Steam Management supported attacks on user screenshots

Organized attacks from the Steam troll community has been targeting the webmaster & owner of WonderGamer.net for 7 months, starting in October of 2023 & once again noticed when a successful attack against their Steam account came to light via an email stating a violation of Steam's policy on May 14th, 2024.  Before we get into details of what was targeted & how Steam management made it clear they supported the attack (and ultimately leads to another documented case of revictimization of Steam management), we are going to dig into what happened only days before that likely prompted the attack.

• For the most part, attacks had been silent & going under the radar since the first case of Steam management revictimization in January of 2024, likely because many of what was happening on Steam itself started getting management actions against those users when they were made publicly.

• On April 7th, after comments were disabled due to a mass of harassment & abuse of the rating system on the webmasters YouTube channel, they managed to get YouTube management to support an attack against a 2015 video recorded in Destiny (although it's not really surprising that this one succeeded giving the title & description that was used, it was only a matter of time before it would happen, however the last attempt in 2018 was successfully reversed when appealed) hit with a successful retaliation attack to cutting them off from being able to respond & have their anger-driven rating retaliation visible to the public, which an appeal of the video did not succeed (admittedly, the description & title was a good enough reason to have it hit with a violation, despite being successfully appealed in 2018, but the video itself had nothing that warranted a ban of it & a full blacklist of the video itself shouldn't have happened).

• On May 8th, I located a disinformation review that stated the following:
     

  • This review had sat here uncontested for 56 days prior to me finding it.

  • This review received a quick response to it stating the following:

    This individual is clearly a part of the attacks that are hitting the site originating from the Steam troll community (starting in October of 2023) and detailed in the last Steam review published on the site (as well as appended evidence of those attacks to an older blacklist of malicious users). It is because of these attacks that mass IP bans have had to be put in place and legal authorities have been contacted about their doxxing attempts over multiple sites, internet stalking and continuing harassment. The only thing that is accurate in this statement is that yes, the first review published here on censored for this site was indeed published by the owner and webmaster of the site (myself). This is yet another attempt to sow misinformation as has already been done on Steam, YouTube and likely other sites I am not aware of yet (only finding this today).

  • Additionally their review was also downvoted & reported to the developers of the website.

  • An additional note is that while I am a paid customer of the service that this review appeared on, it is expected the individual that posted the review in the screenshot above is not, which is likely why their slander-slinging comments didn't affect the rating of the browser add-on when people are visiting the site.

• Given there has been a Twitch user that has stayed in my Twitch channel EVERY DAY since they appeared in it on December 30th, 2023 (suspected of using an IRC client to remain connected & monitor for when I start a stream), I decided to use this & leave updates in chat regarding the continuing attacks to see how they would respond to it.  Those comments were as follows:
     

  • Literally the same day that this was left in chat, I found that this Steam user had left the following response in the original thread on Steam where this all started (although I didn't noticed it until after the successful attack on the 14th):
       

    • The timing of this response gives a VERY HIGH probability that they were the same individual that had sat in an inactive channel for 4.5 months waiting for something they could use to their advantage in the attacks coming from Steam.  Twitch account neon_volta was immediately banned from my Twitch channel after the successful, management-supported attack on Steam on the 14th.

    • Additional details were appended to the IRC log directly after they were banned from the channel.

    • Also note that while this user has not been listed on the Steam Troll blacklist yet, they were already added to my block list on my primary Steam account.

Back to the current situation (the management-supported attack against my Steam account on the May 14th, 2024), we are now going to start getting into details of what is happening regarding this claimed violation of Steam's policy & how Steam management is choosing to address appeal attempts.

The first thing of notice regarding this matter was the email I received while I was busy with something else, only noticing it on my phone roughly an hour after receiving it:

screenshot censored to remove personal information

After I got the email, I went searching for the screenshot that had been successfully attacked, finding the following:

These backups were uploaded to an additional directory structure off of the IRC logs I was keeping for my Twitch channel (located here) since these attacks started in October of 2024, that new directory structure created specifically with the expectation there would be more attacks in the future, to make navigation of them easier for additional future attacks when they were documented (mainly for quicker logging until additional pages could be published to this site).  This same folder had been provided to Steam when an attempted appeal was filed through the support ticket system.

After getting the backups ready for the expected publication of this article, I also made it a point to update my Steam profile with more information regarding the continuing attacks that still have not ended even after 7 months of it.  It's expected sooner or later that my profile will once against be attacked (as was in the case back in January of 2024, but expected to be because of links that lead to my personal site, which I have avoided since then, in addition to the additinoal use of social elements in protest of Steam's support in these attacks), however this is a minimal usage of functions on my profile only to give information why no other voluntary information is currently being offered on the profile itself & will continue to be the case until after the 2-year mark of no attacks (which honestly I don't think will ever be met, not if sites like Steam & YouTube keep allowing them to happen through their support in allowing revictimization of the targets of their aggression).

The next step was to file some form of appeal (which I'm not really expecting anything out of, but it's an attempt I can write further about if it gets fully ignored or rejected), which was started through a support ticket later in the same day that this attack hit (roughly 3 hours after I noticed the email & took the time to get the backups ready for use in the appeal, as well as further publication on the matter).  As far as I can see so far (8 PM on the 15th), Steam management seems to have seen the ticket, but appears to be avoiding giving comment on it (and supposedly trying to close the ticket without giving comment, but it remains open for about a week after an attempted closure on their side to allow for further comments from the user if the issue remains unresolved).

Normally I don't disclose the details of a support ticket prior to it's closure, but I'm going to make an exception in this case since it seems the ticket is very much being ignored & probably will be closed without a response, so details will be published before & updated as necessary as it continues, despite a good portion of personal/identifying information will be censored (at least until a later date if not resolved).  The starting of the ticket was as follows:

Message from you on May 14 @ 12:22pm I received an email today that stated I had a screenshot "removed" in response to a suspected violation of Steam Community & Content Guidelines. The screenshot is (at least currently) located at https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2992441303 . Note that this screenshot was used in a griefing report to Warframe developers because I had forgotten to start recording the video when I started this mission, so the statement in the screenshot was incorrect because I didn't not have the video to use in the griefing report that I thought I had. Note that this is a continuation of attacks that have been happening from trolls on Steam since October of 2023. This has already been reported to the police & has already had multiple articles published to my personal site because they keep finding ways to manipulate Steam managements into doing their bidding. The original support ticket that I made because nothing was being done about it was [censored]. I can no longer access this ticket anymore, so I'm uncertain if you can still access it, but I have a backup of the ticket I was supplying to my doctors when this situation pushed me into crisis back in January, which is located at [censored] . I mentioned in that ticket I was considering contacting news stations to inquire why gaming platforms such as Steam & PSN had not been mentioned in their TV broadcasts regarding dangerous environments on social platforms. Now that these trolls have once against succeeded in manipulating management in once again penalizing a victim of their 7-month (and counting) targeted attacks against me, I believe I will be making that contact, in addition to the Internet Crimes division of the FBI through their online complaint form. While the officer I spoke with stated that they could not do anything on a criminal level regarding this situation, they did state I could elevate it to a civil matter (meaning a lawsuit), I will be requesting my doctor to get me in contact with a disability lawyer to see if taking this step is now a viable option. Also, as I've already stated, every time this happens, a new article is published to my personal site showing that the trolls managed to once again manipulate management of sites that have supported this revictimization (once on YouTube & now Twice on Steam; it seems their other attempts on other sites have been unsuccessful so far). While I hate saying that trolls can have any smarts about them, it's clear they have been doing this long enough that they not only know how to manipulate victims of their attacks into overusing report functions, it's clear they also know how to manipulate the management of these sites they are into giving them the results they are attempting to accomplish to add additional insult on those victims by the management themselves. I had already decided back in January when the first management-supported attack against my profile succeeded that not only had this effectively killed my interest in continuing to be a customer of Steam, it also killed my interest in using any other public community functions on the site; since then I have cleared out my wishlist, removed myself from the majority of public groups I was in & have been unsubscribing from older threads that I was previously subscribed to when new replies were level (either because I started the thread myself or replied to it & wanted to still be informed of replied; this no longer became relevant after the successful attack on my profile back on January 14th). I haven't even been using Steam chat since then, disabling all notifications in the PC client & Android app with the exception of comments on my own content so I could quickly take care of it when they leave abusive comments on them (which it looks like they have decided to just mass-report instead of leaving comments now hoping they get you to cave on a report as you did today).

There are 2 things I left out in this initial contact that should have been included:

• The first was that this was an attempt of an appeal of their decision.  While I don't expect anything positive to come out of it, their email & their violation message left on the page for the screenshot both stated that I could contact them if I believed the removal was in error (not so much in error, but a result of attacks by Steam's most toxic users banding together to further harass a victim of their aggression of over 7 months & contuing).

• The second thing I forgot to mention was that screenshots & videos were already decided back during the successful attack on January 14th & wouldn't be used by ANY of my accounts in protest of Steam management's support in these attacks.  In screenshots provided regarding the removal fo this screenshot, you'll see there are restrictions put in place on any other uploaded I may attempt, but considering it had already been self-decided back in January that I couldn't trust Steam management's position in these attacks (especially in their support of these attacks, which was once again proven on May 14th, literally 4 months to the date after the first sucessful attack on Steam), that this restriction didn't really bear any actual hinderance to somebody who had already decided they wouldn't be using it anymore.

  • In addition to this point (which has already been stated on my profile), I went back to using other screenshot software even in Steam games & have since stopped using Steam for screenshots in any shape or form.  This decision was more based on the fact that screenshots are slow since the Windows 7 cutoff of January 1st, 2024 (which apparently the PC client still works on Windows 7, but much of it's functions are definately not up to par on performance for a gaming system) & had already been a consideration for some time prior to the successful attack on May 14th).

When I noticed that the message regarding waiting for a reponse on a new support ticket had disappeared from the top of the ticket, I decided to follow-up with a new response to point out that the opening of this ticket was meant to be a form of appeal to their decision & to correct a link I had given them prior that didn't make the previous linking of the previous ticket (after the January 14th attack) as clear as it should have been:

Message from you on May 14 @ 5:03pm The link I gave you before was incorrect, apparently a search term on my Google Drive that was also showing the screenshot of this ticket (once again being given to my doctor, as I'm intending on requesting they get me in contact with Legal Aid in regards to this matter next time I speak with them). The correct link for the old support ticket is [censored] (note that you will need to zoom in & let the screenshot refocus before you will be able to read it). This ticket is more or less an attempted appeal to the action detailed in the email. Backups of the email, the flagged page with the screenshot & the screenshot itself can be found at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kZGyrimGeaW3CYPbKc0TTsUcN4Gs5mDt . The screenshot of the email is censored due to these backups being viewable to the public if they have a direct link to the folder (this being an additional folder structure off of my Twitch IRC logs, which I've been keeping track of every day since the attacks started in October of 2023, of which you should have a direct link to in the older support ticket). The "Current situation" file is notes regarding this matter that I am still working on (uncompleted), expected to go into more detail (and publicly findable rather than unlisted) when the new article is published to my personal site regarding once again getting hit with revictimization by Steam management. If you look at the IRC logs, you will notice 1 name every day since they first joined on 12/30/2023; this individual was IMMEDIATELY banned from my Twitch channel when this attack succeeded today, expecting comments made in my channel is likely what prompted the attack (intentionally leaving those comments in chat knowing something would happen, given I located another attack on the [censored] website on the 8th; their response through through this attack supported by Steam management only gave me the answer I needed to finally get rid of them after 4.5 months of idling an inactive channel). The doc gives a direct link (under the first bullet) to the most recent IRC log with appended notes detailing their ban after the successful attack on Steam today.

Once again I forgot to mention the fact that I had already stopped uploading screenshots & videos to Steam in protest to the successful attack on January 14th & that the upload restriction was irrelevant towards somebody who had already stopped using it because management continued to take a supporting part in these attacks...  Another thing I should have mentioned was that they could download the full image & look at it that way if the image was not properly refocusing after zooming in (leaving this option enabled on very few public content uploaded to Google Drive, but considering these logs weren't meant to be accessible to the public, I left it enabled in this case, just incase they needed to download the images for their own records).

While this hasn't been brought up with Steam management yet, it was determined that because this attack hit a screenshot that was being used in a griefing report against a player (using this term loosely in this case) that didn't move from their starting point the ENTIRETY of the mission the screenshot was taken in & it ultimately ended up protecting griefers in Warframe, that I would need to prioritize the publication of a Warframe review & it would be much in the same form that the Dragon Ball Xenoverse review was (with a section of griefers with video/screenshot evidence being used as an example of how bad the problem is in the game).  Screenshots are much easier to relocate between sites than videos are (referring to the attack against the 9 year old Destiny video), so depending on the media being used, it may be easier to transfer that data in the form of a review giving examples of a problem in a game, as apposed to others where it's difficult to find acceptable alternatives to hosting for those files...

The May 14th attack also made it a point that since these attacks are still continuing & Steam management is still supporting those attacks through their cooperation with trolls on their platform in issuing penalties against the targets of the troll's aggression, that I needed to get the last support ticket published to the last review regarding this matter (if I hadn't already, where it seems that I hadn't by the time this review was written & was ready to be published).

5/20/2024 update

I received a response today, however the response was very much the same I got in the last support ticket, de-escalation talk & not really addressing the issue.

Message from Steam Support on May 20 @ 1:43pm Hey thanks for writing in here. It's great to hear you are working with both the police and the developer. They should have resources to help you further. As for the screenshot, we don't allow that type of material to be published on Steam per our rules, so you'd want to find a different method to share that info with the dev or law enforcement. Finally, take a look at this article for other helpful info. Addressing abuse, harassment and other misconduct on Steam Steam Support Walter

Again they are claiming that the screenshot was in violation of their policy, but again they failed to explain how it broke policy.  Additionally, they sent me the same link that was provided in the last support ticket, where it has already been proven that filing reports on the posts themselves (or even the users profiles) does no good, so again I had to point out a recent post that hadn't been dealt with after I reported it.

At this point I was pretty well fed up with the bullshit I keep getting from Steam's management & went on a full rant, laying it out to show how serious the situation was:

Message from you on May 20 @ 2:58pm Explain what is wrong with the screenshot. If the claim is I am making a false claim of the actions of the individual, this is a false claim on the person that filed the report, although I'll admit a video would have been a much better option in proving this. If anything, the comments via in-game chat in the screenshot shows them being called out for leeching at the time it happened & when reported to the Warframe management, it gave them a timestamp & comments made to find what was being reported (meaning their inactions during this mission to verify the claim of griefing by not contributing to the mission) through their server logs. So you claim the screenshot is a violation of your policy, yet you don't make it clear what portion of the policy it is in violation of. Even if there is any truth to it being in violation of your policy, how is anybody supposed to learn from the strikes if they don't have an explanation of how it breaks policy? The closest thing on that screenshot I could see as a possible violation would be the comment left on it, not the screenshot itself, in which case wouldn't it make more sense to ban the comment rather than the screenshot? At this point I have to continue making the claim of revictimization by Steam management in support of the attacks by it's most toxic trolls & the further degradation of their mental health from not getting the support in stopping reported harassment. I already reported another comment in the original thread all these attacks started in literally yesterday & yet again, I'm the one getting penalized rather than obvious public attacks by those organizing the attacks (which has been documented on my personal site, 46 new users over 107 documented posts since it started in October of 2023 & currently having 423 people blocked because almost nothing ever gets done when I file a report of harassment; I suppose a screenshot of these attacks on Steam would have also been removed in violation of policy, which would probably explain why my profile got successfully attacked the first time, due to a link to those documented harassment posts). As for the last comment I reported (which was clearly ignored, as is normally the case), see the most recent comment in the thread located at https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198090867376/recommended/2497900 that states "WONDERGAMER IS A BITCH". Additionally, I'll have to keep claiming this also protects those that are breaking policy in those games because it's removal removed evidence that was used in the report. And yes, the article I stated I was going to publish regarding this matter was already published to my personal site (on the 15th), it's continues to be updated with the following claims & is already viewable to the public. Considering it was targeting a Warframe screenshot, it's also pushed me to prioritize a new Warframe review (where those screenshots & videos will be archived for easy access to show problems with multiplayer in the game). One thing I would have to ask you, have you ever been sued by somebody's family after they committed suicide because they didn't receive the help they kept requesting to deal with the harassment coming from a large portion of your most toxic users? You already lost me as a customer back in January after the first management-supported attack on my profile & the second attack that hit this screenshot has only put the final nail in the coffin on that decision. How many coffins need to be filled with your former customers before you start upholding the laws regarding cyberbullying? According to my research, 48 states (all but Alaska & Wisconsin) have laws against this specific type of harassment (reference at https://cyberbullying.org/bullying-laws ) & too many social platforms (including gaming platforms) do not do enough to stop the targeted attacks against others on their own sites, leading to lawsuits for not doing enough (if anything) to prevent it when a loved one takes their own life. Is this really what Steam wants to be know for? A toxic environment where people take their own lives because the management can be easily manipulated into doing what the aggressors are pushing into or for ignoring the pleas for help when harassment is plainly happening publicly. If it does go down this path with me, I can guarantee I'll leave enough information behind so they have something to go on & continue the fight for what I'm not able to accomplish to prevent the same fate to many others that are dealing with the same issues (I've already spoken with enough people about these specific details that they are already aware of it & have enough knowledge to get some details out even without what I intend on leaving out in the open when I'm gone)... And in case you haven't figured it out yet, the request to speak to Legal Aid would be seeking a lawsuit against Steam for not upholding protections against their users. Of course it may not be me that files it, it would likely be somebody else looking for justice after I am already gone (I don't have over 2 decades of data backed up for nothing). The reality of it is I don't really care that much about the screenshot, I want the attacks to stop & Steam to start doing something to protect their users against what is constantly happening (according to US laws, which I'd be surprised if you haven't been fined over it yet, one of the reasons I'm intending on getting it recognized to the public through the news), not continue to revictimize those customers until they feel that suicide is the only option to escape endless online attacks for the rest of their life... This has been going on for over 7 months already from that one thread alone (or at least started with that thread), how much longer you think I'm going to see living through it as a viable option if you continue to ignore reports of harassment & support their attacks against my profile?

I'm giving a high probability they retaliate to this response through an account suspension, given now I'm making it clear the request to speak to Legal Aid is not to push for criminal actions against those that continue to commit these crimes, but against Steam for not upholding laws regarding this specific type of harassment on their platform.  Of course the first contact with a lawyer will be to discuss the possibility of litigation against Steam for not upholding these laws on their platform through moderator actions, whether a lawsuit will happen or not will be depends on the advice by the lawyer after I lay out all the details (and this could take some time; remember this continued attack alone has already happened for 7 months, this doesn't even start into other issues going over the last 2 decades).

5/28/2024 update

After over a week, Steam finally decided to reply to the last response given to them:

Message from Steam Support on May 28 @ 11:06am Hey appreciate the follow up here. I've deleted that comment thread you referenced. As for publicly accusing others, its in our rules and guidelines. Your best bet is to report, and take advantage of all the other info in the article I shared. Steam Support Walter

According to their statement, it appears that the ENTIRE thread of comments where disabled on that anti-review, however how much of it was actually deleted is still questionable (I know that disabling comments doesn't necessarily delete existing comments).  This should at least put a stop to the organization of those attacks through the thread itself on Steam, but I already know that one of those individuals (apparently an indie developer on Steam, although I would think "indie" is pushing it; they got by the name of Revalopod on Steam & I made sure to add every game they added to Steam to my Ignore list when I noticed it) already scraped WonderGamer.net for illegal re-publication on another site (of which I made note of on the same site the original misinformation against WonderGamer.net was published to) when I became aware of it. 

As for the forcible banning of the screenshot (also revictimization), Steam management stuck to that decision & did not reverse their stance on it.  Of course this isn't the only screenshot on there that falls under the guidelines Steam is claiming in this response & I don't intend on removing them, so these attacks on my Steam profile (as well as management-support of those attacks) will likely happen again, meaning more publications regarding Steam revictimization & further extensions on any boycotts in place, as well as monitoring for more IP bans (based on extensive use for malicious purposes) here on WonderGamer.net will need to continue until the 2-year mark of no attacks is reached...

UPDATE:  An additional matter of notice is I later found out that notifications were no longer working on my primary Steam account, everything that was in it ended up getting wiped.  This mainly only had a few notifications regarding game giveaways from some threads I was following in a group I left a few years ago.  I would suspect this was probably done to make sure I couldn't follow comments in that thread where the attacks were happening, however I unsubscribed from that thread back in 2023, it was being followed through a tab left open in my web browser on my phone.  Despite these notifications now being broken on the PC client & through my web browsers, they still appear to be working in the Steam app itself on my mobile devices (still possible to follow, but much harder to manage given I have to transfer the web addresses to my PC through additional steps for those notifications to even be usable).

UPDATE:  By the time it was almost midnight, I decided to follow through with another response to the ticket regarding the broken notifications:

Message from you on May 28 @ 11:20pm One other thing I need to address before I let this ticket close. Shortly after your last response, I noticed that notifications appear to be broken on both of my accounts in all web browsers (Firefox & Microsoft Edge), as well as the PC client. They do appear to still be working in the Android app (Steam app downloaded from Google Play), however most of those notifications are followed up on my PC & transferring them to my PC can be problematic (not impossible, but takes a few more steps to get to my PC each time it's necessary; sharing the URL to myself, copying it to a Google Doc, opening the Doc on my PC, then opening a link from the Doc, rather than the direct method of opening from notifications on the steamcommunity domain or PC client if it were working correctly). Is this something that was done on your side in response to this ticket or is it a temporary outage? I have already made a report about it on [censored] (shouldn't be hard to tell which comment it is if you see it).

5/29/2024 update

I noticed by the next day that the notifications issue had apparently being resolved.  I decided to make another reply to the support ticket, but also going over some other details previously mentioned, as well as new details noticed later in the day after the last response:

Message from you on May 29 @ 12:56pm Looks like the notifications issue has since been resolved, so I guess I'm done with this ticket for now. I noticed that the comments from that thread weren't actually deleted (the author of that "review" having it showcased on their profile, showing 285 comments; while perhaps not viewable to the public anymore, I would suspect still viewable to him), it looks like comments were just forcibly disabled. This should at least halt the organization of those attacks on Steam in that thread, but I don't expect the assault is over yet (it's already extended to other sites, as well as illegal republications of my own personal site by somebody who already has a game listed for sale on Steam), future attacks against my main Steam account are already expected, whether they are successful or not will depend on whether another penalty is put in place. I still intend on getting in contact with Legal Aid, already speaking to my Doctor & Therapist about it, looking like I will need to get the contact number from my Case Manager. Given something has been done on Steam to put a halt to it however, it seems I may not need to follow through with a lawsuit (at least not with Steam, other sites may still be included however & it's possible Steam could be hit with a subpoena for those users personal information if it gets escalated to a criminal matter that law enforcement is willing to follow up on), but I'm going to hold onto that contact once I have it to follow through with a lawyer or legal consultant on a potential lawsuit or additional criminal complaints with the aid of legal assistance if it continues. This will be my final response for the time being, although I don't expect it will be the last time I will need to contact support over this same type of situation.

As stated, I don't expect this issue to be over, not yet anyways...  At the very least, Steam management finally decided to block comments in that thread, which is something I had been expecting was going to happen for several months, but I had to let them come to that conclusion themselves, knowing that if I made the suggestion myself, it would have been unlikely to happen.  2 years from the last attack (5/19/2024, based on the last comment left in that thread before comments were forcibly disabled) is the current cutoff point, but I don't expect we'll actually reach that point, given I'm certain more attacks will be successfully made, meaning more publications against sites that allow it to happen (supporting those attacks through additional penalties being put in place), as well as further extensions on running boycotts& public protests, as well as extensions to times on high alert responses to attacks on other sites I may have accounts/channels on.

5/30/2024 update

As was to be expected, further retaliation was indeed inbound, literally only a day after the last update & making specific statements in regard to the update on this page yesterday, showing that WonderGamer.net is in fact still be monitored by the toxic users of the Steam community & still be used in their doxxing attempts & continued internet stalking to continue the attacks starting in October of 2023.

Message from you on May 30 @ 4:49am Scratch what I said before. As was to be expected, further retaliation to comments being disabled on that thread. This isn't the first time this has happened maybe the 3rd time it's happened since these attacks started in October of 2023, but the other time included 2 other users that had changed their username to match mine before leaving the comment, both of those users had the names on their account forcibly changed when reported, but only after reiterating that point in a support ticket, a report directly on their profile did nothing to force those names to be changed). I have documented a screenshot of the comment that was left on my screenshot (a bug screenshot that was taken to aid Warframe developers in fixing a bug of a scannable item under the ground located at https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006069333&tscn=1717048105 ), and has been attached to the this ticket. The account that left this comment can be found at https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199651774748 Additionally, the statement made in that comment makes a number of valid points on my response to it, but they already knew this was going to be the case, this is why they said it (either an attempt to deter me from making their toxic nature public or actually verifying my statements over the last few years that trolls in fact relish in their poor behavior being published, probably both). You've already seen the screenshot attached to this ticket (which will be necessary because the comment was deleted after documenting it via screenshot; you should still have server logs to verify the legitimacy of the report), a screenshot with just the comment was indeed uploaded to my personal site & is being displayed as evidence on my Steam Troll blacklist that has been decades in the making (started because no actions were being taken when reported) & they were blocked on my primary account. What they didn't state was that their account is also being linked to directly by Steam ID (not shortname, given they can change these at will), they were reported through their profile (which rarely ever goes anywhere), as well as a follow-up in the already open ticket (this ticket) regarding this continuing matter (only proving my statement of expected retaliation was in fact correct). On a further note, I stated I would be getting that contact for Legal Aid from my Case Manager once I spoke to them (scheduled for next week) & holding onto it for when it is needed. Considering this individual must've be monitoring my site for additional posts regarding this matter (specifically the statement about speaking to a therapist, which was literally posted last night after sending the response about notifications appearing to be fixed), I am going to need to go through raw access logs on my site & start putting IP bans in place again, any IP address that is excessively accessing the site for expected nefarious purposes (which has only been proven over the last several months). Originally I stated that because something was done on Steam's side to stop these attacks (the hiding of comments on that thread where the attacks were being organized), I didn't think I would have to follow-up with a lawyer immediately; considering this literally happened the next day after that response was made (you will see that that comment had been sitting there for 4 hours before I noticed it, apparently posted while I was sleeping, but taking immediate action after I noticed the alert on my phone), it seems contact with a lawyer may still be a necessary step to take, to see if I have a case that I can take to court or if I can receive aid in filing another criminal complaint against these individuals that clearly aren't going to back down (even on the rare cases that Steam management does decide to step in on their actions on Steam). Files attached: abuse report.jpg Note that attachments can only be viewed by Steam management, not by the user, but I have retained backups for future reference

As stated before, the comment was indeed backed up for publication of their toxic nature & notification to the public on why they should be avoided (although trolls will likely see it as a database of individuals to add to their circle of toxicity, if not using the publication of their actions as a badge of dishonor) & published to the Steam Troll blacklist.

An additional point I considering noting in the newest response to the ticket was that the new publication regarding this matter (already stated to them back on the 20th that it was published on the 15th) has received daily updates since the 28th.  Of course at this point, the response was already made & I didn't see a point in making a new response to detail that, but will probably be mentioned in a later comment (especially if further attacks continue to be made every day up until Steam decided to respond again).

6/5/2024 update

I ended up getting another response to the ticket, 6 days after reporting the most recent attack detailed in the last response above:

Message from Steam Support on Jun 5 @ 5:08pm Appreciate these details. I can see that comment is removed, but you should block that user as well. Additionally you might consider closing the comment section. If you notice any other abuse, please let us know. Steam Support Walter

Their response said that I should also block the individual, but this was already detailed in the 3rd paragraph of my last response to their ticket ("they were blocked on my primary account"), so either they forgot I had mentioned it, or they didn't read the whole response.  Either way, I sent another response because the statement of putting the block into effect didn't register on their side & I felt I needed to give further details on why I was not willing to disable comments on my own content yet.

Message from you on Jun 5 @ 5:47pm I already blocked them, directly after removing their comment, which was directly after documenting their comment via screenshot. Updating the support ticket with that information was done directly before I updated my personal site on this ongoing issue again. I later added details to my Twitch channel about these attacks & why the channel is currently in a HIGH ALERT status, as well as how long it will take for this status to drop, as well as my Discord server to become a public server again (being set to invite only after a number of them started joining the server to cause problems); my Twitch channel has a date of the last attack & states that status will be dropped 2 years after the last attack (as indicated in the Chat/Discord section on my Twitch channel). As for disabling comments on my content, this isn't a step I'm ready to take yet. This is what the trolls want & I'm not ready to bow to their abuse just yet. Comments were recently disabled on my YouTube channel after a number of these same types of attacks on those videos (as well as mass-abuse of the rating system, however public viewing of those stats were disabled around a decade ago), then I got a strike on my YouTube account directly after (shouldn't be any surprise there was another publication to my personal site after that, this making the 7th negative article against YouTube (in addition to further reason why I won't put any payment information on ANY Google service), 5 of those articles detailing strikes issued against the channel & the last 2 detailing issues that started on Steam. Trolls do what they do particularly to ruin your experience on whatever platform they are doing it on, whether it be in a game, social platform, email, live streaming/recorded video sharing platform or otherwise; me bowing down to it is admitting defeat & they were already informed that their attacks are not going to work in the way they are expecting it will (likely this declaration being the reason why they have banded together & now puts a target on me for any troll they can get to join in in their efforts). The only real accomplishment they have made is pushing my sanity to the point of crisis & bringing on the VERY REAL consideration of suicide to put an end to endless attacks. From a personal perspective, my life don't really have any value; if my life has more value as dead than living, I'm willing to make that sacrifice if it aids in pushing some real support for those that are dealing with the same issues I am, when it become a public issue that is covered on the news stations & puts the platforms that were not affording those protections to those users into the spotlight for allowing it to happen (not acting on reports of harassment when reported). As for the previous statements of Legal Aid, I'm still attempting to get a contact for them. I was supposed to meet with my Case Manager yesterday, however it appears that appointment got canceled due to a funeral she had to attend. I've stated that I need to reschedule with her when she is back in office, at which point I believe I will be able to get that contact & hopefully be able to follow up on another police report with the aid of a legal mediator (seeing as Utah Police apparently aren't taking this matter seriously, I would expect getting redirected to a district of a city that I no longer live in, which has made it a point they won't act on anything I report to them). This is still an ongoing situation & I'm expecting more retaliation after I update the current (ongoing) article regarding this matter (given these trolls from Steam are still stalking my personal site to give further grief over making this matter public), the last attack being on 5/30/2024 (of which you have already been given the details of, the report being made to see if any penalty could be applied to the account that did it, although I would suspect that's not their main account; the account had the name of AC8, so I would assume that's probably their 8th account).

Of course one thing I forgot to mention in this response was that I had already stopped uploading screenshots to Steam (not even using their client to taking screenshots anymore) because the trolls had succeeded in ruining the experience for me (or more accurately, the Steam staff showing they supported the attack by issuing penalties that they manipulated them into doing) & don't even link over videos anymore (at least not publicly, I might still do so privately so I can retain backups of descriptions on new videos uploaded to YouTube, but I can accomplish the same task by just keeping DOCs in the same folder as the video backups without having to mess with Steam's easily manipulated social functions).

As was stated in the response, I'm expecting a follow-up attack directly after this update gets published, which of course will be made public & again reported in the currently open support ticket (regardless of where the attack happens, the timing will be key in bringing it to the attention of Steam to give indication of relevance from coming from Steam aggressors).

6/13/2024 update

I received a response from Steam Support today as I was starting my appointment with my doctor, who left the following:

Message from Steam Support on Jun 13 @ 4:02pm Let us know if you need anything else. Steam Support Walter

Of course they didn't really address what was stated before & the account used in the last attack didn't get penalized (at least not from what I can see), but I decided to leave it be for the time being (at least until another attack happens, which is more likely when than if).

I do still have to get a few details public on this matter however (which Steam will be informed about after the next attack).  The previous statements about getting a contact for Legal Aid took a while, but ultimately I did finally manage to get that contact during my appointment with my Case Manager on June 10th.  Currently I'm just holding onto the number for when it is needed, not intending on contacting them until further events arise that shows the contact is necessary.  2 things are expected to be discussed with them; the first being the possibility of a mediator if I am to attempt another police report regarding this matter (continued online harassment, internet stalking & attempted doxxing for well over 7 months) & the second being possible lawsuits against organizations that aren't doing what is necessary to protect their users (currently this doesn't appear to be necessary on Steam until another attack happens & if they choose not to act on it or allow another attack to be successful against my profile, however this could potentially be brought against YouTube because the last attack against my primary account still has a strike sitting on it that won't expire until July 17th).  Another possibility could be a lawsuit against the Murray district of Police for refusal to act on any report that is made from my phone number (where I live now still being close enough to Murray that I sometimes get incorrectly redirected to their district, especially during off-hours).  Regardless of what actions need to be taken, a plethora of evidence will be supplied to them to be used in their necessary legal actions (most of which is already on this site, however some uncensored & personal information still remains unpublished & only accessible to certain individuals; this is expected to be passed to the active representative taking the case using a means of USB data transfer, which will likely include additional online URLs for updated information as the issue continues).

For the time being, this issue is currently being put at rest, however as stated before, it's not determined to be over until I have 2 years of no attacks after the last one, which is currently set to expire on May 30th, 2026 (based on the last documented attack).

Also note that it's planned that the quotes above are to be later replaced using screenshots taken each time a new response is made in that ticket, for the time being they will remain as copied content from the ticket itself.

9/21/2024 update

As of 9/21/2024 (noticed at almost 11 PM Mountain Time), it appears that Steam Management is once again allowing comments to be viewable (as well as allowing new comments) in the thread where all this harassment started & makes it certain that the 2026 high alert status being retired will NOT be met, in addition to expected additional support tickets needing to be opened (for now I'll wait to see if there are additional comments that need to be reported before opening another support ticket on the ongoing online harassment & organization of these attacks in that thread).  Support tickets so far has been the only method that appears to get any results, because reports against individual posts don't even appear to be looked at, only when it gets into a support ticket & they are informed that it's already been escalated to various other law enforcement agencies & there's the consideration of lawsuits against them do they actually do anything about it...  At the very least, I have the number for legal aid after finally getting it from my case manager on June 10th, perhaps it will be time to put that number to use.

9/26/2024 update

Only 4 days after the last update to this article (rather than 5, seeing as the last update didn't get published until the next day, the date indicated stating when it was written, not when it was pushed), I got notice through the Steam client of a "Steam Subscriber Agreement" update (while I was in the middle of soloing a Steel Path Duviri run in Warframe).  I waited until I got out of the run before shutting down the game to go over the details.  The alert stated as follows:

Note that the account name has been censored

Digging into it a bit further, I look at the Section 10 they were referring to in the "account alert" (as stated as "You have an account alert" at the top of the Steam client after the alert came through):

The second part ("For EU and UK Subscribers:") is not relevant in my case, but was included in the screenshot to show differences between regions.

These changes are expected to be a precursor to account termination retaliation in statements that there was likely to be a lawsuit against Steam if they did not take steps to stop the mass-harassment from their users.  Before I did anything beyond reading what was being supplied in this update to their ToS, I made it a point to make some backups of account information, to determine how much has been spent on my account.  Based on the logs provided by Steam themselves, it was determined that an amount of $11,257.30 had been spent directly to Steam on my primary account alone (this does not include gifts from other users, keys activated from purchases from local stores or other sites, games acquired through giveaways, estimated values of community items on the account or calculations on my secondary Steam account); if a civil case is brought against Steam in the case of retaliation to statements made resulting in an account termination, the lawsuit is expected to be in the range of $12,000 to $12,500 for revocation of rights to software legally purchased (or activated) on their platform.  I will still need to go through my digital invoices to determine how many other Steam versions of games I have purchased on other sties (it's unlikely I'll be able to find the receipts for games I purchased in local stores like Duke Nukem Forever, but I can estimate for those that I still  have the cases & discs for), so a closer to actual amount spent on the account will take some time to get together (this will also be dependant on what invoices I still have, seeing as I lost a number of them over the years when I lost access to older email accounts).  No more personal money is being paid into Steam anymore due to the allowed harassment by their users & their support in the attacks against content on my profile, so this value above is unlikely to change; that's not to say that the value could still increase in game giveaways from other sites that get activated to my primary account, however.

Interestingly enough, I did not receive this alert to my secondary account (nor the email I received to the registered email address on my primary account), however going to page linked in the alert on my primary account while logged into my secondary account still gave the same alert in a red banner at the top of the article:

The documentation for the estimates above have already been uploaded to Google Drive for use in a civil suite should the issue continue to go down this route & will only require a share to lawyers if it's determined this step is necessary.  I was hoping I would only have to use legal aid to seek criminal charges against those that were engaging in the internet stalking/harassment & doxxing, but if this goes down the route I think Steam is going to take it, they will be included in legal actions should it become a necessary step.

9/27/2024 update

Not even a day after I prepped the update above, I got an email the registered account to my secondary account, stating very similar to what was said in the email to my primary account.  What was odd about this however was that the account name in that email did not match the account name on my secondary account.  I suspect this was a follow-up to my writing the above article while I still had Steam running & Steam was able to monitor what I was typing, so they reacted to what I had typed, despite the update still not being published.  In any case, it made it clear I needed to also keep track of the purchase & activation history on my secondary account as well (just in case loss of use of software on that account also needs to be accounted for in the lawsuit if it goes down that route).

9/28/2024 update

Once again, the next day after writing the last update, I got another email, this time showing the correct username for my secondary account.  However this got me thinking back...  Could there be a third account I had forgotten about?  This would require more digging to see if I had another account that had since been abandoned that may still need to be closed.

11/30/2024 update

As of this date, I noticed that comments were again being left in the thread where this whole incident started.  While none of the comments have yet been classified as continuing attacks, I have started blocking more Steam users for speaking favorably of CutCafe (the YouTube misinformation channel that is committing slander through their uploaded videos, where YouTube is making it a point to protect them by not acting on reports against this illegal content); all new comments in the thread (3 at the time of this update & noticing the new comments) appear to be coming from the CutCafe YouTube channel.  As is expected to happen, because Steam management is allowing comments in that thread again, eventually there will be another comment that will be considered as a blatant attack, which means I'll have to start another support ticket to get something done about it, as well as reset the 2-year "high alert" status on my Twitch channel & Discord server (disabling of comments on YouTube is already permanent).

Note that this review is ongoing, updates are expected as the situation continues