It's Time for Real Change

A Steam Developer Tried to Ban Me from Steam Entirely - It Backfired

Hey hey hey,

Long time no see!

I hope you've all been keeping well.

So, to keep a long story short (well, as short as can be), it's been quite a busy couple of weeks.

Mainly because I've spent it battling with a developer who tried to come after me for covering his scam game on this group.

For those that aren't in the know, the game in question is Containers developed by Containers Dev, AKA SMAX on Discord, and this developer has done his darndest since to keep me silenced on the platform. So much so, it's affected my postings across social media.

The game has, thankfully, since been banned by Steam, but you can view some of the details I'll be talking about on SteamDB[steamdb.info].

Now, for clarity: the situation has been resolved. Well, at least in this isolated instance. However, it doesn't make it less annoying that this happened, and even more so knowing that this has happened before, and most certainly will happen again.

The game in question Containers was released back in September 2024. However, around 2 weeks ago, I was alerted by a Sentinels user that the game was actually a scam. How was it a scam? Well, it had some fake CSGO items listed on its marketplace. Attempting to deceive the unwitting consumer. It even got to the point, as shown by my post on X[x.com], that some of the items that Containers had were even topping CSGO items in Steam marketplace results.

So, when I got alerted, I wrote a curation on this group, a review and a discussion page (since deleted, but I snapshotted in full prior to deletion here on Imgur)[imgur.com]. I wanted to make sure to alert as many users investing in this game, that it left them susceptibly to a potential marketplace scam. But, at least at first, this seemed to totally backfire on me.

The developer, as you can see from the review and discussion board, had a lot to say in retaliation to what I had to say about the game and the scam ring it was pedalling. And as you can also see from the discussion thread, other users chimed in. Some against, but the majority backing up what I was saying. That the game had been made to deceive users who were playing CSGO, hoping to trick them to buying items that were pertaining to Containers as opposed to CSGO.

Anywho, despite me not reporting the game "officially" or via email to my contacts at Steam, the game got banned shortly after my X post and my curation on here. This then sent the developer into meltdown mode and tried to get me taken down off Steam.

Within 1 hour of the game being removed from Steam, I received the following notice from Steam.[x.com] This was a game ban, the first of which I have ever received on Steam. For those that aren't aware, game bans are mainly intended for multiplayer games, controlled by developers and often issued to users who have been found to be making use of cheat engines in multiplayer games. This ban I received was an immediate red flag and I'm going to show you why, unequivocally, this was issued in a retaliatory manner, in a revenge attempt for me blowing the whistle to a larger audience than the developer was hoping.


The very first red flag as to why this was unscrupulous, was because this game has no multiplayer support. As you can see here, the game was only tagged with single player support, there was no online multiplayer scheme.[steamdb.info] As per Steam's own FAQ's, this game ban system is only meant to apply to multiplayer games, despite this clearly being not the case.

Originally posted by Steam:

Does the system for "permabanning" only apply to online multiplayer games, or any type of game?
The banning system only applies to multiplayer games. The new feature of displaying bans on Steam profiles therefore also only applies to multiplayer games.

As a result, when I launched the game after my ban, I received no further restrictions in how I could play the game, because the game had no online multiplayer. The only impact it had was that it displayed a red warning sign to users visiting my profile,[x.com] saying I had a game ban, which to me, was very bad news. As I detailed here,[x.com] a game ban to me, especially if you were an outsider looking in, was a sign of dishonesty, distrust and an overall negative connotation. I use my Steam profile to reach out to Steam users, developers, and to make my case on forum threads. A game ban is something that is very negative towards my reputation, as, for those not in the know, it can be a big no no, especially when someone in my position attempts to make the case to people to come forward with information they usually wouldn't come forward with.


A user by the name of Caramell Dancer kindly came forward and shared a series of Telegram messages from the developer, they can be viewed here.[x.com] In the long and short of it, the game developer was shown, in a private group chat to his follower to be sharing my X posts and my Steam profile, calling me a bastard, and requesting users to flag and report my account for any reason they could, giving "fraud" as the main reason for reporting me. Not only that, but the developer encouraged his user base to harass me as well, to write harassment on my profile comment section.

Originally posted by Containers:

The bastards mass-reported the game, and it got hidden from the Steam store. A support request has been sent, we are waiting for a response..."Post from this bastard's Twitter:
[Twitter link]

Account of the bastard on Steam:
[Steam link]
Send him reports of any kind, for example, 'fraud.'
And leave a couple of kind words on his profile wall if you can 😉

I wasn't the only user impacted by game bans.

Another user went to the Discord server in an attempt to appeal the ban, to which the developer responded by saying that they would unban them once Steam had unbanned the game.[x.com] A very clear point in that the reason the users' in question (including me) were banned, wasn't because of a just reason. We got banned because the developer was angry that he got banned from Steam. This, when I got sent the screenshots, was the smoking gun I needed to make my case.

I can only guess, that the developer used this to attempt to get the people who he perceived as being behind a "mass reporting frenzy" (in which they assumed Valve compled with blind requests with 0 evidence in their eyes) would write an appeal to Steam support, rescinding their report, that they would be allowed back on Steam. I was told at least 1 user had done this. Me personally, I put up the post linked earlier saying I wouldn't, because my morales and ethical standpoint mattered much more than if I was needing to contest a game ban on my account.

Nonetheless, I received this, and as I mentioned, this was the smoking gun I needed. A confession that these game bans were purely to try and get the game unbanned, or to be used for levy, as opposed for being enforced legitimately.


Annoyingly, my experience with Steam Support was very bad. They gave me some basic copy/paste answers which weren't helpful and I ultimately ran into a dead end.[x.com]

So, instead, I went a step higher.

Those that are familiar with me and the work I do here, know that I do have direct contact with high ups in the Steam team. Initially, despite everyone I spoke to who advised me otherwise, I did want to take the Steam Support route, because I didn't want me being unbanned to be a case that could be argued as "favouritism" or of a similar sort. I wanted it to be a case of strong arguments and unequivocal points that couldn't be argued against. This developer had issued a wrongful ban in an attempt to pursue revenge. However, Steam Support fell short in this regard. So...I decided to concede and email my contacts at Steam.

Now, admittedly, it took them longer than usual to get back in touch, however, I did receive an email back from Alden Kroll stating:

Originally posted by Alden Kroll:

Hey, I totally meant to reply earlier. We appreciate your original report of the issue. Very helpful. As you have seen, we were able to identify all users that had received a game ban from that app, and we've removed it.

Sorry you had to go through that :(

So, it was very much a win-loss.

A big win in that my ban got removed, and ontop of that, the bans of the other users who got impacted got removed as well. However, if it wasn't for me having a tie to people higher up at Steam, I do question how any other person might have fared against this kind of report.

And people agreed with this stance.

YouTuber BigfryTV responded citing that many users had been faced with game bans from a game developer who has allegedly been abusing the system majorly and they have yet to get an appeal like those of us faced with Containers.[x.com]

The fact that it also got to this level as well. We got blackmailed, intimidated and the developer even trying to mass flag my Steam account. And even when faced with this, Steam Support said they couldn't do anything further.

But annoyingly, when I went to my contacts, they immediately saw the problem with this, and not only unbanned me, but unbanned everybody that had the same issue. This is, and I don't say this lightly, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

It shouldn't be that people should contact employees directly. Support should be offering the necessary means to review appeals from users that feel that their ban is wrongful. This is a system that seems to very much favour the developer as opposed to the end user, as it took someone like me who had ties with Steam directly to get the bans appealed. This shouldn't be the case. Everyone should have the ability to appeal a ban that they feel is wrongful.

This is a major fault on the Steam system, and is also partly why I didn't just jump towards the more privileged options I had. I wanted to see what options the everyday user had and go through it myself, and admittedly, the options are very very poor. It took me 10 days to get the ban overturned. Between me sending an email to my contacts on the Monday, the bans were overturned on Friday, meaning I'd have only had it 4 days if I went with my more, admittedly privileged direct route.

Nonetheless, I do thank Steam for taking the decision that they did, because not only did a game ban display a warning on my profile, but it also showed me that very spiteful individuals could also take away community features from me. I'd found I couldn't vote on certain Steam Community features such as guides and artwork.[x.com]

But hey, it's gone now.[x.com] I am pleased about it. But what about those that maybe didn't have as much influence as I did? Where's their redemption? In this case, thankfully, their bans got overturned too, but in others, it seems it hasn't been founded.

Steam desperately needs to ensure their support doesn't just comprise of copy/paste responses. It needs to be personalised and more helpful, because really, we shouldn't have gotten the responses we had. The contradictory statements I received from Support employees vs. Steam team employees was shocking. And I do have respect for both Steam team members and support reps, as sometimes they have difficult jobs. But realistically, this was an easy option. I feel if Support weren't restricted to certain training or certain copy paste messages, this could have been solved much quicker[x.com], and I'm sickened that this is what other users received when they tried to appeal their bans.

My main point, that I hope has been taken away from all of this, is that Steam Support is over reliant on copy paste responses. Look, I get it. There's a large amount of users experiencing the same ♥♥♥♥ as each other, but the fact I'm able to just direct email some staff, get a contradictory response, and get an appeal approved in 4 days as opposed to Steam support, where I was getting unhelpfulm non-accomodative responses shocks me.

The support I received on email, should be the norm to Steam users who are looking to appeal these kinds of issues. It shouldn't be an exception.

As I said in a seperate post though, going to game developers that think they can try and pull the same ♥♥♥♥ this developer did:

We stand firm in our commitment to ethics and consumer advocacy.

We will not be intimidated, coerced, or manipulated into compromising our principles.

Integrity matters—even when it comes at a cost.

We stand by our due diligence, and we will not waver.

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