Below every user review on Steam is a prompt asking, "Was this review helpful?" to which the user can respond with the options "Yes," "No," "Interesting," or "Award." It makes sense that a user review would be flagged as inappropriate and the person who wrote it would be restricted from posting, but as the 2,439 people who labeled a negative review on "Warlander" (opens in new tab) as helpful found, a thumbs-up "yes" It turns out that even just clicking on it can get you in trouble.

Warlander is a free game of multiplayer hacking, thrashing, and magic. Like many competitive online games, it uses anti-cheat software (in this case, Sentry Anti-Cheat), which some players dislike; one player, calling himself FREEDOMS117, called the anti-cheat system "questionable" earlier this year in a negative posted a review, claiming that "it keeps running even when the game is closed, including the tray icon," and that "it seems to be sending some packet data to a Japanese IP while the game is already closed."

FREEDOMS117 explains how to completely uninstall Sentry Anti-Cheat, including how to remove what is left in the registry.Warlander's user reviews, sorted by "Most Helpful" reviews were at the top, with 2,439 upvotes as well as hundreds of awards.

Until mid-April, that is, until it was banned by the Steam moderators "for violating the Steam Terms of Service." The reviews can still be viewed via direct links, but their text is now hidden (opens in a new tab).

FREEDOMS117's Steam account was restricted for 30 days and all Steam community features locked. This did not affect his ability to play the game, but made it impossible for him to post further reviews, post messages on the forums, or vote on other reviews. As evidenced by a post on Slashdot (opens in new tab), those who gave the original review a thumbs down were also limited in their ability to vote on the review for 30 days.

Steam support has now responded to FREEDOMS117 (opens in new tab) and lifted their account restrictions and voting ban on others. They are against our rules, and it appears that our moderation team's misperception on this matter led to the banned review. We agree with your assessment that this review does not meet that standard.

"Additionally, due to several steps requiring registry edits, moderation has identified this review as potentially dangerous to other players. For this reason, additional locks have been placed on your account and the voter's account. You will notice that your review does not contain any phishing links, attempts to scam or deceive players, or anything else worthy of a lock.

They further suggested that rather than revert the review, it would make more sense to reconfigure it as a Steam guide, given that it contains detailed instructions, and could be posted "with at least some disclosure that the instructions are 'at your own risk.' The guide could then be linked directly from the review. They concluded, "We will also follow up with the developer about the behavior described in the review."

Plaion, the publisher of Warlander, has reported that Sentry Anti-Cheat "fails to unregister the icon displayed in the task tray when the task tray of Sentry Anti-Cheat is closed, leaving the icon displayed in the task tray and and Sentry appears to be still running" support article (opens in new tab). It also stated that "Sentry Anti-Cheat does not need to handle any personal information and will not collect any personal information" and provided instructions for uninstalling it.

Claims about Sentry Anti-Cheat aside, it makes sense that Valve can use Steam reviews to limit people who post fraud, abuse, or other inappropriate material, perhaps without realizing that the review is malicious and simply giving a thumbs up. The fact that the restriction can be extended to people who click on it seems a step too far.

Although obviously anyone who upvotes a meme review with copy-pasted text and ASCII art should be permanently banned.