Over 800 Games Removed From Steam After Fake Game Scam

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.

▶ FOLLOW

▶ MUSIC
Max Anson - Where Does It End
Hysics - Shell-Shocked
Dream Cave - Unknown Phenomenon
Broad Sky - Conversion
William Claeson - Last Cassette

All music provided courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

▶ 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

[firebrn]

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.

[DualEdgest]

Biggest tip-off would was naming one of the games Dota 3. Valve would never release a third game in a series.

[lehran]

Someone over there realized they had to stop this man before he releases Half Life 3.

[placeholderdoe]

Can't believe he's saying this all while speedrunning and not moving his mouth. Edit: Be nice in the replies.

[seretkeena]

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.

[Le_Fero]

9:10
They made Lethal Company 2 while the 1st one is still in early access lmfao

[-Rua-]

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.

[_Moralle]

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?

[zuziarinechannel]

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.

[BoolXor]

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.

[PetitTasdeBoue]

Scammers ruining everything for everyone else again.

[RolandTheMighty]

Moral of the story: buy 10 copies of Hollow Knight and no other games on Steam

[rev_dude]

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.

[bluemyst]

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.

[DuncDog]

People gave steam greenlight a lot of crap, but I feel like this type of stuff didn't get super bad until that disappeared.

[scorchik]

Lethal company 2 is really funny because lethal company isn’t even finished yet

[ignis]

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.

[lunasophia]

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.

[BlastingXNP]

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.

[Dxtrity]

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.