What happens if you violate Steam's Subscriber Agreement and you have a library of games worth nearly $2,000? As one user learned, you'll lose access to all of those games.
The user in question, who has a total of $1,794.52 worth of games on his or her Steam account, decided to ask how much another person might pay for such an account. "Obviously I don't want someone to pay $1,800 for my account," the gamer wrote on Reddit. "I'm looking at money of course, not full price considering I bought most of them on sale, but maybe we can come to some sort of deal...Of course if someone actually takes me up I'll be removing my credit card information from the account, along with my friends list."
That was a month ago. A little more than a week ago the user was unable to connect with Steam, and was later informed that the account had been disabled for violating the Steam Subscriber Agreement, which explicitly states "you may not sell or charge others for the right to use your account, or otherwise transfer your account." And according to this e-mail chain, the ban is permanent.
In a later Reddit post, the user claims he or she was simply "asking how much someone would pay for a profile like that" and that the account was never actually sold or traded. However, the intention to sell was clearly there, as another post reads "I WAS 'trying' to sell my Steam account on r/gameswap, but that was over a month ago, you can't even access the post now. What pisses me off is that they waited an entire month, up to last night, before disabling my account. They didn't even send me an email [explaining] why it was disabled, I was just logged off of Steam with no warning."
Ars has contacted Valve for comment and will update the story if we hear back.
