Steam Issues

[Serephino]

Anyone familiar with Steam?  My boyfriend bought a game from them, but he can't play it.  The system is reading it as a pirated copy even though he bought it and downloaded it directly from them.  But for some reason it won't authenticate. 

He's tried contacting their customer service, but hasn't heard anything.  I swear, I hate it when companies only offer support through email.  Anybody have any thoughts?

[Thanatos]

Did support ever get back to you? Holidays can make responses take longer of course.

What game did he get that he is having trouble with?

What is the exact error message?

Does he have any other Steam games and is he having a problem with them?

Some suggestions: Try on a different PC if its an option. Uninstall, reinstall. Make sure your DvD drivers, video drivers, sound drivers and any network drivers you have are all updated. Make sure the right ports are open in the firewall you use in your Operating System. If your anti-virus thinks it is suspect content, you can temporarily disable it for testing purposes, just be sure to re-enable after a success or fail.

It is entirely possible you were given a bogus seiral key from them. This has happened before with other game company's, in which case you have to wait until they issue you a new one.

[HairyHeretic]

I'd say you'd need to give the customer service a bit more time, especially at this time of year.

Has he tried any support forums (assuming there are such) to see if anyone else has had a similar issue?

[Serephino]

The game is Chronicles of Riddick.  He has a bunch of other games through them that are working just fine.  The error message was invalid activation code.  Then he reinstalled it, and now it's saying invalid serial number.  It's been 6 days, but we'll see if they respond after the holidays.

[Chevalier des Poissons]

Maybe he doesn't need to contact steam, he needs to contact the game support itself. I have steam, and never saw those kinds of problem before.

[Jeramiahh]

Steam support, when it's not being overloaded by a million people buying games from their awesome holiday sales, is supposed to be fantastic. I've yet to have a need to deal with them, but I've talked with people who have; they'll regularly refund games, offer fixes, and a dozen other things, to fix games purchased through them.