Over 800 Games Removed From Steam After Fake Game Scam
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- Опубликовано: 22 май 2024
- On February 29th, six different games were renamed by a scammer who spoofed their store pages to appear like popular game titles such as HELLDIVERS 2 and Palworld. Many are confused why this happened when the developer couldn't profit off of it from Steam, and the reason is because they probably never intended to do so in the first place. Regardless, immediately following this ordeal, 800 games were removed from Steam. Here's my take on what happened.
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▶ CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
0:51 The Scam
3:53 The Morning After
6:35 Grey Market Sites
8:46 Games Removed From Store
9:44 Conclusion
10:30 Pantheon of God Gamers 
Игры
UPDATE: I have confirmation from TreeSmasherFTW that the keys for "Stolen Mushrooms" which were showing up as "Palworld" when redeemed now correctly show up as Stolen Mushrooms. Seems like Steam fixed the issue.
Nice, you wont see fake keys on shady websites I guess
Remember: downloading the game for free is better than buying a key from suspicious websites, for everyone (yes even the developers)
I want a key for it xD
@@Undice Just to add how it's better for developers: keys from these resellers are often purchased with stolen credit cards. The owners of those cards notice then get a chargeback. This chargeback is paid by the developers-there's no protection from Steam or anything for this as far as I'm aware.
Can't believe he's saying this all while speedrunning and not moving his mouth. Edit: Be nice in the replies.
Ventriloquism is a core skill for any god gamer.
He has now learned to create the sound of his voice by hitting stuff in hollow knight and changing the pitch, we just dont see it cuz its so fast. He is now god.
Yeah, apparently he's a master ventriloquist. I wonder if he has plans to ever take his skills to a stage.
Some people are just built different
he's just that good
Biggest tip-off would was naming one of the games Dota 3. Valve would never release a third game in a series.
Gaben's kryptonite
Gabe counting to 3 is a myth as old as time.
Valve releases 2 games and then just becomes a gmod ragdoll
Valve cannonicly cannot count to three not even half life alex while being a 3rd was named half life 3
@@MrGrimm-eo5lc yes, back during the release of Orange Box
It's so ridiculous that scammers can just simply change the names on their store pages with ease, but yet I can't change my Steam user ID.
It's not ridiculous at all if you use two brain cells.
@@Cramblit i think thats the joke..
your steamID is supposed to be private so no need to change it.
If Valve could charge money for it, you would be able to.
@@TR-cn3ux Nah they let you change you screen name for nothing unlike Xbox/Microsoft there is just no need for it as its a private name that no one but you sees.
If you get scammed like that, take the information to your bank and get the funds put back if the key sites don't allow it. This is just fraud by definition of the crime. You'd win any case involving something like this.
true, but name one person who bothers to go to court over few bucks .. it simply isnt' worth the headache. that's what scammers rely on.
also they use aliases, so it won't bother them if you go to court. by the time all this gets processed (it can be months or even years), scammers have happily walked away with the money. they use aliases to cash out, so you can't ever get it back .. however some banks and services have the courtesy of refunding anyways.
@@SethiozProjectyou dont need to go to court, just report the fraudulent charge to your bank, they will refund it without any court being necessary, you may just have to get a new card
Someone over there realized they had to stop this man before he releases Half Life 3.
Or Silksong! 🤣🤣🤣
Or Portal 3
@@magiccake6776 or prototype 3
Team Fortress 3
imagine if the 3rd instalment of valve games where on the steam store but hidden waiting for the day valve is like "yep need some more money" and a hacker just finds them and releases them
There's a special place in hell for scammers like these, but I seriously can't stop laughing at them changing their name to Valve and listing shit like "Elden Ring 2" as games They're not even trying at this point.
Please shut up.
Not trying, but still winning. Valve doesn't seem to care about scams as long as the scammers don't impersonate them
It is just a low-key form of mockery. It is the Russian way of showing bluntly that they can make a mess faster than valve can clean it up.
They’re trying to get keys for those potential sequels so they can be used in future scams
There's already a special place for them on Earth and it's the mythical land called "Russia".
Helldivers 2 is not available in Russia, so this game is not shown in our steam store. And because of that, the only Helldivers 2 game that we can find there is that scam game. This is why it works.
I wish you guys could enjoy games without being screwed over just because you either live in Russia or are born Russian :(
There are work arounds. I live in district 1, and I'm playing helldiver's 2. Just make another steam account, and put your Country as the United States or United Kingdom 😂. Get a scrambler or any other device that will make steam believe your in another country and not Russia.
Probably india... their whole economy is based off being immoral scammers.
Just pirate the game why would you give money to a company that is Russiaphobia
@@rus-882ad district 1? dahell is this, hunger games?
9:10
They made Lethal Company 2 while the 1st one is still in early access lmfao
outstanding move!
Last epoch hit 1.0 one and a half weeks ago and last epoch 2 is out already. Nature is crazy like that
@@TheModdedwarfare3
That game you just bought? Yeah, that one! its already obsolete! Oh wait, this isnt a Pc in the late 90s/early 00s.
Comes with the yippe lootbug sound in base lol
And we not gonna talk about gta 6 being there lmao
Scammers ruining everything for everyone else again.
swear to god if i cant get my game on steam because of some idiot ill have to become a hunter
Unfortunately they have 0 accountability for this stuff in Russia
what a great day to sail the seven seas!
@@elixirdrenched I don't think developers should be punished because of what scammers do with their names...
@@elixirdrenched10/10 logic here: i'm gonna pirate this game because some other guy with no affiliation to the game tried to scam me using their product as a front!
I feel like Valve could face a lot of legal action if they dont find some way to lock this down. They are basically allowing anyone to sell any game as a AAA game with zero repurcusions. And like he says, the real problem isnt with Steam, but with 3rd party sites that sell product keys. Eventually those 3rd party sites could try to hold Valve legally responsible for the refunds.
Yup. I also think Valve needs to hire more real human beings to work in their fraud department doing investigations. A lot of companies are going to lose everything if they buy into this "wonders of AI" rhetoric that's being pushed everywhere.
People gave steam greenlight a lot of crap, but I feel like this type of stuff didn't get super bad until that disappeared.
It's because people accepted it. I still don't like how steam works this way, but the majority doesn't care.
It doesn't matter, because greed and people's desire to force their will on others is why we're in this mess. We had the ability to decide what games made it on Steam. But it was borderline pointless, because some "devs" bribed people with keys and whatnot, and suddenly their game gets greenlit. If Valve curated Steam like people say they want, they'd be complaining about the games Valve does let onto the store. And how they have no taste, etc. It will honestly never end. But there are certainly things Valve can do better to keep this from happening so easily.
Because the scams were relegated to Greenlight, and Greenlight was the first time Valve allowed any and everyone to try and get a game on their platform.
It's really sad how people like this exploit systems clearly designed to make any sort of changes quick and easy for developers, and the only fix is to make it harder for everyone else. Like, these are all extreme examples, but changing developers/publishers for a game happens, changing a game price happens, changing names, descriptions, images, etc. all happens. The regional price thing too, which is a great tool when used properly, but was also abused for this. We really just can't have nice things, can we?
the problem is that it is TOO easy for some of them.
sure you should be able to freely change descriptions of the game but wtf is the free name changing doing? why can the name of the game be freely changed to a name that already exists? why is there no detection of that the game x from publisher y already has a steam page? it is such an easy check and they fail to do even that.
@@dovos8572 I think this is way more baffling than anything else, the fact you can duplicate an already existing title and the cherry on top, being able to selecto whatever dev/published for the game, come on bruh 💀
@@Basuko_Smoker This might have something to do with all the recent remaster and reboots using the same title as their previous game. I guess they should be forced to add year or something into the title if its a remaster.
@@jingsterling thats a good solution, but more than anything, i just cant think for my Life on why anyone is able to select any developer/publisher lol
@@Basuko_Smoker yeah, they should at least login and confirm to display developers.
Lethal company 2 is really funny because lethal company isn’t even finished yet
well i laugh like crazy when i saw gta 6.
DOTA 3 😩
Same with Last Epoch. Game literally came out of early access a week ago, but is very far from finished. Releasing a sequel while the first one is still pretty broken would be like a death knell for that company.
Do people even play it anymore 😅
@@loliking2763 probably, HellDivers is kind of blowing up rn
I remember a time when you could buy a game and actually own that copy, be it on floppy, tape or disc.
whose gonna tell him that still happens
The fact valve allows two games to share the same name is wild.
It’s like they didn’t even try to make counter measures against scammers.
They renamed them after.
Think about this, what if this person had published their game as “helldivers 2” as soon as the game was announced. How would arrowhead get the name to their rightful game back?
Also, there are a lot of words that are popular things for a game to be named. You could pretty naturally have two unrelated games both called something generic like Home, Vengeance, or Ark.
Game name I can get the reason, but the company name being the same as another is unforgivable.
Moral of the story: buy 10 copies of Hollow Knight and no other games on Steam
Task failed succesfully- accudently bought hollow knight but it was actually some other random game renamed hollowknight
gift it to all the family
Just no
@@greenchilistudioz4537 I agree, fuck that why not ten random indie games and NOT just hollow Knight
Instruction Unclear: Bought Hollow Knight Silksong
One thing: apparently the Deep Rock sale shown in the thumbnail and multiple times in the video is legitimate. If you "go to store page" from the library it takes you to the real thing with 200,000+ reviews and it is actually on sale. We can Rock and Stone in peace.
r&s m8
For Karl!
thx bud i just recently saw that and got scared the game i wishlisted and saw on sale was a scam im gonna buy it now r&s m8
Yes!! DRG Devs are constantly putting the game on sale for folks who are low income, or dont have alot can always buy it. I was there back when they were pretty much an Xbox Gamepass exclusive and they were always making the game for sale.
Lovely Devs, and wonderful game. 10/10 hella recommend.
If you don’t rock and stone…you ain’t coming home!
Thanks for making this video. I had no idea this happened at all.
I'm literally blown away that there's no restrictions on what you can claim to be your publisher or developer name, only retroactive consequences. I'm betting we'll see changes to that soon, because that's insane.
To be fair I think Early Access games that are abandoned is a scam too. Valve really needs to step up their game when it comes to their Store, it's getting out of hand.
That I don't think that Steam is responsible for. Every early access game clearly states that it is EA and warns you not to buy it if you are not comfortable risking that it may have issues or not get finished. You buy them knowing up front you are getting a lower price and assuming a small risk they never get finished. Due to this I generally won't buy them unless I WATCH the game for a while and see that it is getting many significant regular content updates, has good roadmaps and dev involvement, etc. A good example of this would be Planet Crafter, which I did buy, as updates were coming regularly on it and adding significant content and improvements. Beware the ones with an occasional small bugfix and a "we hope to eventually add something even though we haven't improved this game at all in months". You can usually tell if a EA game is truly a labor of love, or some pie in the sky overrated hype cash grab if you use common sense.
@@stacythomas9916 I did hear how there are actual scam games that deliberately stay in the Early Access category for YEARS. There's not much regulation regarding this apparently.
It costs $100 to upload a game to steam. They must be scamming like crazy if that's profitable for them.
Only takes 10 scam keys at 10 bucks a key
I mean it is going to be hugely profitable. Just generate as many keys you want to and then dump them into G2A or somewhere similar. You'll be able to get the 100 back in under a day.
you only have to make $1000 on a game to get the $100 back.
@@CivilizedWasteland yeah but that doesn't count for selling keys I don't think.
Well, Steam says you can have 5000 keys for your game, after which you need to request more and they will review if you actually need it on a case by case basis. But 5000 is still a lot, considering that this single guy made like 10 fake store pages!
I think the solution for Valve might be simple and not as bad as people imagine. Mainly just get approval for the name change of your game. You can keep the rest of the ability to change but simply stopping people from changing names so quickly is the best call, you can even automate it by giving checks to games with high price tags and all that to make sure they aren’t duplicates of other titles.
If it's automated, scammers can use close misspellings or Unicode shenanigans. If it's not automated, you'll be creating a massive administrative bottleneck.
@@godowskygodowsky1155 Misspellings can still be kept in check tho, there's not that many that aren't obvious (e.g. just treat a lowercase L like an uppercase i for verification purposes).
As for Unicode shenanigans, maybe the naming rules should be more strict. Different languages exist, yes, but from (TM) to the occasional emoji there's a lot of stuff that shouldn't be part of a name anyways
@@godowskygodowsky1155 Eh... "huge administrative bottleneck" is kind of a stretch - it's not that common for (legitimate) game developers to change their names or the names of their games.. it happens sometimes, but not so much that it would be unfeasible to handle (and normal cases would probably only take someone actually looking at it for like 10-20 seconds to see that it's fine).. it would be a tiny tiny fraction of their time spent when compared to how much they already spend reviewing games to make sure that there's nothing in the game that breaks any laws.
@@godowskygodowsky1155How often do games names change for legitimate reasons? It is well within Steams capabilities to manually check these things. I mean jfc these are products they are selling to people not random users messing around.
@@godowskygodowsky1155 could add a $500 escrow for the rename, and if the rename is rejected because of scamming the scammer loses the money, if it's legit the money is returned
I’m honestly amazed this scammer wasn’t more malicious. He could have installed malware, key-loggers or even just farmed personal information from the people who were duped in purchasing these fake versions of the game.
Who says he hasn't? They are obviously shady.
Do you think scammers ever stop and think for a moment: "Do I really want to die being known as the guy that everybody hates?"
A person's conscience can get burned to the point of no return. Like people that grow up in a Mafia family. Christ Jesus is the only power that can bring a human conscience back.
@@liveletlive0regrets From what Ive seen, there are some people not even Christ can help
@@liveletlive0regrets That's nothing but facts. You'll get some weirdo atheists saying some weirdo stuff because they can't fathom reality I'm already expecting that weirdo energy from them.
it's never a happy ending when the scammer isnt drawn and quartered. all that's happened is they've been inconvenienced slightly, they still made money, they're still on steam, and they can still try again in a better position than where they were prior
This. THIS is why we can’t have nice things. Not because some people are naughty and screw it up for the rest of us, but because they never face punishment for it. Scammers fleece people out if tens of millions of dollars annually and nothing consequential ever happens to them because they’re overseas. But if you write the code someone ELSE uses in a piracy operation you spend the rest of your life giving Nintendo half of every dollar you ever make. If governments spent a fraction of the money they use to protect massive corporations on protecting US, the world would be a better place for everyone. Except the scammers. But fuck them anyway.
Hope this is a wakeup call to steam to have some sort of way to verify devs/publishers and their games. It's insane how you can just change your game name to "Palworld" and steam just says yep that's totally ok.
there is a problem with that: name squatters. 3 days before release someone squats on your name and demand $10,000 for it. whatcha do?
@@tsm688 Ever heard of copyright?
@@XMysticHerox ever heard of 9 months of legal proceedings after which your game launch is ruined?
@@tsm688 That seems unlikely. Steam should just be able to take down the fake game after a corresponding takedown request. This works in other media why wouldn't it for games?
@@XMysticHerox plus if this people are out of your great country jurisdiction and said country of origin does not have any accountability.....there not much you can do even you can get it down....more will arise from it ?
Valve needs to get a handle on this because worst case scenario fake games being on their store for any length of time could be used an an attack vector to spread something like ransom ware. As far as grey market gets go, you get what you paid for. You roll the dice every time you buy something that fell of the back of the truck, you can't complain when you get scammed.
Incredible video! Thanks for such a important bit of information!
Thank you, I had no idea this was going on. I hope they go to jail for all the laws they are breaking. This is several different kinds of fraud!
Sadly, it's not very likely. The problem ultimately comes down to that most of the time the people that do these kinds of things operate in countries that don't crack down on scammers as long as the scammers are targeting people in other countries, and without the cooperation of the country that they're actually living in there's very little that can actually be done to punish them.
@@asdfqwerty14587 Precisely. And given the mention of Russian rupees being the original currency in this week's incident, I think we can take a pretty good guess this is a Russian job
5:43 "One would think [Valve] would have regulations in place" They have been doing absolutely everything they can for the past decade plus to avoid having to moderate their store or anything else by hand.
Doesn't even need by-hand moderation from valve. If someone wants to tag the game as by , then the Developer should get a confirmation prompt in their dashboard
@@MaakaSakuranbobut when the developer doesn't exist anymore?
@@Buttersaemmel Then most likely the game isn't on steam anymore. Also when you for example look at Sim City 4: The developer there is EA - Maxis (company is not existing anymore), the publisher is Electronic Arts. Both Accounts go to EA. And this is with most still active games of dead developers: they still have a legit publisher, because otherwise the game couldn't be on steam. So this problem isn't existing, Buttersaemmel.
@@Buttersaemmel Good point
@@acmenipponairThe Supreme Commander Series, Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance I + II, Star Wars: Battlefront.
to name just a few bigger games from the top of my head.
my point was that pure Developer oversight doesn't work.
Nice job. We were following this and trying to figure out what the cause of this was. Good work!
Thanks for this video. I've already shared this with my friends. I probably wouldn't have found out about it if you didn't make this video.
I'm surprised Steam has no way to block releases that share the name with another game
Like using already existing nickname, yeah. Really weird.
because it can become abusable and a logistical nightmare if someone just takes the name beforehand and now they have to contest that one dude thats holding it for ransom
@PowerOfTheAsian people have done this with URLs for an age now so it's easy to assume they'd do it with steam titles too. Good foresight !
@PowerOfTheAsian people have done this with URLs for an age now so it's easy to assume they'd do it with steam titles too. Good foresight !
Because 2 games can have the same name?
They can also obfuscate the name. It would just be a cat and mouse game.
This also raises concerns about malware on Steam, which has been an issue in the past. I know that Valve does some auditing to make sure developers aren't putting malware in their games or updating them with malware after the fact, but like with anything its never 100%.
Well you will just have to stop playing them seedy R 18 Asian games to avoid the malware.
@@facetubetwit1444 "depends" if the developer or publisher was attacked by malware it could easily happen but I'm sure there should be safe guards for that.... but doubt its always non zero chance anyway
Yeah one of my first thoughts when I saw the video title was "this is either a Sybel attack against the steam algorithm, or a malware attack. Possibly both"
I never knew Helldivers 673 was finally released!
Hear me out: what if this is actually a carefully planned attack designed to ruin the reputation of the gray market key selling sites? Game devs hate these sites. They are notorious for reselling keys that were gifted for review purposes or just stolen. They make money off of lost sales for the developers.
"Why buy all of those random steam key packs when you can buy Hollow Knight instead?"
But Silksong when?
I kid you not, I've read the citation the exact moment it was said while I decided to check the comments.
Soon, Little Ghost. Soon.
nov 4 2023
because it's cheap, you get multiple games and feel like you can get a great game as a bonus if you're lucky and peoples like to gamble.
but i think it's a one time thing, once you realize you get absolute garbage that nobody would play even if it was free
it’s probably cancelled
Despite being an extreme case, this serves as a great example of why systems focused on making things easier for legitimacy are quickly abused to make a quick profit. It's unsurprising since any real contribution to any given industry takes time, money, and experience to accomplish - whereas "gaining the system" is far easier and quicker.
The guys at Valve deserve some recognition for how quick they responded. I think many of us forget that Valve only has 200-500 employees, which is nowhere near enough to monitor every single game/report/scam. This is why it's important for devs and players alike to report en masse and signal boost any issues that arise since it's easier for Valve employees to see and address in a timely manner.
I don't understand. We should praise Steam for 'quickly responding' to a problem, that they allowed in the first place? And especially because they managed to do it with only '200-500 employees'.
Them having so few employees is their choice, if they can't handle the security aspect of steam with that little employees, then it deserves shame for neglience and not praise. Valve has money. valve can hire people for store security.
"The guys at Valve deserve some recognition for how quick they responded"
The problem is, had Valve not utterly skullfucked any sort of quality control by removing Greenlight this wouldn't had been an issue in the first place.
Not to mention Valve only did THIS purge because of Helldivers 2 being ultra popular and having 2 fake pages. There were plenty of fake and copyright infringing games on Steam that I have been reporting for years and it was ONLY AFTER I posted links to them in the discussion section of the fake helldiver 2 discussions did they FINALLY get removed.
So no, this isn't a dub for Valve this is as big an F as you can get. No one should be cheering for the literal bare minimum, and even then that's a minimum that only occures when Gaben decides to get off his fat ass and finally fix shit.
@@BlackChad792 exactly
I just think it's wild how draconian Valve is with anime titles. So many get rejected that are legit games and made by large studios. However, they allow these garbage games to be dumped by the dozen on their store. To let the devs change the name or developer name multiple times in a short span etc. Just makes me wonder what is even going on at Valve. They really need to start doing a better job
Anime games??? Thats where your going wrong kiddo.
@@ryshellso526 i dont play anime games, but steam is supposed to be free market goddammit
I learned a lot. Thank you. Subscribed.
Several questions:
1) How can they change the name of their games and studios without Valve's confirmation?
2) How can they use an already existing name?
3) Why are these guys still allowed to sell on steam?
1) quality of service, manual approval would mean changing name could take weeks
2) because names cannot be reserved, if they could, it would create new scams that rely on that to bribe companies to "release" the name
3) pretty sure they cannot anymore, but they have multiple accounts so...
@@rompevuevitos222 guess this is harder to fix than it looks...
@@progste it looks bad because Steam has a bigger emphasis on consumer quality rather than tight anti consumer practices. So they have issues other sites do not.
But yeah, they have decades under the belt. They will probably come up with a solution of sorts
Honestly, I do not even see how changing the name of a game, or any business or product should even be allowed legally, there is no legitimate purpose for changing the name of something, the only reason a company would want to do that would be if their current name is doing poorly, so they want a new name that doesn't have any tarnish, well, that tarnish is needed to be seen publicly so people know what they are getting into before they decide to make a purchase, if a company has horrible reviews for being a garbage company, we need to know, so we don't utilize their business, that's the entire point. If you can just hide all your crappy past business practices by pretending to be some new company named something else, then it's basically fraud/false advertising something like that. People will think it's a new fresh company with no bad history. But it's not, the customer just doesn't know about it's bad business history, so isn't aware to avoid it.
So, to reiterate, as far as I am concerned, there is no legitimate reason to change the name of a crappy garbage product to something different - good products want to be noticed so they would keep their current successful names - kind of like when you RE-Upload a video to RUclips, it doesn't have any of the previous views or comments or reviews, but it's still the same video (Minus the ones that had to be edited for copyright), but you see my comparison - all the past history of the original uploaded video isn't there, the new RE-Uploaded copy starts at zero with nothing. Companies with bad reviews and bad past practices etc, shouldn't be allowed to hide all of that by changing the name. The entire idea is shady.
@@Arthaius If I had to guess, it's for things like updating a game's name from "Title" to something like "Title: Game of the Year Edition" after a lot of updates or content patches. Or a name change during early access, or even a retroactive subtitle following the release of other games in the series. They're edge cases but I can still imagine them happening
You'd think Steam would have some sort of verification system or something. At the very least, you'd think you wouldn't be able to have the exact name as an existing game or publisher (and in the unlikely case you do, have a verification process to make sure you are legit).
Kinda surprised a scam like this hasn't happened before.
Then people would make scams where they take big names forward and bribe studios to skip the verification delay.
Valve is not dumb, they have been at this for decades.
I think the reason this hasn't been done before is due to how gamers were treated in the past. Due to the rise of companies being just straight jerks to put it lightly, this has led to people expecting terrible problems, and as a result scammers are feeding this by doing stuff like this. In a day and age where finding anything good is a needle in a haystack, the worst thing you can do is give people what they want and take it away, cough cough The Day Before
Well, if you watched the video, it specifically states that this has been happening for years.
probably partially due to the fact that smaller indies don't always go through the trouble of trademarking their alias, so there's nothing to verify in some cases
but still, some process to ensure exclusivity of an alias you do have trademarked should've been in place at the very least
Alright, I guess I will have to be extremely paranoid about buying any game keys from now on. Thank you for making a video on this!!
Very useful information, glad I saw this, thank you!
I'm not surprised this happened in the first place and I'm sure it will happen again in the future, its Steam from Valve, reminder that several times they have allowed the sale of games without an .exe file, meaning there wasn't even a game to boot. Their game devs and the ones behind Steam are different teams.
Yup, this is the crux of the problem. Valve on the one hand have a decent idea of being open and allowing people pretty free acess to things, but they completely fail to account for bad actors who WILL show up. They never seem to grasp this yet we see it countless times.
It's about time they started to employ at least some people to offer some due diligence before anything gets released.
Having an exe is not necessary to play a game.
Some games use a non .exe format and "some" may not need to be executable at all. Like with products such as OSTs or art books.
@@rompevuevitos222 Not the point. The case they're talking about is ASACAM games where theree SHOULD be an exe. Stop making shit excuses for bad behaviour.
@@rompevuevitos222 but the point was that steam has tolerated listing of 'games' that were entirely non-existent, and therefore, there is an extended history of known exploitation of the storefront in pretty easily detectable ways.
Technically Valve has very little corporate structure, anyone can move to any project at any time. So it's very much possible that people that at one point were working on games are now working on Steam, especially with the massive falloff of game releases from them.
They did something similar to this with indie games on the Nintendo Switch back around 2019-2020.
lower the prices to cents, make a bunch of purchases to shoot it up through the rankings, then jump the price back up so it looks like the game was selling out at full price to give the illussion of a better game.
How did Nintendo resolve this?
@@aleanddragonITA i don't remember it was years ago. i just remember it was the Beat'emUps guy and the WolfWood guy talking about it
These platforms (Steam, PlayStation, Nintendo, Xbox) really need to do something about these shovelware developers and people who clearly aren’t developers with access to publish garbage, it’s honestly embarrassing
I appreciate the heads up. Thank you.
Valve needs to implement a verification process & create a limit on how often developers & users can change their username.
I think the fix is simple, just make it a bit hard to change publisher name. This will fix a lot of issue.
@@eternalinsignia Maybe have both publishers verify the transfer and have a grace period, where they could recall in case of mistakes.
no they don't. how about stop letting any fking anon publish his shyt tier game on their storefront for 100 bucks and maybe some basic curation? It was working more than fine at the start of Greenlight.
@@Vilehead so your solution is limited the platfrom to only elite tier developers ?
You forgot that many popular games start as indie projects from no name devs.
Games like DayZ, pugG took off is because steam provided an enviroment where everyone’s games can shine.
@@Vileheadbecause then Valve would be deciding what games they allow with THEIR criteria.
Apple already refused great games because of that.
It sounds good until they decide a game you like is not acceptable.
4:57 it's actually kinda smart that they used Russian Rubles specifically. It has become harder to add money to the steam accounts in Russia since the Ukrainian war started, so they ran even less risk of someone buying the games. Also, it's not necessarily their region, just the region of where they want their accounts to be, i already said the reason why they would want their accounts to be Russian
nah, in 90% of internet scams russians are involved
if they need region where ppl most likely will not buy their game - they should have chosen some small region from poor country, and write game description in a language no one understand in this region
@@Z3rgatul nah, in 90% of internet scams indians are involved
@@Z3rgatul nah, in 90% of internet scams indians are involved
@@Z3rgatularen't russians unable to buy any games on steam at the moment? Also the "russians are involved in 90% internet scams" is just a stereotype :(
@@Z3rgatulyou say that, but literally all scammers in youtube channels like Kitboga and Jim Browning are Indian
This is why Steam Greenlight should come back, there is 0 regulation for the games that come onto steam, if there was even one human being looking at these rapid name changes and store page reskins this wouldn’t happen. And yes I’m aware that getting games through steam greenlight was a fucking nightmare, but it’s better than people getting scammed
Thank you for raising awareness!
8:58 was ready to hear silksong mentioned the moment i heard 'sequel'
My first thought was Half Life 3
What no silksong does to a mf
I also did that
I thought of "Portal 3"
Crazy how "scammers on steam" wasnt even a concern before steam killed greenlight and flioded its store with hentai puzzle games
Greenlight approval time was super slow. It may have been effective for it's purposes for the start of indie games on steam in early 2010s but it simply wouldn't work in today's market of thousands.
Greenlight was killed by people upvoting games like "grass simulator" because le funny joke game and downvoting ok games that only had some issues like Chasm.
@@Sam-pie what’s Chasm
@@onelooongboi5838 Probably some 5/10 game
@@cattysplat - Todays “market of thousands” is mostly shovelware and garbage, and it’s embarrassing on Steams part
devs in steam should not be able yo change their name willy nilly, it should pass through a steam review
I dont understand how this even happens, I uploaded games to steam before myself and valve has humans chrcking if your game is what it says it is before you can upload it..
You missed one key point
800 games has a cost of $80000 to list them. The fact that they are listing so many means that they are definitely making their money back, as these scams are profit driven and the scammer has to have a good amount of money to pull this off
Imo, this is more of an attack on G2A than anything else. After all, they are the ones that will be affected, and from where the money is coming from
apperently it just a one time deposit the 100 (dont quote me on that)
@@EmberGoWild100 dollar for every game. Google Steam Direct Product Submission Fee, you can read their terms there.
No it costs $100 to list each game. But you get it back if you scam $1,000 in sales which isn't really all that hard to do.
I wont call it an attack on G2A but more of using G2A already gray business for their benefits. Sites like G2A didnt sell keys from developers, they get it from anywhere else and it could be things from credit card fraud to tricking developers to give keys as streamers
How the hell did they get past the whole 100 dollar deposit you have to put down to have your game listed on steam? Like 800 games would be $80,000. Did they buy these games from other developers? Like how did this happen?
You have to only pay the $100 once
@@foxtrots5223
I thought that was once per game, is it not?
@@FireFox64000000 No it is not it is just a one time payment and I believe the payment exist to sort of help combat people scammer
@@foxtrots5223Xsolla, a payment partner for Steam, states on their website it's 100 dollars per submitted game.
@@FireFox64000000 I looked it up and it seems that yes, it is $100 per game. Google seems to have mixed results but the Steamworks documentation says the $100 fee is per app and not one time.
Valve needs to make all name changes have to be manually approved by an admin. Also, they need to start screening games... clearly. I don't understand why this isn't done already.
Great informational video man! :3
I don't understand. Why go for the newest games like that, if you can use older ones? You'll get noticed way later. And why so many at once? Do it sporadically, so you would get caught later.
I don't even know what annoys me more - that this exploit exists in the first place (Steam is a fairly good platform for its gamers, so I hope they're working on patching that shit already) or that someone that careless and dumb had implemented it.
maybe this dude ''quit scam'' and want to show the last time what he can do and move on idk ...
The reason is simply quick money. Spoof the popular games and sell fake keys on third party sites, no matter if your fake game gets removed or not.
@@krysher6 The reasons why that can't work is if Valve catches you in 30 days you do not get the money. This scam was caught in 2 hours.
@@dragonearth5456but they do get money if someone buts a key in sites like G2A or InstantGaming
@@dragonearth5456 sure, but think about it from their perspective- worst case their fake accounts get nuked, best case they make a bunch of money, online scams are of an extremely low risk relative to their reward profile, so stupid stuff like this is still entirely viable, because there’s no cost to doing it, especially if, like this one, you have a second vector for the scam to work- in this case, steam keys, which increases the likelihood of success
wait doesn't steam take 100$ to list a game on their marketplace in the first place? how is it possible to upload so many games?
100$ is nothing crazy if you're well off and people trying to run a scam and get way more would easily drop that
Well, if your name is listed as a company, or someone, who has already PAID that fee...
Why COULDN'T you list a game on the marketplace?
Hell, maybe it's possible to have your info be the same as the devs & publishers and have access to downloading a copy of the games?
Idk man.
@@Jadebones just the front end looks the same, they haven't taken the account ID so Valve still knows that they aren't the same.
@@MudakTheMultiplier lol, I know...
They probably figured they'd be able to score enough purchases to negate the entry fee & etc, so the cost was worth the gamble.
It just blows me away that submissions aren't vetted better, but at the same time it is kind of understandable given just how damn many submissions they receive....
To be honest, I also bought one of those "premium" key packs, as it promised at least one game worth 50$. Every single game I got was on the list of inflated games turned fake AAA games. Funny thing is I noticed the games get removed the other day and I was wondering why.
You gonna tell me those fools do not have a duplicate name check even? This needs serious investigation.
Whats really wild to me is that the spoffed pages manage to link back to the actual developers and publishers.
Because even if you change your own name to Arrowhead or some other dev, Steam should still be smart enough to realise you arent Arrowhead
The one that uploads the game does not need to be the one that made it or published it.
Your steam account is separate from your brand. Be it for creating or playing.
Publisher and author lines are just hyperlinks. It doesn't require any sort of verification on either side
@@mattvoelker241 Example results include: Developer hyperlinks that just go to the publisher's page, or the many and various developer/publisher links that go to a steam store search rather than an actual page for the entity in question.
I think they should charge $500 in escrow for any rename, legit users get the money back but if they suspect it's a scam their money is gone
@@mattvoelker241
That uh, should really be changed lol
no one is above getting scammed, it can happen to anyone, but i'm always surprised about scams that i could easily fall for myself, when they are done so well that even tech savvy people could be caught up in.
scary stuff
what I don't understand is why somebody can choose the same names as the dev or publisher name, isn't there a system in place that tells you if the name you chose is already taken? That way you can't have duplicates, the only thing that Valve then has to do is write a rule that the name of your dev company or publisher can't look too similar to other studio names to prevent other scamming.
I'm honestly shocked Steam doesn't have 2 painfully obvious checks in place.
1. Someone to check that the game is at least loosely as described in the first 5 minutes of gameplay before the game is available for purchase.
2. Detection of spam uploading. No student, game company, or anyone else for that matter, would take on 3+ games at once then publish them all at the same time.
Another “scam” that is running comes from (mostly) Chinese games that state the availability of the game in english when it’s just a terrible mostly incomprehensible machine translation (but they still get to check the boxes for English).
Steam needs to get their shit together and check the games they sell more often… English isn’t my first language but it’s awesome since so many foreign games WILL have english available… but not most of these chinese games
Then Steam would have to review and decide what quality is acceptable.
And would also have to apply this to other aspects of games, for all games.
That is not a good solution.
would you rather not be able to play those games at all though? a feature of a game being bad isn't a scam, that's what reviews are for
Steam can’t go through every single game and quality check each language implemented. It’s your responsibility to do basic research beforehand on whether it has a passable English translation or not. If it’s from no-name indie developers, expect to see a lot of machine translations.
@@rompevuevitos222
I think steam should hire a review team to review each game at EA or initial launch.
They have more money than God, they can afford it. This isn't RUclips. They have like what 200,000 games? A review team to just run a new uploads for 10 minutes to see if they are real isn't a huge ask for a multibillion dollar company. Hire 50 people to do nothing but this. Why not?
@@honaleri what, you think youtube cant afford stuff? Under what rock are you living? They obviously CAN afford it, the problem is they dont WANT to.
This is a major bug from steam that allow this exploit. I hope they fix it soon
It is not a bug
steam should really add a NMG rule to their terms of service smh
@@rompevuevitos222bug or not bug, the fact is that is possible to create a duplicate of a game on steam, with the same name and publisher, while other platforms won't even let you put an username that's already used
@@Grande_Vtr It is to pretent name-squatting. Otherwise someone could buy a name of something unreleased on steam and hold it hostage for money. kind of like how domain name squatting works.
usernames aren't bought and sold so steam could care less
Less a bug and moreso atrocious cybersecurity practices.
It's scary how the scammers/hackers can run the steam platform completly if they wanted too.
This is why I hate none phycal copys of games. I user to love computer games when they also had them out on disk. This why i love my disk version of my ps5 and Xbox series x amd Nintendo switch. Plus I don't have to worry about the internet I don't have to update I don't have to do anything I just install and uninstall games when I'm low on space
nvme drives are large and lightning fast and because of that not many computers support dvd drives anymore so the only way to get a game is digitally or through a usb thumbdrive which are very slow, if you wanna buy a game in steam you need to check if there are real reviews and real information and buy the game directly from the store page dont be as foolish as the gen x putting their credit card on an obviously shady website
@asdasdf1243 that's the thing I still have games on a old hard drive and they install fine but the new windows 10 won't let me play alot of them. I tryed doing the virtual drive where I emulate a older version of windows on my desktop but it's a pain in the ass. I just hate the fact that I gotta pay steam now for games that I already own. Going completely digital I feel like is gonna have some unforseen consequences in the future. And they can make games Blue-ray disks like the ps5 and the Xbox series x. It's not like your gonna be running it off the disk. I do like the idea of how nintendo switch has there cartridges they could do the Same thing only a certain type of nvme chip inside them.
Whats more shocking is this scam could of been happening years ago. (maybe they have been with only now the games are no longer going under the radar anymore) but yeah if it hasn't been on going over the years then as said its quite shocking it took many years for them to figure this out.
Also thanks for the video i guess this is sort of why the steam review system got bit of a update like a 2-4 weeks ago, where those who got gifted games or bought keys aka off stream no longer show in the overall score of the game anymore, other then the recent rating score. When i noticed i was like aww few of my reviews are now meaningless at least more then half are still valid but some mainly the small indie games with like under 600 reviews have now been hurt of those small indie games with their score dropping, one game i noticed was about 460 total range from when i last saw it. Now dropped to 295 so yeah like half of its overall score now wiped due to this change to the system.
As someone who has published games to steam before, I can tell you, they ask for a lot of info when first uploading a game for the first time, but very little for subsequent changes, which can't really change easily as urgent updates are a thing, we can't wait for days for valve to approve a minor fix for a major game crash after all. Very importantly though, no form of two factor authentication is ever required, even if it is highly recommended under normal use, which looking at this will probably change.
Why is this not view as an international crime? One would think something like this should already have laws to prevent some sort of international uproar.
I noticed this as well. Dragon Ball FighterZ Legendary was like 80% off, and I was like, WTF? There's no way. I thought about it, sure, but I didn't do it, and now I am glad that I didn't.
I have a steam dev account, you can set the developer and publisher as whatever you want and i think set the link page to whatever you want i think as long as its a steam page
This is news that needs to be spread like wildfire. Growing up my only option to play higher priced games was third party sellers, so it's a shame to see that scalpers and scammers are ruining the ability for younger people to have access and play games.
I joined the discord server to see if there is a point and laugh section but there was nothing. Not even a public chat channel. I hope to see more stuff added to the discord server. I’ll subscribe to stay up to date to these scams.
I feel bad for the guy who was hyped up for Elden Ring 2 and GTA 6 and fooled.
Honestly my thoughts go over to the people that opened them. I don't think this guy has the skills to put for instance a bitcoin miner or malware hidden in these games or their files but man is it a possibility. Keylogger, spyware, this is potentially more dangerous in someone who actually has malicious intent.
It might kill the grey market if people cleary get scammed without any recourse.
Not a bad deal.
Excellent. The more distrust in the system, the less likely it is people will buy from key resellers again.
@@dagda1180 i'll always be from key sites, Steam is too Expensive
I love these videos! Please keep making them!
this going to piss off a lot of indie developer if valve change the system to a more inconvience manner.
Tarkov is not even on steam, that just shows how desperate people are for Tarkov on steam
Any possibility of injected malware? I feel it was likely added to those downloads
I think steam does scan for it but it's not possible to make it impossible to put malware in it so idk
Its scary that scams like this can get on steam. Been using it for almost a decade and I always thought it was basically perfectly secure. Its great that they "nuked" the operation within hours, but still spooky.
it could be worse, people could go out of their way to buy a specific steam key just to realize that it was a scam, and the key resellers are like "you got the game what do you want us to do about it?" and side with the buyer.
That scammer needs to put Silksong up for sale in the store....
...then I can at least PRETEND to have it and I'm not playing it yet because...
"...if I start playing Silksong before I finish these other games I've already started first, I'll completely forget about them."
I have a hard time feeling sympathy for anyone who buys a key bundle or a game from these resell sites and gets scammed.
But this scam was done on OFFICIAL STEAM store. So is there now any difference between 3rd party sites and STEAM store after there is now possibly for a scam on both?
It's usually poor people who try to find good deals and end up getting scammed.
@@waarschijndont be poor then sucks to suck
@@waarschijnjust do it the yohoho way...
You hurt devs more by buying grey market keys.
@@poeepee1715 lol
Awesome content, as always!
The AAA companies that were spoofed have trademark claims against these users. Valve also needs to completely remove these fake games from their systems and ban the devs that are doing this.
If this happens in the physical world criminal consequences would happen but constantly all we see is some form of online scam where nobody is ever properly punished, the issue is growing at an alarming rate
I'd also be concerned about the fake games containing malware. Anyone who bought the "discounted" games and tried to run them could now have a compromised computer. Either part of a botnet or even just logging to steal info like logins/credit cards/bank/etc.
An IP ban for these scammers is the best route. With how quickly Valve handled it there's no point in faffing about with an automated system, just hardlock them out of selling on steam.
To clarify on those random key bundles; its fine to get them from authorized resellers. They usually have some games you personally wouldn't be interested in playing, but that's to be expected assuming a broad spread of genres.
When in doubt whether the sale of a popular recently released game is legitimate…
1. Look at the user reviews. The less there are the more suspicious it is
2. Refer to official media pages to see if the sale is promoted and advertised by official social media accounts.
3. Compare search results from the steam search bar. If there’s copies of the same game and one of them is on sale and the other isn’t, it’s suspicious.
Point 2 is most important. Most game studios will heavily advertise sales of popular games since they want as many people to buy it as possible. They will heavily advertise sequels for the same reason. Always make sure games on sale or unannounced sequels are first confirmed real by game companies official social media sites
So valve has become so complacent that conniving developers have found a way to undermine their storefront. Impressive yet concerning indeed, because the more expansive your service the more difficult it is to update it due to the stacking codework; this scam and more similar to it will continue until valve does some system-wide overhauling, and that will take a significant margin of time.
That's not complacency though? It happened because of abuse of a godd system. As someone here pointed out if you do a name duplicate check and deny it that way a lot of games fall into to issues when they have common legitimate names.
@@blvckl0tcs750 But it took thousands to be scammed before valve did anything, that means they're not even paying attention to new games being added nor checking if those details are legitimate.
First of all nice video and nice gameplay :P I watched your video right now, and there still plenty of scam games up like 7times "Only Up" XD, Valve isnt really doing anything about it, they should maybe restrict that dumb publisher/developer name changing.
few months ago, one guy added me and he was claiming he sells rocket league key for steam but price was too good to be real so I didn't trust him. I Found a guy which he recently traded with and asked him was the game he traded for valid. when he checked, he was shocked because the game in library was named rocket league but when clicked on it, banner was different and when installed and opened it was obviously a different game.
Scammer had a game which he released before but he renamed it to rocket league. When i told him that he is reported for scamming, he replayed that people (collectors) were happy with the trade and he was sure he haven't done anything wrong by changing game name