Buying games using VPN is a big no-no. However, activating games via VPN for whatever reasons is fine.
It depends what you mean by fine, people do it without problems but it doesn't mean that steam will not enforce it at some time especially with the changes they have made recently for trading games/market items
do you know, if they only terminate the access to the account, which violated their SSA or also all accounts with the same IP?
They won't close your account. It's extremely rare for them to do that. You probably get trade banned and restricted access to Steam Community. This means that you can't activate any games and won't be able to use the friends and community features.
but only the account, that violated the SSA right?
I am thinking about main and alternativ accounts here
I have seen this being discussed in another thread on SG a while back, and going by people that actually got a ban for that steam only bans the offending account and never any other account using the same IP since other account could be alts, but might as well be a completely different user sharing the same network like people in student housing etc.
few days ago I saw a comment from someones thread for selling games, the guy said he's friend got banned for using VPN
Activating games via VPN is not safe at all. More and more reports show up on the steam forums about people being permanently banned from Steam. Some people even had 200+ games.
Yes it is *safe. Just use common sense. Never use public VPN where the IPs are shared with other people. Get a server in russia, with private IP, to make sure no one else is using it, tunnel your connection through there. Do not switch from your original IP to russian IP instantly. If you want to use russian IP, don't log into your steam for a while before opening, so that you have excuse when shit happen. Limit your purchase, limit your gifts. Of course it isn't 100% safe, if they want to, they could trace your russian IP and find out that you are using hosting service. But I believe they don't have such time and resources to check you all one by one. Unless you are doing something obvious. Disable your beta participation, and just refuse when the steam client ask for a survey of your PC.
If you don't want to take a risk, combine above but with new steam account that is 100% russia, no single touch of other IP. And don't family share both of accounts.
Indeed a funny definition of safe. It doesn't matter if you use a public VPN, a private one or even give you steam account to a friend in russia who logs in and activates the game. All that matters is that if your account is mainly used outside of Russia (or CIS) and your account will automatically be flagged if it suddenly gets a russian IP AND a game that was purchased in russia was activated.
Your account will 100% be flagged, even if you just do it once, but it's up to Valve support to decide if they should just leave it, or send you a warning or even disable your account.
Have a look in some other forums, sooooo many people report having had warnings sent out, a guy even got his account completely disabled and he had 200+ games.
No its not safe. My account got banned for using UK VPN to buy a game a few years ago. Lucky for me I got a warning and got my account back. Not worth the risk anymore.
