I can't add friends? It's been over a 15 days

[LyreX]

Whenever i want to add someone

"It looks like you've sent too many friend invites. To prevent spam, you'll have to wait before you can invite more friends. Please note that other players can still add you during this time."

I haven't been able to add anyone for almost 15 days.
I got this ban even though I didn't spam. It is usually said to be opened within 14 days, but my problem still continues. Has anyone had or overcame this problem?

[mimizukari]

If it's anything like old restrictions used to be you need to completely stop trying to add people while you're under that restriction. Wait 2 weeks then try again and don't try before then. You triggered it by suspicious behavior with how frequently you added friends and whether or not you've been reported by anyone for actions you did after adding them or if many people blocked/ignored your request.

also how is 15 days a month and a half?

[MoonC A T]

I've heard of it being up to a month, but if it is truly over 1.5mos, which is doubtful based on your 15 day statement (it seems you don't know how long it's been) I would contact support. Here is the correct link:

https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithCommunityContactSupport

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

That's the invite spam cooldown. Have them invite you instead or...

Stop sending requests. Everytime you do, it resets the cooldown.

The cooldown varies from 1 week up to 1 month "from the last time you saw the error message." Key point in quotes. This means if you saw the message today, you have to wait a full month before you can send another. Have them add you instead.

Read this post that explains a little bit of the new restriction...

Originally posted by ReptaR LFT:

Originally posted by Ogami:

You should be able to send 30 friend requests each week.
After 30 send you have to wait a week before you can send more.
If you still cant send a friend request after 6 weeks like you described, you should contact Steam Support.
There is clearly something wrong there.

Did do so, apologies for forgetting to mention. This is what they replied with before closing the ticket abrubtly:

The duration is different for each user and can last 1 week or up to 1 month from the last time you saw the message. Please note, Steam Support is also unable to remove or modify this limit.

We don't have any further information in regards to this limit but if you would like to share your thoughts or suggestions regarding it, we encourage you to share it in the Steam Discussions as this forum is regularly read by the Valve Development team.

Since there's not much more that we can say or do for this, I am going to go ahead and close this help request.

If you have any other unrelated questions or issues, please create a new one and we will be happy to assist you.

Steam Support / Jr. Portal Cake Tester
Vido

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/2299597907734477316/?tscn=1591660294#c2299597907734515946

The cooldown has many variables for when the account gets this message. No 1 account is the same in this matter. Some will get it after 1 invite, others 30.

[LyreX]

Originally posted by mochikaeru:

If it's anything like old restrictions used to be you need to completely stop trying to add people while you're under that restriction. Wait 2 weeks then try again and don't try before then. You triggered it by suspicious behavior with how frequently you added friends and whether or not you've been reported by anyone for actions you did after adding them or if many people blocked/ignored your request.

also how is 15 days a month and a half?

I spelled the title wrong. I was going to write it as 15 days

[Vandal]

These types of issues are common when programmers attempt to create a system that punishes bad actors. The main issue in them isn't that they observe negative events and act on them. It's that they pretty much never observe good events to counterbalance the allegedly bad events. Simply put, being anyone other than someone who is 100% quiet will result in you receiving more reports even if you are doing things like saying what the enemy are doing in a tactical game where that type of call is essential at higher levels. If you happen to be at a lower level or playing with a stack of trolls, you can receive extremely hostile attention for saying "There's 2 mid."

In my case, I have added a handful of people since CS2 came out to increase the number of people I can play with that make calls. I have gotten 16 accepted invites that are on my friend's list right now in that time. Maybe, I sent 30 total? I have no idea to be honest. Not everyone is going to fall in love with me over a few games. The madness is that the positive 16 accepted and retained plus the following games played with each other is absent in their analysis.

To sum it up, to be loved you must be hated. If you put yourself out there in any capacity, there will be haters that want to see you fail like they do. They have an internal rule never to express emotions, communicate, joke, etc. since those aren't things they feel comfortable doing themselves. It's a lot like how on Reddit, a person will get 100s of upvotes for saying an attractive man who has done the sin of caring what clothes he wears, pursuing the positive quality of beauty, has a "punchable face". Yeah... I guess men aren't allowed to wear anything but jeans and a t-shirt or else, according to you.

I have had related issues in Valorant where I'll tell some jokes and be lively in between rounds sometimes (I am quiet during the round except to call since sound is important). There will be people laughing and even people adding me to their friend's lists, but again, since they only tally up allegedly negative events, all the antisocial people who dislike anyone who puts themselves out there will eventually cause a communication ban on me. Funny enough, these bans were also correlated with my performance in game of all things. I had an old computer, and eventually, I got a literal 1-year ban. Around the same time, I bought a new PC that gets 600 FPS, improving my performance from the 60 FPS PC, and of course, I made a new account. Despite not changing my social behavior at all, I have received zero communication bans so far. Basically, people become bloodthirsty to anyone who has put themselves out there when they are perceived as the reason a person lost a game in something competitive. To a psychotic extent. They want to "punish" you for regular talking combined with getting few kills. How dare I make them lose some RR.

I mean, one time I went 20 kills and 1 assist, winning a game of DotA 2 largely due to my performance, and afterward, I was punished with 4 low priority matches for griefing. The reason I got those reports was my build wasn't the exact thing the streamers and guides recommended (It was based on the actual line up I was facing), and I would do things like discuss what strategy the enemy is using. You'll tend to receive reports any time you are different from center mass at all, and unfortunately, gaming is an activity where many people are super quiet and view communication in a negative light, being highly sensitive to any kind of evaluation even though mature people pay others for this kind of thing, thinking together, when they hire a tutor. They might also view any kind of attempt at teamplay (communication, discussing recent successes and losses, ideas of how to end up winning, etc.) as defying their expectation that everyone adhere to some strategy or alleged truth that they have developed privately in their own head that they find self-evident, not understanding all the builds seen on stream relate to the meta everyone is following at the top. They conflate "I saw it on a stream" with "anything else is a total troll, and I want to punish you with inaccurate reports." If you aren't against a similar line up, different items might become more useful. It's just that the pros never face those lineups since they are suboptimal. Or maybe, by virtue of not being in the top 0.01%, my performance isn't optimal. In either case, I don't deserve 4 low priority queue matches.

When their low priority thing went live, I eventually had to stop discussing things that fragile people could not handle (you know, that they may have made an error. No big deal just TP here when 1 person dives me, and we can kill them rather than me dying and them snowballing.). My MMR steadily went down about 400 points due to that against an average I had maintained for years, and it never went back up

Gamers, especially those who put in enough time to get to maybe the top 10%, can be very, very fragile people for some reason. I haven't experienced anything like that IRL in competitive environments. Instead, I've experienced the opposite: That people who succeed tend to discuss what is going on and what can improve and how. Yeah, imagine not thinking you are infallible lol. And being in the top 10% rather than the top 0.1% implies EVERYONE there, including me, in the game does different incorrect things or else they would march up in rating to 0.1%. I was, of course, always open to anyone suggesting something with me. Here is how that would usually look:

Them: "[insults] do this, idiot. You suck."
Me: "Can you explain your reasoning? I don't get why based on this."
Them: "Muted."

Or other times:
Them: [Only insults]
Me: "What do you want me to do differently. If you explain it, maybe I can do it."
Them: "Muted you suck."

I am not exaggerating when I say that literally about 95% of people discussing the game was in these two forms. I can see why they assume report = communicating = must be bad communication, but alas, their system caught anyone who discussed anything due to the toxicity in the environment and due to those that "punish" others who defy their private beliefs unexpressed. You know, I'd rather let 10 criminals go free rather than punish one innocent person. Nah, not at Valve. Who cares that they earn 100s of millions and can vet reports for accuracy. Instead, we'll apply MACHINE LEARNING am I right guys? I've heard that term before, so likely, it can solve every problem out there just like moving average plus 2 moving standard deviations used to.

It is really remarkable how the attitude of players in game can result in almost a guaranteed win or loss and that these same people are affecting other people with their perceptions since Valve's system has zero capacity to judge the truth of a report or any capacity to account for indicators of positively communicating for the team where a person naturally receives an increase in both good and bad indicators.

One last thing: The Valve system was so bad in Dota 2 that they used a moving average over time to judge if someone should be punished. I was getting put into low priority queue after the 2nd day everyone got their new reports to use, because I'd play so many games with their limits based likely on something naive like an average of reports all players get per unit time plus 2 standard deviations (Yes, Valve, I've seen +2 SD as well. How mathematical and intelligent of you, I assume.). Well, the average good person also plays 2 games every 3 days rather than 8 games a day, so a good actor playing more might flag as a bad actor with such a terribly simple system. And to think: They put that punishment on everyone without vetting anything. I had to make a lot of noise on their dev forum until they actually patched it to use a moving average of reports PER GAMES PLAYED. The error was so simple I'll never know if my threads resulted in the fix, but I definitely reported it with passion as it was affecting my ability to game, punishing me simply for playing more than average. Well, I'd still sometimes get punished after the fix (as detailed above. And I "fixed" my behavior, losing 400 MMR), but at least, it would happen seemingly at random based on who wanted to punish me for both talking and performing poorly (God, I HATE poor performers, am I right? Hmm maybe people who use this type of reasoning are the poison themselves.) rather than exactly within the first 1 or 2 days everyone got their reports. The point is that Valve maintains this almost elite silence like all their systems are designed with great quality by mathematical geniuses, but in this case, we have a clear example where anyone who is a junior learning engineering with a C GPA who played DotA 2 could figure out the moving average over time makes no sense when people play different amounts of games per unit time. The more someone plays, the more the expected value of reports for a GOOD actor will be out of rage and whatnot ("This person lost us the game by performing poorly. I will now punish them!").

And now, I suddenly can't add people to my friend's list since I've somehow been conflated with a scammer or harasser by assuming who gives a ♥♥♥♥, just add good people and they'll either accept or decline. Are you serious? I already have three different social groups I play with now, multiple people in each, that I didn't have before, but somehow, I'm to be limited due to math. Great job, geniuses.