http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2665125 - Another example of accounts still being fully disabled.

I don't think you know what the word rational means if you're claiming to be rational over the issue. The rational inference is that people get autobanned by VAC that aren't doing anything wrong. Yes, the number is certainly small, but it is with perfect certainty non-zero and it does require some degree of supporting evidence to say that nobody ever gets autobanned by VAC without Valve fixing the mistake.

Unless of course you're seriously suggesting that in the decade or so of operation that Valve hasn't once autobanned somebody that wasn't doing anything wrong. I find that rather hard to believe. And if it isn't the case, then you've lost the argument as that was my point. A refusal to accept the most reasonable inference of Gabe's own admission isn't what I would personally regard as rational.

The suggestion that it doesn't happen at all is quite possibly the least rational thing you could have said in response.

Personally, I have better things to do than to continue feeding an obvious troll.

As far as how I look, I don't really care what trolls think of me.

Oh I'm pretty sure that there have been false positives in the past. No-one can get it right 100% of the time.

But using sweeping statements such as:
"Tell that to the many thousands of people that were banned by VAC due to a bug."
is what YOU would label as 'trolling.'
It completely misrepresents the situation.

Now never mind me as I troll along.

nice to see steam not disabling accounts anymore for a transaction gone bad , it could happen to anyone by mistake but i guess they still would want to disable accounts for other serious offenses like hijacked accounts, accounts trying to scam others via trade , bad links etc

Read the third and fourth replies. I so want to nuke those people.

Seriously? This was all over the fucking news. 10 seconds of google-fu should dig it up for you. They wrongfully banned over 10,000 accounts...

they will still disable accounts for more serious offenses such as stolen accounts , scamming others via trade , trying to hack others , but not for a bad transaction that was the issue , one wrong transaction and account would get disabled but they seemed to have made it less painful

The point is the only reason they reversed this banning is because it was such an obvious fuck up. How many wrongful bans of 1-10 people could have happened? Even in said case the first users to ask for help publicly were not only treated like shit by the forum members but also by Valve employees, very unprofessional.

Valve's pulled shit for years because no wronged party has ever had the money plus the will to drag them to court and win. VAC was "infallible" in their words and laughably people believed it was true (probably because they know fuck all about software).

vac did do some wrongful bans but they have been reversed successfully , even to users who did not even know why they had the vac ban first , many users did post later why they got left for dead 2 free, so they did reverse all the bans caused by the bug

for those looking for the false vac bans here it is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Anti-Cheat#False-positive_detections

The only users that have gotten reversals were part of the 10,000 or another mass ban, I'm not aware that any other VAC ban has ever once been reversed (or it's so rare it might as well never happen). It stretches the bounds of all credibility that their software, which produced 10,000 false positives in less than 2 weeks, has never, ever produced another false positive in the years it's been in operation.

The truth is, it does produce false positives and Valve has no system in place to truly eliminate them, otherwise we'd have reversals on record.

For whatever "awesome" that Steam provides, this part is pretty much bullshit.

Ah, the good old double standards in full blow again.

Has anybody ever considered that Steam was this harsh because there are actual liability issues with stolen credit cards and such? If Steam gets notice of fraudulent usage they have to act, or are otherwise liable. Same with Amazon, ebay and whatnot. Steam has, due to the service they provide, a shitty way of doing it. But it's not like some Valve executives sit each day in their office an think "how can I screw our customers now".

Most, if not all cases of unjustified account bans/restrictions are bogus. And often users don't even comprehend that they are doing something illegal. Eg. circumventing regional pricing is a big no no, that even holds up against EU consumer protection laws. Or creating multiple account to farm coal. That is actual fraud. The legal knowledge of gamers is not excactly top notch. Plenty of piracy=stealing or "this games is abandonware and therefore free" threads even on this forum are a testament to that.

I had plenty of "failed transactions", quite a couple of downright illegal games (one even confiscated by court) on my account and Steam won't do shit. Why? Because I'm also a very good customer for them and they simply can't afford to deactivate my account. All those stories about losing "thousands of dollars" worth of Steam games are bogus. Steam wouldn't dare to do that without some pretty solid evidence because otherwise the legal risk would be way to high.

Steam is far from perfect, but the service it offers far outweighs the negative aspects. And having this childish debate over and over doesn't help adressing the real problems Steam has.

I don't think the fallibility or lack thereof of the banning process matters one whit. Even for someone who has been legitimately banned from multiplayer servers for cheating or committed fraud on any purchase should not ever lose access to games they legitimately purchased.

That should be obvious and incontrovertible. This former practice should not be in any way shape or form be defended by the argument: "but they deserved the ban".
No double standard at all. Regardless of the legitimacy of the ban, Steam does not have the right to remove access to ALL games bought from that account. They can remove that game for fraudulent transactions and they can remove access to the multiplayer server a player cheated on, but they cannot remove access to all the games or the game a player cheated on.

This is incredibly anti-consumer.

You don't get banned from all your games for cheating. You get banned from playing on VAC-secured servers in games that use the same engine as the game you were cheating on.

VAC bans only got you banned from serves using VAC, not your library. Sucks for MP heavy games but otherwise it's normal.

And a downright "loose all access to games ban" is very, very rare and most often affects "fake accounts" (those who only have a couple of games in it). The rest get's restrictions or their game removed. Whenever Steam get's notice of fraudulent CC activity they have to act. The "how" is debatable, but they have to at least restrict purchases from this account.

Many of the risk you face on Steam are the same you face in real life. If I go around the corner and buy a bicycle, I can also get this legally taken away from me it if it was stolen (even if it all looked perfectly legal). I can go to the guy who sold it to me, but that is mostly a lost endevour as they usually aren't the kind you can expect money from. Same goes with Steam trading. Every trade is a risk, that's why I don't do it.

And they can take away all your games, because you sign a SSA with each purchase. To totally cancel the SSA however (at least in germany) it must be a very serious contract violation and they must refund you the legitimate games (full price or not is another debate).

I can show you at least 50 accounts that farmed on Christmas sale and never get banned :) And they were big sellers on the forum ;)