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Steam game is actually a crypto miner, devs use souvenir section to scam TF2 users [Up: Removed]

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xClkx9UzsmE&feature=youtu.be

Saw this video on Reddit. Situation needs more attention. But, basically:

  • Game includes a "steamservice.exe" executable that is, actually, a crypto miner (that flags as a trojan for most AVs) which the devs claim is just something needed for Steam to work properly with the game
  • They've used their souvenir page to create items using rare TF2 names and images, and trading them in order to scam people
  • Outside of that, the game is essentially an asset flip selling memes and other shit as "souvenirs" now that they've changed the names back from the TF2 items to other things.

Here's a link to the store page.

Their "souvenir" page on Steam is full of stuff like selling images of Pepe the frog for inventories, flags, conservative politicians like Trump and Putin, random image board memes, stolen art, etc. All ranging from a few cents to $100 USD a pop.

And, of course, anti-semitic shit.

DjVY0WyUYAAsoOs.jpg


At this point I'm entirely convinced that Valve has absolutely no curation of any sort or kind.

Mod edit:
lashman said:
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problem solved (as of 4 minutes ago)
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LewieP

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Oct 26, 2017
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So by it being on Steam, is it implied that Valve think that this is entirely legal and definitely not trolling?
 

Mills

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Oct 28, 2017
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Is there any liability on Valve's side I wonder..? There must not be for this kind of negligence.
 
OniluapL

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This doesn't have anything to do with Valve's approach (they still won't accept malware, which I would consider it to be, lol), it has to do with a MASSIVE failure in their checks. It's really unjustifiable that this happened, but I don't think it's a problem with "the floodgates being open", exactly.
 
LewieP

LewieP

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OniluapL said:
This doesn't have anything to do with Valve's approach (they still won't accept malware, which I would consider it to be, lol), it has to do with a MASSIVE failure in their checks. It's really unjustifiable that this happened, but I don't think it's a problem with "the floodgates being open", exactly.
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Their approach is to do minimal checks.
 

Deleted member 1849

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Report the game. I'm also just about to.

This shouldn't be taken as an example of Valve's rules on curation. It clearly violates multiple rules. Unfortunately this is just another example of them half assing their checks.
 
WieDerrickWie

WieDerrickWie

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Jul 4, 2018
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Space Trucker, a game that uses stolen assets from several different games, is still available on Steam since it released years ago.

I'm sure this game will get fixed/killed well before they do anything about Space Trucker, but it still pisses me off.
 
Jacobson

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there was also a steam game called 'Climber' which uses Dota 2's logo as its own logo, and has an in-game item which is an exact copy of an item in Dota 2 (Dragonclaw hook, worth $1k in Steam market). a couple of people were scammed using these items and they posted on reddit. the game is gone from the steam store now, and i doubt those users will be getting back their items.
 
1upsuper

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Jacobson said:
there was also a steam game called 'Climber' which uses Dota 2's logo as its own logo, and has an in-game item which is an exact copy of an item in Dota 2 (Dragonclaw hook, worth $1k in Steam market). a couple of people were scammed using these items and they posted on reddit. the game is gone from the steam store now, and i doubt those users will be getting back their items.
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I don't really understand what this all means. How did users lose a Dota 2 item by playing this "Climber" game?
 
OP
OP

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1upsuper said:
I don't really understand what this all means. How did users lose a Dota 2 item by playing this "Climber" game?
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ok, so think of it this way

there's an item named "rare spaghetti" worth $1,000

a new game comes out, and copies the image and name of "rare spaghetti" to essentially make a bootleg one

they then trade their bootleg spaghetti for $1,000 worth of other items that are legitimate to an unsuspecting user
 
Hella

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I know Steam doesn't care about the actual quality of games on their store, but I've been under the impression they do some kind of check for malware before letting something onto their platform. Between them letting Red Shell spyware in, this, as well as the plethora of clearly hateful content scattered throughout their store, I'm becoming increasingly disturbed by Valve's complete lack of quality control on their platform.

The bottom line is, Steam needs standards. Hateful content and malware should have no place on their platform whatsoever. At the point that it is used to genuinely scam or hurt people, Steam has gone too far.
 
1upsuper

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Enter the Dragon Punch said:
ok, so think of it this way

there's an item named "rare spaghetti" worth $1,000

a new game comes out, and copies the image and name of "rare spaghetti" to essentially make a bootleg one

they then trade their bootleg spaghetti for $1,000 worth of other items that are legitimate to an unsuspecting user
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Thanks for the explanation. That's really damn heinous. Good grief.
 
oni-link

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Valve are like that really cool kid at school who grows up into the absolute worst person
 
GrrImAFridge

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newmoneytrash said:
remember when fairly well known pubs and devs had to go through greenlight to get their game on steam

who would have thought that process would be the *good* old days
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Greenlight wouldn't have made a difference. I bought the game to poke around a bit, and steamservice.exe was added with last Sunday's patch. Release-approved build:
abstractism1o5c2p.jpg


July 22nd build:
abstractism2w0d1q.jpg
 

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Hella said:
I know Steam doesn't care about the actual quality of games on their store, but I've been under the impression they do some kind of check for malware before letting something onto their platform. Between them letting Red Shell spyware in, this, as well as the plethora of clearly hateful content scattered throughout their store, I'm becoming increasingly disturbed by Valve's complete lack of quality control on their platform.

The bottom line is, Steam needs standards. Hateful content and malware should have no place on their platform whatsoever. At the point that it is used to genuinely scam or hurt people, Steam has gone too far.
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Adding Red Shell to the discussion about Valve curation is pretty disengenuous, man. Publicly it was an ad tracking service which isn't against the rules, and a whole load of major games used it including things like Civ 6, Kerbal Space Program, ESO and Vermintide.

It isn't Valve's responsibility to deal with awful disclosure of third party programs and libraries of everything on Steam. If it was, quite frankly that would be a mess to deal with. It's definitely not the same as a game literally being a bitcoin miner.

That said Red Shell was scummy as hell.
 
Hella

Hella

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Nappael said:
Adding Red Shell to the discussion about Valve curation is pretty disengenuous, man. Publicly it was an ad tracking service which isn't against the rules, and a whole load of major games used it including things like Civ 6, Kerbal Space Program, ESO and Vermintide.

It isn't Valve's responsibility to deal with awful disclosure of third party programs and libraries of everything on Steam. If it was, quite frankly that would be a mess to deal with. It's definitely not the same as a game literally being a bitcoin miner.

That said Red Shell was scummy as hell.
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It is absolutely Valve's responsibility to own up to (and be aware of) what they are distributing to their users. Like, they might reactively take something down after the fact, but they clearly aren't checking for themselves to begin with and that is a problem.
 

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This is what happens when you pander to people who whine asking for games that fetishize women of questionable ages to be allowed
 
ZeroDotFlow

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This is absolute dogshit. I wrote an email to Gabe Newell directly because this is the kind of thing that should be stamped out immediately. I doubt I'll get a response back but c'mon Valve.
 
Sei

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Steam has no quality control.

I guess since no one is a boss, they just keep passing it on to some one else.

There needs to be a competitor, Steam is becoming trash.
 

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Hella said:
It is absolutely Valve's responsibility to own up to (and be aware of) what they are distributing to their users. Like, they might reactively take something down after the fact, but they clearly aren't checking for themselves to begin with and that is a problem.
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I don't think you realise just how steep of a demand that is when you extend the reach out to disclosure of literally every ad tracker, data analytics tool, and third party library ever used in any patch. It's a completely unreasonable expectation to have. Every major piece of software these days has multiple third party libraries all doing different things, you probably have multiple pieces of software installed on your PC right now with ad tracking and data analytics tools that you have never heard of, etc. It's a complete mess to manage and responsibility 100% lies with the developer and not the store front.

Again, I remind you that nothing red shell did was actually against the rules. Ad tracking and data analytics are totally accepted these days, regardless of what I think about it. The problems with it being a thing were basically:
  1. The implementation seemed to be poor and could be used to track personally identifiable data, against GDPR.
  2. This was not disclosed.
For a widely used third party library, it's pretty clear to see why this wouldn't be picked up by Valve.

It's not hard to design a quick anti-virus check to flag potentially damaging games and have someone look over those ones in particular. It would probably prevent games like the one in the OP, or Capcom's rootkit they included with Street FIghter V. Something like that is actually reasonable to expect a store front to do.
 
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dude

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oni-link said:
And people will still defend them

It never ceases to amaze me how many shitty things people on Era will defend as long as it's their favourite corporation in the spotlight
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Oh please. Can people not actually engage in a discussion anymore, do we have to just jump to assumed interest and factionalism?
Some people believe that Valve shouldn't ctrongly control Steam, and there are plenty of arguments here in this thread that have nothing to do with factionalism.

This game clearly breaks some Steam rules, and I believe Valve will remove it.
 
Lashley

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Reported the game.

This is what happens when people whine about "censorship"
 
GrrImAFridge

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Nappael said:
It's not hard to design a quick anti-virus check to flag potentially damaging games and have someone look over those ones in particular. It would probably prevent games like the one in the OP, or Capcom's rootkit they included with Street FIghter V. Something like that is actually reasonable to expect a store front to do.
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Builds submitted for release approval are scanned for viruses and malware, but since there's no certification process for patches, I do think Steam's backend should scan files automatically as part of the upload process.
 
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