Valve Purges Steam Of 200 Fake Games, Takes On Evil Video Game Cartel

Most video game enthusiasts don’t know that there is a battle brewing between digital distribution platforms like Valve’s Steam and a Cartel producing fake games. The groups participating in this malicious activity were recently dealt a blow by Valve when the company removed up to 173 fake titles on Steam. All of which were produced by one studio masquerading as two companies.

Valve has been working to combat the epidemic of fake games on Steam as far back as May, Gamasutra reports. It wasn’t until recently that the company finally offered tangible proof of progress by removing nearly 200 titles published by Silicon Echo Studios and Zonitron Productions. Upon further investigation, however, it was found that these two entities are actually operating as one.

Helping to expose this trend of publishing shovelware on Steam to abuse the platform’s system for monetary gain is YouTuber SidAlpha. In a video, the content creator talked about how the perpetrators managed to crank out as many as 86 low-quality titles over the past two months. These games have since been removed, along with all the titles that were published by both studios.

Some of these titles include Clickey, SHAPES, and Grim Banana, Polygon reports. Every single one of the games is of absolutely no value to gamers and thanks to how cheaply they can be made, the video game Cartel producing this worthless garbage is actually able to avoid having to pay the $100 publishing fee for all the games.

What really makes the spread of these fake games so problematic is the economy that it has since created. Abusive users can actually buy these games in bulk and sell the trading cards that they get to certain individuals. This has created a gray market, which Valve has struggled to contain, and which is putting a dent on Steam’s user experience.