Players evading bans by using game sharing with friends feature on Steam, way to fix/detect?

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Brian Jordan asked Feb 23, '21

Players evading bans by using game sharing with friends feature on Steam, way to fix/detect?

We're learning some players are evading their Steam bans by:

0. (Getting banned)

1. Creating a new steam account

2. Adding that as a friend

3. Sharing the game with that account

4. Playing

Expected: this other account would not be able to play as the copy they are being shared has been banned

Actual: they can play the game (even with same username), can't ban them permanently

They are also utilizing VPNs to avoid IP bans being effective.

Is there a way to disallow shared copies with bans from accessing multiplayer to evade bans? Or all shared copies?

sdks Account Management Friends

1

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brandon@uprootstudios.com commented · Feb 24, 2021 at 12:19 AM

@Brian Jordan

The only thing I can think of to prevent this would be to ban the device instead (check the device ID or read/write a file somewhere on the device)

0 ·

Answer 1 · 2021-02-23T16:03:49Z

brendan answered Feb 23, '21

That's really going to be a question for Steam. When a user signs in with Steam, we're getting that user account info from their service - that's the only information we have to work with. If they're using an account that looks like a different user to us, we have no way of knowing that.

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