Steam "developers" and their free illegal activities is the perfect platform to make money.



Angel Moreno



A youtuber and a few people I follow have notice a big problem in Steam platform. The illegal activity in Steam is greater than smaller platforms like itch.io or gamejolt. When I say illegal activity it is people who used noticeable artwork and sold it for money. The stolen copyright artwork is not a fan made game or small detail you might not care. Artwork that is indeed someone else and an image easy to find on google, that is the noticeable artwork.

Another side note, I contacted PayPal on Steam approval on sex games. Anyone who used PayPal knows it has a Prohibited rule. No news sites or reporters have question PayPal's Prohibited rule on Steam. We know anyone can use PayPal to buy games on Steam and Valve still shows no effort to do better on selling sex games. Mexico laws will shut down companies if the sex game is ever sold to kids. Britain is doing a similar move, Indonesia banneds any sex website. Japan doesn't allow actual porn (their terms). USA will arrest people if a child is involved (image or real). Russia blocks kids from looking, I can go on.

Paypal link: https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/what-is-paypal%E2%80%99s-policy-on-transactions-that-involve-sexually-oriented-goods-and-services-faq569#business

Mexico: https://www.xataka.com.mx/otros-1/el-senado-de-la-republica-aprobo-que-los-videojuegos-en-mexico-sean-clasificados

Every other country can be easy search online with google.

The Illegal activity

I will get back to the sex problem on Steam later, the big headlight spot is the scammers. What would be the problem? Stolen images and stolen games are currently a rising problem. Musical Anti Hero a small youtuber spotted the problem; it was too easy to sell stolen images. If the "developer" wanted to be creative they also steal music. We only going for images because they are easier to spot as well as finding the original.

3:32 if you want to skip

This is not where the scammers stop. A reddit user gamedevartist1990 got their free game stolen. The Steam version sold for $1, it is unclear what happen after the page was remove. Then Hello Neighbor Game got stolen, the developer said yes to the idea of uploading to GameJolt. It then became clear the scammer wanted more money and Steam was perfect. For some crazy reason many sites think is real, they never bother to do research. Final example is 'Its good to be a pirate' a small free RPG Maker game. The game is currently on sale over at Steam for anyone to buy, the original developer is trying to take it down.

Rules for Hello Neighbor

The original developer of 'Its good to be a pirate'

Reddit user gamedevartist1990: https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/8dmkxe/what_should_i_have_to_file_a_dmca_against_a_game/

The Sex games

Now the second problem with Steam... sex games. I question the way Valve allowed this to happen. It became clear Valve never understood sex laws since I found 46 possible ways Valve could go to court. Top 5 are as follows:





- Fake game rankings

- Failure to stop children from buying porn

- Failure to block porn in world view of public eyes

- ESRB and PEGI rules completely ignore

- Allowing fake age to be accept





I manage to get PayPal to look into the matter, but they do not release any reports. Others like PEGI and ESRB have not reply. I'm now attempting to contact the government, starting with my for possible answers.

I don't think they are doing anything

PEGI : https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19042908

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/jul/30/pegi-video-game-ratings-law

Concussion

People say Valve is not responsible for it. I disagree because we all follow the law, no one is allowed to break it. The company can hire people and not doing it is an example of a weak company getting ready to fall. Steam does not help developers including the Visual Novel community. None of the games you own are yours not after a report of a developer removing someone's key. If, you want to support developers buy the game at full price. Never make it Steam exclusive, only scammers do that. And for goodnes’s sake stop spending money on COD, AC, CSGO loot, etc. This is why we don't get better games.

I'm writing about this because not only does it hurt real developers but gamers too. The more people spend money on scammers the more it helps them. While real developers are being left behind, I saw many blog posts about zero downloads. This is not about problems with your game, the marketing or even reused assets. If anything this leaves small developers to fight for themselves. The lies they hear, the bandwagon and unprofessional experience has lead them nowhere.

Any edits and updates will appear below here.