Remove the upvote ban when a review you upvoted broke Steam TOS.

[Dr. Death]

As of right now in steam there's a system to prevent bot account/paying for upvotes to potentially malicious or scam sites in reviews. If a review you upvoted has been deemed to break steam TOS the people that upvoted that review get a 1 month penalty before they can make another upvote in a review again. I find this thing to be incredibly counter-productive and while its a sound idea in theory, it means that a number of people that is in theory unlimited, depending on how many upvoted a review, which could also have been written years ago, will be affected by a temporary ban because of the actions of one person. This has happened to me with the case of this review:

https://steamcommunity.com/id/bobbyzero77/recommended/1600/

I think this feature is just terrible.

[holodeck murder mystery]

引用自 davidb11：

From what was said and tested, it uses literally no DRM at all.

IT's too old to use DRM.

It completely works from the folder without any connection to Steam.

Yah, I bought the game earlier today on my alt, specifically to run it on my old win 7 machine, and the game runs without Steam

[Slava Ukraini]

引用自 cSg|mc-Hotsauce：

I really hate how close delete is to edit.

引用自 cSg|mc-Hotsauce：

The topic of the thread is about the upvote ban. Why do we need to go on tangents?

Lmao. She's not even the one who started this tangent. There's literally no mention of or allusions to DRM, piracy or "bypassing" anything in the review, so it would be really interesting to know how it started. Now go back to eating your tall horse you legitimate bank teller. Have a nice day.

Best Wishes, Rembrandt

[Dr. Death]

引用自 cSg|mc-Hotsauce：

引用自 ree：

Does anybody know which DRM it uses then?

The topic of the thread is about the upvote ban. Why do we need to go on tangents?

:qr:

Because the fact that the ban was missplaced signals a flaw in the system. Steam isn't perfect. Its ok that steam isn't perfect, but i'd like to see steam acknowledge its shortcomings and faults to improve rather than pretend they have none.

引用自 davidb11：

The point is, Steam wouldn't have banned the Review for no reason at all.

The weird thing is that the review isn't the only place where the wrapper is mentioned, nearly all the guides of the game that talk about compatibility with modern OS links to the wrapper too, which again, means that the review ban was wrong (which again, its ok, people make mistakes) or the review was banned because of the subsim community link, which is still kinda BS.

Returning to what my original intent of the main post was, the reason why i doubt the usefulness of this small ban is because i personally cant remember seeing bots being used to upvote malicious reviews, although i'd gladly shut the ♥♥♥♥ up if it turns out that was the case and this system is in place to prevent a legit issue.

Besides, i dont even remember when i did that upvote anyways. I only tried that game i think before even the covid pandemic and the review itself is from 2016. I'd understand if the reason for the ban is legit and the upvote itself is recent, i just find it weird to punish me for something so old that i had to google what game it was even talking about.

[davidb11]

That's a fair point.
It really does seem like Steam messed up here.

[davidb11]

引用自 Eiswolfin：

at the very least what Valve should so is that when something is edited, all votes on it are removed, it starts back to no votes at all. That way people can't bet trolled by them upvoting an actually good review/guide/ect, and then person makes an edit and changes it to something that breaks the rules and all those people end up vote banned because of it.

I think there is something already that stops edited reviews from triggering that kind of an incident.
But I'm not 100%.

It would make a lot of sense for that to be done.

[Dr. Death]

引用自 Eiswolfin：

at the very least what Valve should so is that when something is edited, all votes on it are removed, it starts back to no votes at all. That way people can't bet trolled by them upvoting an actually good review/guide/ect, and then person makes an edit and changes it to something that breaks the rules and all those people end up vote banned because of it.

Considering what i upvoted was the review that already triggered the TOS idk if steam already has a system in place where an edit that breaks the TOS does not affect people that upvoted before the edit.

[kaboomboom]

It is not just Steam, but all over the internet.

REVIEWS CAN NOT BE TRUSTED!

Every large corporate entity sells out, and allows manipulation of the end consumer.
Small devs buckle under the pressure too, eventually, because they want to put food on the table.

Too much deceit.

[Tanoomba]

引用自 kaboomboom：

It is not just Steam, but all over the internet.

REVIEWS CAN NOT BE TRUSTED!

Every large corporate entity sells out, and allows manipulation of the end consumer.
Small devs buckle under the pressure too, eventually, because they want to put food on the table.

Too much deceit.

Meh, this "You can't trust reviews" narrative seems to be a holdover from the GamerGate days. The truth is that reviews written by professional critics tend to be honest, well-written and very informative. And while user reviews can vary tremendously in terms of how informative they are, in general the more reviews a game gets the more accurately they represent how the player base as a whole feels about the game. This is especially true on Steam, where people have to own the game they're reviewing and there exist measures to exclude periods of review bombing from the score aggregate.

I don't really see how "selling out" (whatever that means) has any effect on reviews at all, or what you think is being "manipulated".

[Gate]

引用自 davidb11：

From what was said and tested, it uses literally no DRM at all.

IT's too old to use DRM.

...

I'm pretty sure DRM (in one form or another, by other names) has been around since at least the commodore 64 (citation needed!). It's only the implementation that has changed over the years.

There was a time when you had to open up your (physical!) owners manual and search for a number/string/symbol when prompted by said game/software before it would launch.


But, back to the topic;

Under the DMCA and various EU copyright / anti-piracy laws -- any modification of software is a grey area. Steam leans heavily towards "if in doubt" because they can (potentially) be held liable (.. for the support of distribution). Granted a judge would most likely toss the case before it ever came down to any kind of penalty phase, it still costs money to defend. It's cheaper to toss the baby with the bath water.


In the end, what it means to use end-users is this; Be careful who and what you endorse (and up-votes _are_ an endorsement).

[Dr. Death]

引用自 Gate：

引用自 davidb11：

From what was said and tested, it uses literally no DRM at all.

IT's too old to use DRM.

...

I'm pretty sure DRM (in one form or another, by other names) has been around since at least the commodore 64 (citation needed!). It's only the implementation that has changed over the years.

There was a time when you had to open up your (physical!) owners manual and search for a number/string/symbol when prompted by said game/software before it would launch.


But, back to the topic;

Under the DMCA and various EU copyright / anti-piracy laws -- any modification of software is a grey area. Steam leans heavily towards "if in doubt" because they can (potentially) be held liable (.. for the support of distribution). Granted a judge would most likely toss the case before it ever came down to any kind of penalty phase, it still costs money to defend. It's cheaper to toss the baby with the bath water.


In the end, what it means to use end-users is this; Be careful who and what you endorse (and up-votes _are_ an endorsement).

But that law only applies to steam itself IIRC, not to third party mods or addons, not to mention it would need the publisher to actively pursue thsoe that do this, and im pretty sure the publisher went under already.

[Gate]

引用自 Dr. Death：

引用自 Gate：

*snip*

But that law only applies to steam itself IIRC, not to third party mods or addons, not to mention it would need the publisher to actively pursue thsoe that do this, and im pretty sure the publisher went under already.

First, let me preface; I'm not a lawyer. This is from my small experience in dealing with a couple of software houses. Take it as third-hand info with a big grain of salt.


I *believe* it becomes breach-of-law and is then a matter of whether a prosecuting authority would want to attempt to enforce. With the way the current laws have been twisted, they even apply to the *discussion* on how to modify a piece of software.

While a fix for a "dead" game could be argued to be all above board and legal; Technically it's not. It's a real dark subject because of the way the laws are crafted. Copyright grants the holder, immediately upon a works creation, "every" right. Us, as end-users, only have those rights _specifically_ outlined in the license (or those provided under law). We have _no_ others rights. ... including the one to modify.


ok, rant over : )


(urg, this box _needs_ a preview button!)

[Slava Ukraini]

A dynamic library that intercepts calls is not a modification of any software. Stop spreading this FUD

[davidb11]

引用自 Hi 😉,：

A dynamic library that intercepts calls is not a modification of any software. Stop spreading this FUD

You know I'm pretty sure this was a case of Steam messing up.

[Gate]

引用自 Hi 😉,：

A dynamic library that intercepts calls is not a modification of any software. Stop spreading this FUD

*sigh* modification of a program in memory at runtime is still a modification. it's called hooking via dll-injection (depending on language flavor anyway).

modification (in this instance) is defined as any action, process, or mechanism which changes the behavior of a thing to perform in a way not specified by it's creator.

yes, this includes the patching out bugs.
yes, this includes adding support for extra languages.
yes, this includes removal of cd-key checking or other DRM.
... and yes, this includes patching a program to support other resolutions.


I wish you would not spread the idea that you can do anything you want with software (whether you paid for it or not). This is a false ideal. There are restrictions; and you agreed to those restrictions. You do not get to pick and choose which parts of a license (or the law) you will abide.


Example: Steam License Agreement

3. Responsibilities of End User.
• Subject to the grant of license herein above, you may not, in whole or in part, copy,
photocopy, reproduce, translate, reverse engineer, derive source code from, modify,
adapt, merge, translate, disassemble, decompile, or create derivative works based on ... *snip*

As we are seriously derailing this topic, I now return you to our regular programming.

[Slava Ukraini]

引用自 Gate：

*sigh*

How juvenile. Anyway, Microsoft does allow you to hook into their APIs, they even make it simple by including NOPs at the beginning of every function and windows even provides you with a function to create hooks easily

Example: Steam License Agreement

Provide a link

Edit: oh and btw, on modern OSes you don't need to overwrite any memory to intercept api calls. LD_preload ftw

Edit 2: https://www.technologylawdispatch.com/2021/10/in-the-courts/ecj-top-system-ruling-grants-right-to-correct-software-errors/