VPN and Steam

[Angelhearth]

I have recently started using VPN as default, on startup, and notice that every now and again (once or twice a week) Steam starts downloading most of my Workshop content from scratch. It's always after a restart of the PC. Is this because my VPN provider has chosen to connect me through another hub, maybe even country, since last Steam was restarted? If so, is this something Steam is aware of, and will do something about? Especially after the new EU regulations on Internet more and more people will probably start using VPN, so if it isn't a problem now, it will soon become one.

[hawkeye]

As ar as I know the usage agreement bans use of vpn's. I don't think getting banned is automatic. It might be if purchasing or playing multiplayer games. There is a public blacklist of known vpn ip's which media companies use to block content regardless.

[𝔇ave]

steam won't do anything about it since you are not supposed to be using a vpn while connected to steam. if you are found to be doing so your account can be terminated

http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

"You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose. If you do this, Valve may terminate your access to your Account."

[Angelhearth]

Originally posted by hawkeye:

As ar as I know the usage agreement bans use of vpn's. I don't think getting banned is automatic. It might be if purchasing or playing multiplayer games. There is a public blacklist of known vpn ip's which media companies use to block content regardless.

If you read it closer you will see that it say "You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose. If you do this, Valve may terminate your access to your Account." I do neither. I live in Norway, I have in no ways tried to fool Steam into believing I live anywhere else. Also, I do not use VPN to circumvent Steams policies in any way. If they want to deny their users the right to use VPN all together they should probably say so, since what they have written is not that.

Originally posted by Dave:

steam won't do anything about it since you are not supposed to be using a vpn while connected to steam. if you are found to be doing so your account can be terminated

http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

"You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose. If you do this, Valve may terminate your access to your Account."

There's a difference between terminating the account and terminating the access to it. Other than that, read my answer to hawkeye.

[𝔇ave]

Originally posted by Angelhearth:

Originally posted by Dave:

steam won't do anything about it since you are not supposed to be using a vpn while connected to steam. if you are found to be doing so your account can be terminated

http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

"You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose. If you do this, Valve may terminate your access to your Account."

There's a difference between terminating the account and terminating the access to it. Other than that, read my answer to hawkeye.

it's the same thing. you will no longer have access to the account.

this is the part you need to be wary of..

or for any other purpose.

by using a vpn while connected to steam you fall under that category.

i can't find any record of people losing their account access simply by using a vpn. but if you violate any of the terms with said vpn then it's on you..

afaik a vpn masks your location. that's the whole point of it. this is against the terms

[Angelhearth]

Originally posted by Dave:

i can't find any record of people losing their account access simply by using a vpn. but if you violate any of the terms with said vpn then it's on you..

afaik a vpn masks your location. that's the whole point of it. this is against the terms

I think trying a case based on something as vague as "or for any other purpose" will fail miserably.

[𝔇ave]

Originally posted by Angelhearth:

Originally posted by Dave:

i can't find any record of people losing their account access simply by using a vpn. but if you violate any of the terms with said vpn then it's on you..

afaik a vpn masks your location. that's the whole point of it. this is against the terms

I think trying a case based on something as vague as "or for any other purpose" will fail miserably.

Money talks in a courtroom. Valve has lots of it..

In any case I don't think you need to worry if you don't violate the terms.

As far as steam making their client work with VPNs. Not going to happen anytime soon

[FeilDOW]

Originally posted by Angelhearth:

Originally posted by Dave:

i can't find any record of people losing their account access simply by using a vpn. but if you violate any of the terms with said vpn then it's on you..

afaik a vpn masks your location. that's the whole point of it. this is against the terms

I think trying a case based on something as vague as "or for any other purpose" will fail miserably.

You have no case because you agreed to the terms. I guess you could try suing Valve if they do terminate access to your account, but I hope you have a very big team of very expensive lawyers to try and get access to your account back.

I use a VPN as well just not when I have steam open, not worth the risk to me.

[R.A.T. Army *MST3K*]

I've heard people say before that Steam doesn't allow the use of VPNs. I was on a VPN for a very long time, 4-5 years and never had an issue.

Granted this could be a newer rule implemented since then. But from about 2004-2009 I was on a VPN. Never did anything with it. But where I was at the time used one so...I was just kind of stuck with it.

Didn't know it was against the TOS, never checked, but it might not have been back then. 2004 was a long time ago.

[Angelhearth]

Considering how the net has changed, not being allowed to use VPN for privacy issues would probably not work. Too many people use them now, and if you check the advice of people who ought to know a thing or two, not using VPN is a real safety hazard.

[FeilDOW]

Originally posted by Angelhearth:

Considering how the net has changed, not being allowed to use VPN for privacy issues would probably not work. Too many people use them now, and if you check the advice of people who ought to know a thing or two, not using VPN is a real safety hazard.

At the end of the day when you agree to a ToS what you think matters very little, it's follow the rules or dont use the service.

Just keep using a VPN if your scared and just hope steam doesn't start cracking down. What do you think is going to happen or could happen if you dont use a VPN with steam?

[Angelhearth]

Originally posted by FeilDOW:

Originally posted by Angelhearth:

Considering how the net has changed, not being allowed to use VPN for privacy issues would probably not work. Too many people use them now, and if you check the advice of people who ought to know a thing or two, not using VPN is a real safety hazard.

At the end of the day when you agree to a ToS what you think matters very little, it's follow the rules or dont use the service.

Just keep using a VPN if your scared and just hope steam doesn't start cracking down. What do you think is going to happen or could happen if you dont use a VPN with steam?

What I meant is that if, by any insane chance, Steam should block me, then it might actually be as if they opened Pandora's box, things might actually turn out ugly for them.

[FeilDOW]

Originally posted by Angelhearth:

Originally posted by FeilDOW:

At the end of the day when you agree to a ToS what you think matters very little, it's follow the rules or dont use the service.

Just keep using a VPN if your scared and just hope steam doesn't start cracking down. What do you think is going to happen or could happen if you dont use a VPN with steam?

What I meant is that if, by any insane chance, Steam should block me, then it might actually be as if they opened Pandora's box, things might actually turn out ugly for them.

How do you figure? Having a steam account is not a right it's a service and you agreed to the terms of service when you made your account.

If you don't like the terms of service you're free not to have a steam account.

[Angelhearth]

Originally posted by FeilDOW:

Originally posted by Angelhearth:

What I meant is that if, by any insane chance, Steam should block me, then it might actually be as if they opened Pandora's box, things might actually turn out ugly for them.

How do you figure? Having a steam account is not a right it's a service and you agreed to the terms of service when you made your account.

If you don't like the terms of service you're free not to have a steam account.

I don't think you get my angle here. If they block me then they have to block everyone else that uses VPN, right? Steam has millions of subscribers, right? How many of those millions do you think uses VPN? Also, I have a right of privacy, it's one of the most fundamental rights in the US, where any court proceedings would be held . What do you think denial of basic rights would turn out in a US court? We're not talking about me, or most other VPN users, using VPN to get around Steams restrictions, we're talking about privacy and absolutely nothing else. So, as long as Steam can't prove that the use of VPN is to circumvent any restrictions they have in place, considering geographical locations, they would most probably loose. And you wouldn't need a very good lawyer to get that point through either.

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

Originally posted by Angelhearth:

I have recently started using VPN as default, on startup, and notice that every now and again (once or twice a week) Steam starts downloading most of my Workshop content from scratch. It's always after a restart of the PC. Is this because my VPN provider has chosen to connect me through another hub, maybe even country, since last Steam was restarted? If so, is this something Steam is aware of, and will do something about? Especially after the new EU regulations on Internet more and more people will probably start using VPN, so if it isn't a problem now, it will soon become one.

Do you use it to access sites who can't be bothered with the EU and hence lock you out or just to not get the information and questions?

The former exist but it's the later which is the most annoying. But as far as privacy goes it didn't made things worse. It did make things "better" but suddenly it's very noticable how massive the tracking is and it's a pain to try to get rid of it. As long as one is fine just accepting it then it's not all that much work relative before.

One alternative to a VPN is to use Firefox and change it so that it try to prevent tracking and third party cookies even for normal surfing. Of course that and VPN doesn't do the same thing and an even better solution for improved privacy is to use both. Could use the VPN to get full access and not have the annoying questions and Firefox to make their efforts a bit less successful.

Originally posted by Dave:

steam won't do anything about it since you are not supposed to be using a vpn while connected to steam. if you are found to be doing so your account can be terminated

http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

"You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose. If you do this, Valve may terminate your access to your Account."

"or for any other purpose" was very vague and they kinda should update that to just accept modern Internet.

I have turned on VPN but not for Steam reasons but for other reasons and I may not shut down Steam before doing so. Then again I don't always have Steam running so I don't really know how often they are used together. They should limit that to trying to access content one shouldn't have access to, to make purchases from other markets, to add keys from different regions, launch games one can't launch otherwise, for scams and such. As in use it to abuse their service. I don't use a VPN all the time but I can see why someone would want to do that too.

The service providers and game developers should care more about their audience and trying to keep them happy. I spend a lot of money onto their products/services and they should value that and try to keep me as customer not try to convince me to stop.

Do Windscribe for the web-browser only affect web traffic or the whole connection? Is that a solution if one just want it for web?

Originally posted by Dave:

Originally posted by Angelhearth:

There's a difference between terminating the account and terminating the access to it. Other than that, read my answer to hawkeye.

it's the same thing. you will no longer have access to the account.

this is the part you need to be wary of..

That's true. It's something to wary about. And something I do wary about with GTA V and Witcher 3 which I've bought but which kinda seem to hate modifications even though there's mods for them and I would kinda feel like it would be fine if I used them in single player.

Anyway. It's also something they should wary about. Since I've bought games for multiple thousands of dollars limiting my access would be terrible business sense.

[Angelhearth]

Originally posted by Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism:

Thumbs up!