Dev Explains How Steam Curator Reviewers May Be Scammers

Steam is both an easy-to-use digital game storefront and a seedy shit rabbit hole filled with weird, archaic leftovers from past ideas that Valve never finished or improved upon. One example is the curator system. Most users do very little, but recently an indie developer believes the system is used by scammers who sell game codes on the gray market. So it claims that the latest games have been targeted with these supposed glyphers on Steam.

Yesterday on Twitter, Cowcat, Brok developer—Newly released point-and-click side-scrolling action featuring a crocodile—shared a viral thread It explains how certain types of scams involving curators, Steam code, and reviews work. Curator on Steam list created by the user Anyone can create and update Reviews of new and old games help people easily find the next game to buy. Technically, nothing in the thread has been confirmed by the alleged scammer himself, but the evidence speaks, and a small game developer has created and sold his game in 2022. Another example of the kind of shit you have to deal with when trying. Scammers who trick developers and publicists into abandoning their code This is by no means a new phenomenon.

Just two days later, on August 28th, BrokeOn the release date of , Cowcat announced that the game was Targeted by some Steam Curators with questionable negative reviews. Many of these curators had hundreds of positive reviews for various other games, but some curators Broke.

What makes this more suspicious is that many of these curators had One negative review and that their Broke reviewCowcat said many of these curators First Posted Positive Review for BrokeBut then something changed. what happened? The developer believes this attempt to filter out scammers by emailing free codes has angered some people.

Normally, Indie developer email inboxes are overflowing I’m with people who claim to be reviewers, critics, YouTubers, publishers, etc. and request the code. As Cowcat mentions in a thread, most of these are scammers trying to get free codes that can be sold on shady key selling sites.But to avoid accidentally ignoring a few legitimate critics and reviewers trying to reach out Broke, Cowcat came up with a plan.They sent all these people a free-to-play Steam key Broke The Prologue serves as a prequel and demo for the full game. Cowcat figured that people who really wanted to play the game for review purposes would use the code, make sure it was a free prologue, and contact them about any mistakes. And some people actually contacted the developers, As for the “mistake” that most people didn’t play, Cowcat believes it was because they didn’t want to play it. they immediately sold the keys instead through the shade leading seller.

This move may have caused problems for these scammers as people who bought the keys found they had been tricked. We believe you have visited and reviewed the page. Broke Minus before release. What makes these reviews so questionable is that Cowcat never distributed the full game to these people. Their review claims they played the full game.

Things to watch out for Curators can review any game on Steam, even if they don’t own it or have one at all. Played it to make it even easier for people to use old, barely updated stuff fraud system.

Kotaku I reached out to Cowcat and Valve.

After all this, Cowcat says they plan to report these Steam curators to Valve. They also further criticized the company for continuing to allow shady Steam curators and scammers to use positive and negative reviews like this to “blackmail” indie developers. Additionally, the code is often obtained via scams like the one Cowcat believes these curators are involved in, so developers don’t see a dime from these sales, so We asked people not to buy games from shady Keysight.

How does this affect Brokethe cowcats don’t believe in these curators so don’t worry Leads to many sales on SteamBut they’re happy their thread went viral, helping spread the word about how this kind of scam goes unpunished on Steam.