What happened to Hookups?

[zrmnt]

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/103582791432502936

It says it has been disabled or something

[samhs]

That's weird, I used to love that group

[zRad]

I enjoyed when they linked deals to other official digital sellers, they probably got the shaft because they also offered some weird deals from ebay sellers or something like that.

[cryptload]

Hookups owner post. Also, SteamGifts forum thread about this. The group will be back soon, don't worry

[0xiDIzE]

Originally Posted by cryptload

Hookups owner post. Also, SteamGifts forum thread about this. The group will be back soon, don't worry

I hope you're right. It'd be some total BS if Valve took it down just because they were finding us cheaper Steam keys. Group is completely legit.

[Lunick]

They often spammed invites to random people. I remember the owner sending me an invite once and I had no groups or friends in common. And then going into the chat and being asked to send all my friends some invites too...

I did use the group eventually though because Adz invited me

[0xiDIzE]

Originally Posted by Lunick

They often spammed invites to random people. I remember the owner sending me an invite once and I had no groups or friends in common. And then going into the chat and being asked to send all my friends some invites too...

I did use the group eventually though because Adz invited me

Virtually every group does this. The difference being that Hookups actually had something to give you in return.

[Lunick]

Originally Posted by 0xiDIzE

Virtually every group does this. The difference being that Hookups actually had something to give you in return.

They got caught then I guess or enough people reported it?

[BaSeBallDuDeR]

Hey guys, I am the creator of Hookups. I am Sammy. The current situation I am in with the group is as follows:

I sent a support ticket and asked about the mock group and whether or not that it was against the rules to copy a group to the T like mine. The person who made that mock group got uncovered and the mystery was solved. It was an admin who was in Hookups "Kriss-c" who is also a mod in Traders Guild, I then sent a support ticket in asking if this was against the rules to copy a group like they did with Hookups.

After 7 days from starting my question to support about this I received 2 copy and paste responses back to back saying:

Hello,
Thank you for contacting Steam Support. We apologize for the long delay in getting a response to you.
Steam Support has recently had a higher volume of tickets and we are working to respond to everyone.
We have found that many users have resolved their issues since submitting their ticket. You may be able to find solutions to common problems in our Support Knowledge Base or in the Steam Discussions.
Support Knowledgebase: https://support.steampowered.com/
Steam Discussions: http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/
We would like to help you resolve your issue. If you have not found a solution since submitting your ticket, please respond to this ticket and we will continue to assist you. If we don’t receive a response, this ticket will automatically close in 24 hours.
If you are still encountering the issue please follow the instructions linked below to run an msinfo32 report and attach it to this ticket so we may further diagnose the issue:
Title: How to run and submit MSINFO32 Reports
URL: http://support.steampowered.com/kb_a...1376-WTZN-9132
NOTE: Please make sure your Operating System is fully updated before running this report.
http://update.microsoft.com/
We appreciate your patience as we want to make sure all our customers are assisted."

This response was not good enough for me and my question felt like It was not being answered, I then asked them to read my question and a day later I got this response from them:

Hello Sammy,
Unfortunately, both these groups are in violation of the Steam Rules of Conduct. We will investigate both groups and take the appropriate actions.
For more information on Valve's policies, please see the Steam Subscriber Agreement and the Rules of Steam Online Conduct.
Steam Subscriber Agreement
http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/
Rules of Steam Online Conduct
http://store.steampowered.com/online_conduct/

After that I was shocked that all this backfired right at me and I was just wanting a simple question answered. I then found my group got disabled and is under "Investigation" for something.

Also I am sorry for the mass inviting, I have received a week community ban for doing that, It was not my intention to disturb anyone in regards to my inviting them, I just want to save you money on great games. I also thought it was a noble thing to be the creator of the group and personally invite people to the group because I cared that much about it, I hope you can forgive me for doing that.

If support is looking at this thread its ticket number:
3740-TLCN-3574

[BaSeBallDuDeR]

Originally Posted by Lunick

They got caught then I guess or enough people reported it?

Enough people reported me for inviting and I received a week community ban for doing it. I am sorry if I have annoyed or bothered anyone for inviting them. That was not my intention, when you came to my group you all know I gave each and everyone who came the same level of care and respect, I kept my members top priority and really wanted to do you guys a good job. I would spend about 3-4 hours each day responding and fixing things in the group. When a bad link popped up or a mistake happen it would be quickly fixed. The people in my group would understand the level of work I did for the work. It was always hard looking into the history and seeing people leave after an announcement or just because. It just gave me motivation to keep the members I had and do them a good service with deals we were finding and stuff we were innovating within the group. As I type this we are still working on making things better with in the group and coming up with better ideas of how to bring deals to you guys.

[zeroxxx]

What the hell? I like Hookups why would anyone do that?

[BaSeBallDuDeR]

Originally Posted by zeroxxx

What the hell? I like Hookups why would anyone do that?

If your asking why someone would report me for inviting them even though it says nowhere in the official rules of Steam that its against the rules to invite people to your group then I don't know.... I don't know why people would report me for inviting them to the group. When they would come to my group I would see each member as important to me.

If your asking why would someone like "Kriss-c" created another group which was named "savemorenow" which copied even Hookups description when she could of posted her links and stuff in the Traders Guild and Hookups at the time which equaled to 30,000 combined members then I know her motive was money for doing that. "Kriss-c" also made 5 other accounts after being kicked from Hookups. She used her accounts to be very rude in my group and to re-invite herself back into Hookups after I kicked her other names out of the group. Us finding all this about the mock group took alot of time to uncover but our findings on the mock group is 100% correct.

I have been reading the rules of the Steam rules and can't find anything we did wrong as a group. I always tried to make sure all the deals were 110% safe for you guys to purchase from. Mistakes did happen though, like that one time I personally posted a link that I thought was cool about Adobe Photoshop, I quickly found out it was not safe and quickly fixed the issue. I don't know what we did wrong but we always tried to keep everything safe.

[adz]

Originally Posted by Lunick

They often spammed invites to random people. I remember the owner sending me an invite once and I had no groups or friends in common. And then going into the chat and being asked to send all my friends some invites too...

I did use the group eventually though because Adz invited me

Hi lunick mate!

oh btw, how is the daily deal is it worth buying?

[zeroxxx]

Originally Posted by BaSeBallDuDeR

If your asking why someone would report me for inviting them even though it says nowhere in the official rules of Steam that its against the rules to invite people to your group then I don't know.... I don't know why people would report me for inviting them to the group. When they would come to my group I would see each member as important to me.

If your asking why would someone like "Kriss-c" created another group which was named "savemorenow" which copied even Hookups description when she could of posted her links and stuff in the Traders Guild and Hookups at the time which equaled to 30,000 combined members then I know her motive was money for doing that. "Kriss-c" also made 5 other accounts after being kicked from Hookups. She used her accounts to be very rude in my group and to re-invite herself back into Hookups after I kicked her other names out of the group. Us finding all this about the mock group took alot of time to uncover but our findings on the mock group is 100% correct.

I have been reading the rules of the Steam rules and can't find anything we did wrong as a group. I always tried to make sure all the deals were 110% safe for you guys to purchase from. Mistakes did happen though, like that one time I personally posted a link that I thought was cool about Adobe Photoshop, I quickly found out it was not safe and quickly fixed the issue. I don't know what we did wrong but we always tried to keep everything safe.

Wow so much drama for a simple group like Hookups. I hope Hookups will be restored by Steam soon - I've found many good deals thanks to that group.

[-=Sgt. Fopper=-]

I really apprecitate the Hookups group since they're online. The group offers great and legit deals from several downloadable PC games retailer sites like Green Man Gaming and Co. I am also a mod there.

BUT:
I can remember that I had a short conversation with Sammy, the owner of that great group in the chat there. The topic was his short-timed ban from his group. I told him that is a difficult and kinda dangerous behavior to invite new members in an "aggressive" way he does. Users who get an invitation has the opportunity to deny the invitation or ... report this behavior as spam. And he got lots of them because of this and he was banned. He didn't believe my saying and he just said that is not really spamming and this is not against the SSA. And I said ok but he has to be careful with this situation...

And now since several days his whole group was disabled by Valve and I must admit that I kinda can understand this step from Valve. It's not the content that was against the SSA, I guess, it's the aggressive invitation situation that Valve doesn't accept .. or the lots of report it received from many Steam users...

Nevertheless I hope Valve will do the right thing and enable the group again. Like I said before, Hookups is doing a great job with his offerings. But Hookups itself or the owner must re-thing about his invitation behavior.