The developer was banned too
Not all games are just games. A recent example popped up when Steam delisted an innocuous-seeming indie platformer that actually had quite nefarious motives.
Abstractismis a minimalist platformer that developer Okalo Union was selling for $.49. The low price was a trap though. As YouTuberSidAlphareports,Abstractismis a front for a series of viruses that mine Monero (which is a cryptocurrency) in the background. During installation,Abstractismalso adds a Trojan virus and malware that masquerade as Steam executables and launchers.
It’s not necessarily easy to detect an example of cryptojacking, but the most obvious indicators are that CPU and GPU will usage will be far higher than they should be.Abstractismdid this, especially for such a low-specs game that shouldn’t require much processing power at all. However, the smoking gun isthis now-deleted developer commentthat says “Bitcoin is outdated, we currently useAbstractismto mine only Monero coins.”
This isn’t the only example of Okalo Union scamming Steam users. Another personsaid that they were ripped offby the developer who sold them a worthlessAbstractismitem that looked identical to a rareTeam Fortress 2item. Okalo Union created items that appeared to be valuable in hopes that they’d be able to trick a few careless people into buying them for big bucks. It worked at least once.
Steam has removedAbstractismfrom sale and banned the developer. Valve’slaissez-faireapproach to quality control on Steam means that incidents like this will always be reacted to rather than prevented. It’s a small miracle that malicious schemes disguised as legitimate games don’t pop up more often.
Steam Games Abstractism Is Virus Crypto Miner and TF2 Scam Items[YouTube viaEurogamer]
