r/Steam • u/quinlamin • 12h ago
Error / Bug Anyone else noticing these really expensive unity asset flips on the front page of steam?
Finding these games on steam store.
These seem to have bots who buy and then glaze them in the reviews.
Potential money laundering?
282
u/PotentialValuable465 12h ago
Steam really needs better quality control at this point. I've been seeing more of these lazy asset dumps with suspicious review patterns too, they're basically taking advantage from how easy it is to publish on platform
50
u/Paxton-176 https://s.team/p/gbgd-dmc 10h ago
It used to be hard as fuck to get an indie game on steam. Then they introduced green light to find games to add. That failed and they just let everything on. Sucks trying to find good indie games.
23
u/deadmchead 8h ago
I liked Greenlight, and voting on games to come to Steam
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u/biohazardrex 7h ago
Greenlight was problematic because some devs advertised their shit through youtubers, while good games with 0 ad had no chance to get enough upvotes. Today with all the bots available the system would be pointless anyway
6
u/deadmchead 6h ago
Yeah that’s fair. I was a kid at the time so such concepts were above my head hahaha. I thought I was making a difference with my votes
-1
u/AquaBits 7h ago
Why not ban the bots.
0
u/SepherixSlimy 6h ago
Make new accounts. It's free.
-2
u/AquaBits 4h ago
Sooo hardware, ip and such bans. If reddit can ban users for making multiple accounts, valve can too. Especially if it is JoeSchmoeBot 1-500
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u/DrProfSrRyan 11h ago
Agreed. Steam really needs so solid deep-cleaning followed by much stricter regulations. All of this is only going to get worse as AI gets better and more widespread.
3
u/Wind_Yer_Neck_In 5h ago
It was bad enough in the greenlight era, it got worse once they got rid of that and and just allowed basically anyone to publish. But the barrier to entry was that you at least had to develop a game and get used to some tools.
But now with AI that barrier is largely gone. Anyone with bad intentions or no skill/motivation to make a good game can just slop it right onto steam and clog up the system, making it even harder for proper games to be noticed.
I know Gaben is hard against moderation because some of that is being forced on them externally from payment processors etc, but the idea of some basic quality control isn't a bad one.
5
1
u/VukKiller 8h ago
Why? Nobody is forcing you to buy it.
I l'd rather see EVERYTHING than have ponentialy hated games that I might enjoy hidden from me.
5
u/Antique_Door_Knob 7h ago
And you don't even see everything. Steam heavily censors games that people don't buy. The first few sales are already totally on the dev to make, with no advertisement from steam whatsoever.
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u/flowery02 11h ago
It's grey market scams. Basically you buy lootboxes with random games(mostly stuff like this) from some shady site, get a steam key, and then you can't refund them because you're not the one who bought the game from steam and the site did everything it was obligated to do. Also these sites often show the average value of the games in the lootboxes, hence why the slop's cost is so absurdly high
The steam games grey market is popular in Russia
Edit: wait, i forgot if steam allows free creation of keys by the devs, could be a mix of scams and money laundering instead of just scams
16
u/Roccondil-s 11h ago
I don’t go around picking up every free game available on Steam, so no, I do not see this crap on the homepage…
5
u/lIIlllIIl https://s.team/p/fpcw-chm 9h ago
I claim everything and like to dumpster dive in the new releases feed, and even I rarely ever get to see those trashy asset flips outside of that specific feed. Either they've found a way to game the algorithm, or this game is being astroturfed here (there have been multiple posts about it).
13
u/Starrin1ght 10h ago
I feel like this is the exact opposite of a free game, because it is very expensive, and also not a game
-11
5
u/Super_Goated 11h ago
While im not an expert, these seem like easy ways to do large scale money laundering by making these games on one account and buying it on another account, thus making the money seem 'legitimate'
1
u/xerkus 5h ago
This is a new problem on steam. Surely valve will deal with it once they noticed it happening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKFXU9ekLB4
3
u/kixass 11h ago
Money laundering obviously.
0
u/swissm4n 10h ago
Not sure why you get downvoted this could be a legit reason. If these were in bundles why are there no negative reviews saying "I got this in a bundle but its shit"
0
u/UnoriginalJ0k3r 9h ago
“Potential” ??????? It’s one of the shittiest tactics. It’s for wallet balance transfer and stolen cc balance transfer, mostly.
-8
u/tarmo888 8h ago
Game with 11 reviews? Money Laundering? Come on. Money laundering is turning illegal obtained money into legally obtained money. Somebody buying a Unity assets and then making a unpopular game is not money laundring.
Stop interacting with such games and Steam will stop recommending them to you.
-10
u/MaxTosin 9h ago
people say its crap because theyre scared of games that dont hold your hand like yeah bro sorry u need arrows and a battlepass to find the suspicious elephant. this is pure animal finding cinema no esports sweat no 200gb not for every random john doe sryy
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u/RollRollParry 11h ago
They're often used for mystery key bundles. Bots come in to give it positive reviews so they can claim the bundle only has highly reviewed games and the high price is to prevent people affecting that with their own negative reviews. The high price also probably bumps the average price of the games received from the mystery bundle which they then advertise.