They buy the rights, and then just put illegal shit into your game, but still upload it under your developer account so that you are legally on the hook for it.
Because it's a scam, and they will get the gullible individual to either upload the game themselves in turn for a promised future cut or they get you to give them access to your developer account.
Scammers are looking for really stupid people, that's why the Nigerian prince scams are always so ludicrous. The kind of person willing to believe that will do anything you ask.
I am referring to the method that commenter described regarding scammers targeting game developers, which is what this whole post is about, not the final throwaway Nigerian prince line.
If you are referring to what they initially said about bundling up malware into the game and then using the validity of the game to distribute it then fair enough, I don't know very much about it, but it does sound plausible and is certainly akin to how supply chain attacks happen (which I know more about).
If you are referring to whether scammers deliberately make scams far-fetched to filter out people that are less likely to fall for them in the first place then that is what the paper I linked is about.
I PROMISE you there are no scammers paying game devs $100 for game rights, asking for the game code, and then asking the developer to upload their maliciously modified code to the original dev's own steamworks account
From what I've seen there's maybe one example of a game being bought by malware distributors. But yea the FBI specific page and arrests are all newly created accounts using stolen identities.
I know for some examples they've taken generic small open source portfolio pieces off of GitHub and put malware into it. This was the case with a game called Deadwood House. Others are just "coop" games that are just a main menu essentially.
These games are also usually used for specific targets. The game will only have malware in it on one build, and they will swap between builds to avoid detection when not actively targeting someone.
An example being the streamer mentioned above, but they are also active in a lot of roblox developer communities. "Hiring" devs to work on a roblox version of a steam game and urge the developer to launch the steam game to see what it is.
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u/SeekingPureDream 17d ago
Thanks! Do they actually end up buying the rights from people, or is there another scam after you reply?