Valve bans alleged scammers after indie developer uncovers potential resale racket

Valve has banned several Steam curator groups following accusations of key reselling and false negative reviews regarding a new indie game. 

Events were initially set in motion when beat ‘em up point-and-click game Brok the InvestiGator was hit with negative reviews from Steam curators after its developer used prologue keys in an attempt to determine whether some of those who asked for access to the game were simply trying to resell their keys. 

In the wake of its release last week, the indie title had accrued many positive user reviews, but developer Cowcat spotted that several reviews from Steam curators had switched from a positive 'Recommended' rating to 'Not Recommended'. After looking into it, Cowcat concluded that the resulting switch was likely backlash from those they'd handed out free keys to. 

In a Twitter thread (below), Cowcat explains that they didn’t want to give the game for free to resellers posing as reviewers, but wanted to make sure they didn't inconvenience legitimate critics. As such, they sent a demo version of the game to every user who requested one, believing the actual reviewers would reply to flag the error. As Cowcat goes on to explain, you can’t fully confirm the contents of a Steam key without activating it, which would likely catch a reseller out if they’re simply passing it on to someone else.

Cowcat assumes that having attempted to re-sell the demo keys, the illegitimate curators were hit with negative feedback from third-party customers expecting to have purchased a full game. In response, they suggest that the alleged resellers changed their reviews as a form of revenge, but by doing so have highlighted another problem.  

“Those reviews are 100% fake because considering I sent them prologue keys, they couldn't play the full game,” Cowcat says. “Yet I was surprised. Somehow, those curators were able to post reviews of the game on the full version page”. 

Now, it looks like Valve has taken action following reports from the developer. As flagged on Reddit and then Cowcat thereafter, all the groups that have targeted the game with fake reviews have been removed. Other groups that were owned by the same curator but didn’t leave a review also appear to have been banned. Nine curator groups were reportedly used to post negative reviews, with one owner managing another 11 groups. As such, 20 bans have been dished out.

At the time of writing, trying to view any of these Steam groups leads to a message explaining that each one “has been removed for violating the Steam Community Rules and Guidelines”.

While Brok has brought more attention to this issue, it’s unfortunately not uncommon on Steam. You can read a Reddit thread here warning potential indie developers of just that. We’ve reached out to Valve and will update this story if we hear back.

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