Recently got a VPN because I’ve become increasingly paranoid (It’s getting crazy out there), but… is it a bannable offense to use it while on Steam?
I’m finding mixed answers, and I wanna be safe, so I figured the Fediverse might know.
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I exclusively use a VPN with everything and have done so for years. If steam has an issue, they have yet to inform me lol.
On a serious note tho, there is an issue if you use a VPN to access store prices for a country outside your own. Regional pricing means that some people game the system and Valve rightfully cares about that.
Yeah I changed it so my VPN says I’m in America for this reason
You don’t have to, your regional price is linked to your account’s regional setting so that if you move you can legitimately change your region but VPN doesn’t affect it at all.
still…
Valve only cares if you’re setting your VPN to a different region to take advantage of differences in currency exchange rates. It used to be really popular to buy the version of a game released for random eastern European countries with poorer economies for a lot less than you’d spend in USD, until Valve started cracking down on that.
As long as any purchases you make from your account are done from the correct country for the content you’re buying (and as long as the billing address on your credit card also matches the correct country), the VPN shouldn’t set off any red flags or result in any bans.
Cool, so the only thing I’d need to worry about is if I actually went into my Steam settings to change the region, not so much the VPN?
Yup, as long as all your Steam Store and payment method settings match the country you’re buying from, you should be good. My roommate games on Steam from a VPN all the time and has had no issues in the several years that he’s done that (though I don’t believe he’s using the VPN to change his location, just to hide his IP).
I haven’t had any issues. I’ve used one for about 6 months. It never even occurred to me it might be a problem with Steam.
In general there’s nothing wrong with using a VPN. And in particular, steam doesn’t care that my home network funneled all traffic via work for a while.
About 10 years ago my steam account was locked for 3 months after bypassing regional pricing. At the time they said it was first and last warning and the only reason they didn’t ban my account was I’d previously got approval to change the steam URL to redirect to a different store region to purchase a game not available on my default store.
Be careful.
Previously got approval? Whut?
I asked Steam support if I could change the store to buy a game not available in my region. They gave approval.
Really? What was the game?
I’ll allow it.
