The article was posted on the 19th, so I doubt that this is it. But let's go with it!
Originally Posted by
Gamespot
•Send friend invites
This one is dumb. I started out on Steam playing TF2 and didn't actually buy anything off of Steam for two years. If this security feature existed, half of my friends list wouldn't exist, and I wouldn't have been able to keep in touch with some of the most fun people I've met. I see what they were trying to do-keep a malicious user from adding a friend, and they can't talk to that person at all, not to mention trade with them.
Originally Posted by
Gamespot
•Open group chat
I didn't even know group chat existed, but if I can guess correctly, I would think that you would need to be friends with two other people in order to even open a group chat with them. So this one is a little redundant (if I'm wrong about this, feel free to correct me. I don't have access to Steam when I'm writing this).
Originally Posted by
Gamespot
•Vote on Greenlight, Steam Reviews and Workshop items
This one makes more sense than the first two. It keeps a workshop creator from making a bunch of bogus accounts to vote on their item multiple times, but this must be balanced against how many people only have F2P games such as TF2, Toribash, Dota, etc. who also want to be able to vote on workshop creations.
Originally Posted by
Gamespot
•Participate in the Steam Market
I assume 'participate' means both buying and selling items on the market. This doesn't make much sense either, since my first purchases were on the market. I suppose it could keep a scammer from putting up an item from his main account and then having the alt buy it for $5, thus bypassing the $5 security feature and only losing a few cents in the process, but it also alienates a lot of users who just want to buy a few keys for Dota or TF2 or whatnot, and now they have to go through the Steam store and end up paying up to a full dollar more per key.
Originally Posted by
Gamespot
•Post frequently in the Steam Discussions
This seems like it's tied to voting on workshop items, and I see what their thought process was. If a user hasn't spent any money on Steam, then they are probably not going to be active in discussions, so why not put on a post per day/week cap? I don't have much to say about this, since I am not active in discussions even as a paying user.
Originally Posted by
Gamespot
•Gain Steam Profile Levels (Locked to level 0) and Trading Cards
Again, for those who only play F2P games, this is a needless pain in the ass. Both TF2 and Dota have trading cards associated with them, and if players want to collect the cards and gain Steam levels with only what the Steam program will give them, they now cannot do that.
Originally Posted by
Gamespot
•Submit content on the Steam Workshop
Similar to Discussions, Valve probably assumed that a F2P player is not going to be invested enough to create and submit their ideas to the workshop, so why not slap that restriction on there?
Originally Posted by
Gamespot
•Post in an item's Steam Workshop Discussions
See discussions and workshop submissions.
Originally Posted by
Gamespot
•Access the Steam Web API
Someone tell me what this is.
Originally Posted by
Gamespot
•Use browser and mobile chat
Again, this one makes no sense whatsoever. There is no conceivable reason for Steam to disallow players from using the integrated browser. Mobile chat is linked to the friends and group chat, so they should have just said chat in general is disabled. It doesn't make it any less dumb though.