Helldivers 2 may have triggered a wave of bans for 20,000 Russian and Belarusian Steam accounts

helldivers 2 gunships — (Image credit: Arrowhead Game Studios)

Steam appears to have been cracking down on rule violations recently, particularly towards users who attempt to bypass regional restrictions by the use of VPNs and Steam code and gift reseller sites.

The immense popularity of Helldivers 2—in combination with a large number of users attempting to subvert pre-existing restrictions on Sony game activation in Russia and Belarus—appears to have kicked off a wave of bans, with an estimated 20,000 Steam accounts facing the wrath of Valve in response.

Russian and Belarusian Steam accounts were no longer able to activate games developed by Sony as of February this year, mirroring a pre-existing 2022 ban on PlayStation sales in Russia as a response to the Ukraine war. Still, that doesn't appear to have stopped many from turning to less scrupulous means to acquire Sony-published games like Helldivers 2, released in the same month.

It's not just Russian and Belarusian accounts that have been subject to Valve's latest crackdown, either. Several cases have been reported of accounts with gifts from multiple regions being blocked, while others report that accounts with suspected activation of "global" keys bought from reseller sites have also been banned.

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Steam is currently in the enviable position of dominating the online PC game marketplace, and is the primary port of call for many as a repository for their personal digital game libraries. However, as these recent account bans show, Valve is well within its rights within the current Steam subscriber agreement to deny access to your games if it detects what it deems to be suspicious activity.

We've reached out to Valve for comment on the most recent bans and will update this article if we receive a response. In the meantime, if you've been considering buying reseller keys, or using a VPN to bypass Steam restrictions, these latest developments suggest that it's really not a good idea.

After all, Steam does indeed giveth, but at a moment's notice, it can taketh away, too.

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Andy built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 12, when IDE cables were a thing and high resolution wasn't—and he hasn't stopped since. Now working as a hardware writer for PC Gamer, Andy spends his time jumping around the world attending product launches and trade shows, all the while reviewing every bit of PC gaming hardware he can get his hands on. You name it, if it's interesting hardware he'll write words about it, with opinions and everything.