Steam account not working, legally bought game cannot be installed :Solved by steam customer support

[William Gaatjes]

My old steam account is no longer working because i have not used it in years.
And my old hotmail address is also canceled. Thank you microsoft.

Now i am in the situation, that i have legally bought a game. I have it right in front of me.
I made a new steam account but i cannot use the game.
The game product code is noted as duplicated.
I am not able to install it.



Does anybody know what to do ?
Is there some email address that i can mail to ?

It is half life 2 episode pack.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Well, i send a request to the steam support.
I will wait and see.

 

[Newbian]

This is what happens when you don't maintain your accounts if you use them.

Now you play the waiting game but not having your account info for both steam and the email associated with it is going to be rough as you are a security risk now.

Also try playing half life 3 instead as it's so much smoother.

 

[DaveSimmons]

If you're going to abandon your accounts for years on end and expect them to be maintained, perhaps you should be buying from gog.com instead?

Also, what is the game? Many 10 year old games only cost a few dollars to re-buy.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Going out on a limb here, but this particular game has never been on GOG.

 

[Imp]

Doesn't Steam have a return policy now?

Yep:
http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/

You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn't meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn't like it.

Edit: Oh, wait. You bought it years ago and can no longer play it?

 

[William Gaatjes]

Look, if valve wants to provide a service with accounts, it is their job to keep those accounts active.
Secondly, i paid for that game already(In a store, i have a DVD with a product code).I am not going to pay for it again. That is just silly.
It is half life 2 episode pack and i only played it once. I wait until i almost have forgotten the game and then i play it again. I always do this. I am not in the habit of playing a game over and over again.
I already asked support, it is now wait and see.
If they deleted my account because i have not used it for a few years, they sure have a log about my old account.
Thus, they can fix it.

 

[Rifter]

Always link your steam account to your cell phone, then even if your email gets cut off you are still good.

 

[rivethead]

Look, if valve wants to provide a service with accounts, it is their job to keep those accounts active.
Secondly, i paid for that game already(In a store, i have a DVD with a product code).I am not going to pay for it again. That is just silly.
It is half life 2 episode pack and i only played it once. I wait until i almost have forgotten the game and then i play it again. I always do this. I am not in the habit of playing a game over and over again.
I already asked support, it is now wait and see.
If they deleted my account because i have not used it for a few years, they sure have a log about my old account.
Thus, they can fix it.

If you have the license key from the DVD couldn't you just create a new Steam account and re-enter the license key?

 

[Rifter]

If you have the license key from the DVD couldn't you just create a new Steam account and re-enter the license key?

Not if it has already been activated before.

 

[DaveSimmons]

If you have the license key from the DVD couldn't you just create a new Steam account and re-enter the license key?

I wouldn't expect that to work if the code was already used with the old account. HL2 required Steam so it couldn't have been played without linking the code.

I'm afraid you're the exception to normal Steam users. You must not have bought many games since 2004 since almost all AAA titles except EA/Origin's require Steam. So very few gamers have ignored their account for a decade. But hopefully support can help you.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I wouldn't expect that to work if the code was already used with the old account. HL2 required Steam so it couldn't have been played without linking the code.

I'm afraid you're the exception to normal Steam users. You must not have bought many games since 2004 since almost all AAA titles except EA/Origin's require Steam. So very few gamers have ignored their account for a decade. But hopefully support can help you.

I hope so too.
I would be very disappointed if valve/steam would deny me a game i bought honestly. Which i always do. I try to support by not going the illegal route.

Doom i am going to buy as soon as i have finished prey. Prey sure looks great with 16xAA. I have everything on max. Unfortunately, the game does not scale higher than 1600x1200 in a sort of widescreen mode. But even then, i have never seen such 3d depth in the game before. There are body parts in that game that look really disgusting.
I have vsync on at a refresh rate of 60Hz and it is locked steady at 60fps. And the RX480 does not even get warm, around 60C and the fans are at around 750rpm. I checked with wattman. I guess the gpu just waits for something to draw all the time. It is that fast.

 

[William Gaatjes]

It would be nice to see how halflife 2 looks. Especially episode 2 with the huge 3 legged robots that charge and shoot.

Edit :
Ii do have to say. Microsoft did a great job with windows 10. It is 64 bit but it runs up till now everything except really ancient stuff. But i have vmware for that. And even vmware runs better since i installed the RX480.

 

[KMFJD]

Not valve's problem that you let the email account associated with your steam account get expired. Hopefully they can resolve this for you but by that time you'll probably have lost interest in playing that old game anyways

/have you tried to recreate the old hotmail account? that sometimes works

 

[William Gaatjes]

Not valve's problem that you let the email account associated with your steam account get expired. Hopefully they can resolve this for you but by that time you'll probably have lost interest in playing that old game anyways

/have you tried to recreate the old hotmail account? that sometimes works

Well, luckily valve is more customer friendly then you are.
My account did not expire, my old email address was canceled for some reason when microsoft went from hotmail to live mail.
My account was still active, but i could no longer login. I think that for security reasons, my password was changed. And i was not able to check with my old email account what the password is or if there is a link(which i doubt is still active for security reasons).
And i think the same happened to my steam account.
Anyway, i was able to give a new email address that will remain in use.
After providing proof to valve/steam customer service that i own the game, my password has been reset and i had to follow all steps for steam guard and now i am downloading the latest version of all half life 2 games that i own.

I would say thank you to the customer support. But i could just press "problem solved".

 

[alcoholbob]

It's probably already baked into the Steam TOS that they can revoke your game licenses at any time for any reason.

Pretty much any online game these days has a similar TOS for in-game app purchases and the product key of the game itself.

 

[Qbah]

So why did you start with a rant without even trying to contact Steam customer support? Steam accounts don't expire. You forgot your password. Your let your only recovery option (email) expire because you haven't used that email in years (that is typical of any email provider, sans Google I think - it has nothing to do with Valve). And this is somehow Valve's fault?

Hell, within 24 hours you regained access to your Steam account and all it took was an email to their support. I would call that an excellent platform and customer support.

My suggestions:
- update OP and retract that baseless rant, with an update on the speedy access recovery
- update your Steam account settings to add more recovery options

 

[William Gaatjes]

So why did you start with a rant without even trying to contact Steam customer support? Steam accounts don't expire. You forgot your password. Your let your only recovery option (email) expire because you haven't used that email in years (that is typical of any email provider, sans Google I think - it has nothing to do with Valve). And this is somehow Valve's fault?

Hell, within 24 hours you regained access to your Steam account and all it took was an email to their support. I would call that an excellent platform and customer support.

My suggestions:
- update OP and retract that baseless rant, with an update on the speedy access recovery
- update your Steam account settings to add more recovery options

I did not forget my password.
Reading is difficult i see.
I will do nothing you suggest with exception of removing the rant.

 

[KMFJD]

lmao at that Dutch stubbornness....your old email account didn't expire even though it no longer exists...smh

 

[William Gaatjes]

lmao at that Dutch stubbornness....your old email account didn't expire even though it no longer exists...smh

Everybody has a flaw.

 

[WhiteNoise]

I would have been upset too. Very cool that steam worked it out for you though!

 

[William Gaatjes]

I would have been upset too. Very cool that steam worked it out for you though!

The fact that they allow you to change your email is a lifesaver. Be sure that steam will track my account for some time to make sure it is not compromised by some crook.

Yeah, all in all with hindsight, Steam/Valve customer support is the best. :thumbsup: