be a part of our conversation as we continue to improve our service.

Removing content is not something we enjoy doing. It's a difficult trade-off that we have to make in order to keep Steam appropriate for all of our users. I am sorry that the content had to be removed.

As I mentioned, your feedback about this does matter to us, and it will be included as we calibrate going forward. The content will not be restored, so I am marking this ticket closed. If you have a different issue, please open a new ticket.

Steam Support
Connie
This help request has been closed.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

Funny thing is, I have seen a few of these Valve Support responses that were personally sent to me as well.

[The Nameless]

Wynters님이 먼저 게시:

Funny thing is, I have seen a few of these Valve Support responses that were personally sent to me as well.

It's like an automated version of a Democrat avoiding questions about the border.

[The Nameless]

For the record, the "deleted content" was stuff I wanted deleted anyway so I'm not mad about seeing it gone. I'm just upset that they'd send me something this nonsensical, try to get away with using something this ridiculously, transparently automated, to handle customer grievances. It's a massive slap in the face, a demonstration that they don't actually care about their quality of service at all.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

I sent in screenshots of blatant sexual harassment in DMs and this is what Steam Valve Support sent to me:

"Hello,

Thank you for contacting Steam Support.

I need some help understanding the issue you’re seeing. Can you please be more specific about the game in question?

Please describe the issue in detail. If you need to, you can attach screenshots of the problem so I can better understand how to help.

Steam Support"

[Mailer]

Steam Support is not a bot. Like it or not, they are humans behind Steam Support using a mix of prescribed phrases to make their work faster.

If you can't get your answer the first time then this is their way of saying that they won't answer it anyhow or how many times you repeatedly ask them.
I've had decisions on my account overruled by them, but they usually don't elaborate any more than that. Your disposition is not anything like that though.

Also, take the warning as a reminder that the thread isn't yours delete anymore once you go past ~6 replies. Changing the content of the initial thread just causes confusion. If you wanted to dissociate yourself from that thread you could've just unsubscribed from it.

[The Nameless]

Mailer님이 먼저 게시:

Steam Support is not a bot. Like it or not, they are humans behind Steam Support using a mix of prescribed phrases to make their work faster.

If you can't get your answer the first time then this is their way of saying that they won't answer it anyhow or how many times you repeatedly ask them.
I've had decisions on my account overruled by them.

Also, take the warning as a reminder that the thread isn't yours delete anymore once you go past ~6 replies. Changing the content of the initial thread just causes confusion. If you wanted to dissociate yourself from that thread you could've just indeed unsubscribed from it.

Nah, there's no way my exchange with them was ever read by a human being on their end. It never made enough sense to have involved a person. I think you're doing the wishful thinking thing. And you're being judgy as hell toward me, so I'm not inclined to take anything you say seriously anyway.

[Satoru]

Just because you don’t like the answer doesn’t mean it wasn’t reviewed. If you keep getting the same answer then maybe the answer is not the problem, but the question being asked

[Lithurge]

You've never seen behind the scenes of a helpdesk. They literally have a set of FAQ's they copy and paste from. They also usually have very little discretion and too high targets to do anything other than provide responses from those Q&A's.

[The Nameless]

Satoru님이 먼저 게시:

Just because you don’t like the answer doesn’t mean it wasn’t reviewed. If you keep getting the same answer then maybe the answer is not the problem, but the question being asked

Or maybe you didn't actually read what I copied from my conversation with them. It never even addressed my question in a way that made sense. A human would have. Ergo, logically, it wasn't a human I was corresponding with.

I'm not interested in your denials.

[The Nameless]

Lithurge님이 먼저 게시:

You've never seen behind the scenes of a helpdesk. They literally have a set of FAQ's they copy and paste from. They also usually have very little discretion and too high targets to do anything other than provide responses from those Q&A's.

I don't buy it. I wasn't talking to a human. You didn't read it either did you?

[Lithurge]

The Nameless님이 먼저 게시:

Lithurge님이 먼저 게시:

You've never seen behind the scenes of a helpdesk. They literally have a set of FAQ's they copy and paste from. They also usually have very little discretion and too high targets to do anything other than provide responses from those Q&A's.

I don't buy it. I wasn't talking to a human. You didn't read it either did you?

Yes I did, it reads like a repeated 'here's our FAQ response, a chat bot would have more variation.

[The Nameless]

Lithurge님이 먼저 게시:

The Nameless님이 먼저 게시:

I don't buy it. I wasn't talking to a human. You didn't read it either did you?

Yes I did, it reads like a repeated 'here's our FAQ response, a chat bot would have more variation.

Okay, maybe it's not even a chatbot. Just a copy-paste macro maybe? Trying to use that to make it better is just sloppy thinking.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

Every company uses autobots to handle reports, but most hybrid appeals.

[The Nameless]

Wynters님이 먼저 게시:

Every company uses autobots to handle reports, but most hybrid appeals.

In this case, the bot even gave a response to me catching on, then gave me a repeat of the same form response anyway.

(sigh) I wasn't even trying to get the warning removed. I know that in the thread in question, I had said things they'd be within their rights to give me a slap for. I just wanted said slap to make some damn sense. To actually know which thing I said, specifically, I was getting a slap for. To show me they even had people paying attention at all. Is that too much to ask?

If they can't even do that, what *can* they do?

I think it's time to find another platform to buy my games on. Steam's become my one go-to source... there's gotta be another way.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

The Nameless님이 먼저 게시:

Wynters님이 먼저 게시:

Every company uses autobots to handle reports, but most hybrid appeals.

In this case, the bot never even noticed that I had caught on.

(sigh) I wasn't even trying to get the warning removed. I know that in the thread in question, I had said things they'd be within their rights to give me a slap for. I just wanted said slap to make some damn sense. Is that too much to ask?

Yes it is to much to ask apparently. I sent them a plethora of screenshots and they sent me a message to send them screenshots. So idk wat is happening over at Valve HQ.

The Nameless님이 먼저 게시:

I think it's time to find another platform to buy my games on. Steam's become my one go-to source... there's gotta be another way.

→ Epic Games or GoG Galaxy.