Valve Now Restricts Some Steam Features Until 5 USD Is Spent In The Store

Valve has introduced a new requirement for Steam users in order to prevent spamming and phishing, limiting account features until at least $5/£3.35 has been spent on the digital storefront.

Until users have coughed up the five bucks they’ll be restricted from sending friend invites, gaining any Trading Cards whatsoever, or voting on Steam Greenlight, amongst other things. If you’re kitted out with a Steam account and you’re only plugging away at free-to-play titles such as Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2, then you’ll need to splash a bit of cash in the store in order to regain access.

"We've chosen to limit access to these features as a means of protecting our customers from those who abuse Steam for purposes such as spamming and phishing," Valve explained in an update on Steam.

"One of the best pieces of information we can compare between regular users and malicious users are their spending habits, as typically the accounts being used have no investment in their longevity. Due to this being a common scenario we have decided to restrict certain community features until an account has met or exceeded $5.00 USD in Steam."

Steam features unavailable until $5 spent:

• Sending friend invites
• Opening group chat
• Voting on Greenlight, Steam Reviews and Workshop items
• Participating in the Steam Market
• Posting frequently in the Steam Discussions
• Gaining Steam Profile Levels (Locked to level 0) and Trading Cards
• Submitting content on the Steam Workshop
• Posting in an item's Steam Workshop Discussions
• Accessing the Steam Web API
• Using browser and mobile chat

If you’re a physical copy gamer then you’re most likely to be hit by these new restrictions, activating a retail game won’t count towards the $5 - you’re going to have to spend some cash on the store. The upshot is we should stop getting spammed so much by trade and friend requests, although spammers always seem to managed to find a way somehow.

Is this change going to be a nuisance for you? Would you rather Valve found a different workaround than forcing you to spend money?