Overview
If you have content you’ve posted to the steam community that has deleted/banned, this guide will tell you what you can do to have it restored and get yourself unbanned.
The Steps
If you’ve posted content to any Steam community hub and have had the content deleted and subsequently been banned for posting it, you can have the content restored very easily, as hard as this may be to believe, by contacting Steam Support about it. Use this link and click “Contact Steam Support” to file your ticket.
Just link to the content in question in your report, and politely explain to them that Steam had a policy change in June of 2018 that allows everything “except for things that [they] decide are illegal, or straight up trolling”. You may link to the blog post stating the new policy (which can be found here) if you feel it is necessary to do so when you file your dispute with Steam Support. Also important to note is that community content that is considered controversial/suggestive has a censor blur applied due to this new policy. If your content is deleted, be sure to point this out in your dispute, and ask that the blur be applied when your content is restored if you feel it’ll help your chances of getting the content back up. I actually highly recommend you link to the blog post, and mention that suggestive screenshots are censored now when you contact Steam Support, because you can’t assume that everyone at Steam Support knows about either of these things.
An example of what my deputes usually look like. Don’t just copy it word for word though, put it in your own words but be nice about it:
Keep in mind however that unless the community hub for that game is marked as mature, if something you posted has had a censor blur applied, it won’t appear in the community hub anymore, but it will still show up, and be visible on your profile, which is still better than having it deleted. Also keep in mind that unless the community hub for that game is marked as mature, if you posted outright porn or something along those lines, Steam Support may still refuse to restore the content, even with a censor blur.
Provided you didn’t post outright porn or something similar, you should get a reply from Steam Support within 24-48 hours informing you that you were banned by mistake and, that the content in question has been restored (if they don’t contact you within 24 hours don’t worry about it, just be patient). This is all based on my personal experience with Steam Support, so your results may vary. Being polite is just as important as everything else mentioned in this guide, so even if you’re angry about your content being deleted/getting banned, be sure to be polite in your dispute.
If your email telling you that your content was removed tells you to contact customer support for the company that made the game, don’t do this! Contact Steam Support instead. Lastly, due to privacy reasons, Steam Support won’t restore content deleted by users other than yourself without their consent or knowledge. So if you noticed that content you like by another user has been deleted, be sure to let them know they can get that content back, and encourage them to contact Steam Support to have it restored.
Lastly, if the amount of content you had deleted is so much that you can’t link to all of it, just link to a few examples and be sure to point out how much of your content was actually deleted and ask for all of it to be restored.
I hope this guide helps you. I don’t know if Steam Support will retroactively restore content, that is to say, content deleted before this new policy was put in place, so if you have any information on that, please let me know and I’ll add it to the guide.
About Steam Workshop Items
NSFW items (nude mods and such) are allowed on the Steam Workshop as long as they follow these guidelines:
The screenshots showcasing the mod are censored.
The title of the mod contains no NSFW text.
The item is marked as mature by the mod uploader.
As per explained by Steam Support:
