Dev explains how Steam curator reviewers can be scammers

Steam is both an easy-to-navigate storefront for digital games and a rabbit hole of seedy shit filled with weird, archaic remnants of past ideas that Valve never finished or improved upon. One such example is the curator system. Most users barely interact with it, but recently an indie developer believes the system is being used by scammers who also sell game codes on gray markets. They claim that because they didn’t provide any free codes, their latest game was targeted by these alleged scammers on Steam.

Yesterday on Twitter, Cowcat, the developer behind Brok—a newly released point and click beat ’em up featuring an alligator—shared a now viral thread explains how a specific type of curator, steam code, and review scam works. Steam curator lists are user created and Anyone can create and update them with reviews for new or old games to help people find the next game to buy. And while nothing in the thread is technically confirmed by the alleged scammers themselves, the evidence is revealing and another example of the kind of shit smaller game developers have to deal with trying to develop and sell games in 2022 . Scammers tricking developers and PR into giving up codes is by no means a new phenomenon.

On August 28, just two days later WhineRelease date, Cowcat stated that the game was targeted by some Steam curators with suspicious negative reviews. While many of these curators had hundreds of positive reviews for various other games, some had published negative curator reviews for Whine.

What makes this even more suspicious is that many of these curators just had one negative review and it was hers Whine review. Cowcat claims that many of these curators did so initially gave positive reviews to the Whine. But then something changed. So what happened? Well, the developer believes that this attempt to filter out scammers by emailing them free codes has upset some people.

Usually, Indie developers’ email inboxes are flooded with people requesting codes and posing as reviewers, critics, YouTubers, publishers, etc. As Cowcat mentions in the thread, most of them are scammers looking for free codes which can then be sold on shady key sale sites. But in an effort not to inadvertently ignore the few legitimate critics and reviewers who have signed up to play Whine, Cowcat had a plan. They sent Steam keys for the free-to-play to all these people Whine Prologue that acts as a prequel and demo to the full game. Cowcat figured that people who really wanted to play the game for review purposes would use the code, see that it was for the free prologue, and report the bug. And while some actually contacted the developer about the “mistake” most didn’t make, which Cowcat believes because they didn’t want to play it, Instead, they quickly sold the key about shady key seller.

This move likely caused these scammers some trouble as people buying the keys found they had been scammed. So Cowcat believes that some of these scammers have checked out their curator pages on Steam Whine negative before its publication. What makes these reviews very suspicious is that Cowcat has never given these people the full game Their reviews claim to have played the full game.

It should be mentioned that Any curator can rate any game on Steam even if they don’t own it or have never had it played, making it even easier for people to use the old, barely updated cheating system.

my box contacted Cowcat and Valve.

After all that, Cowcat says they plan to report these Steam curators to Valve. They also criticized the company for continuing to allow shady Steam curators and scammers to use positive and negative reviews like this to “blackmail” indie developers. Also, they asked people not to buy games through shady key sites as the developers don’t see a penny from those sales as the codes are often obtained through scams like the ones Cowcat believes these curators are involved in.

How that will affect WhineCowcat isn’t worried as they don’t believe these curators lead to many sales on Steam. But they’re still happy that their thread has gone viral and is helping to spread the word on how this type of scam continues to go unpunished on Steam.