Cryptojacking – the practice of hijacking the computer resources of unsuspecting users to mine for cryptocurrency – has become a widespread issue, overtaking ransomware as the leading cyber-crime. Now, cryptojacking has spread into video games.

According to a report from Motherboard, Valve Corporation, best known for their video games series Half-Life and the digital video game marketplace Steam, have removed the indie game Abstractism for reportedly using deceptive business practices and leveraging the game to cryptojack those that purchased and downloaded the game. Valve has also banned the game’s developer Okalo Union and publisher dead.team from further releasing games on the platform.

The scam was brought to light because Steam users complained the game’s steam.exe and launcher files included malware designed to mine for the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero (XMR).

Apparently, there were numerous red flags that alerted gamers that there was something afoot. A prominent YouTube personality noticed the game was overly taxing of computer resources – an unlikely occurrence for a 99 cent indie game. The game was also triggering malware alerts.

Okalo Union denied the claims:

“Abstractism does not mine any of cryptocurrency. Probably, you are playing on high graphics settings, because they take a bit of CPU and GPU power, required for post-processing effects rendering.”

Okalo Union also deceptively encouraged users to leave the game running even when not in use to gain access to rare in-game items, however, this was likely done to increase the amount of crypto mined. Worse yet, the in-game items that the developer was teasing, also turned out to be phony. Steam users are reporting that an in-game item for Abstractism used the same art and name as an item in the popular Steam game Team Fortress 2.

Value issued a statement to Kotaku, saying that they “removed Abstractism and banned its developer from Steam for shipping unauthorized code, trolling, and scamming customers with deceptive in-game items.”

There’s no telling how much money developer Okalo Union made off with between sales of the fake in-game items and cryptocurrency mining, but the situation has put a spotlight on Steam as a potential risk for picking up cryptojacking malware.