Scammers have been creating copies of Steam pages in an attempt to fool users into downloading fake demos packed with malware, Kotaku reports.
The developers of indie titles Octopus City Blues and Street Fist 2 have both reported fake pages masquerading as the official store page for their game, hidden in the Concepts section of Steam. After eight days, Valve has finally taken the offending links offline, but it’s something to be aware of when browsing Steam Greenlight.
”We have removed the malicious links and taking further steps to deal with anyone involved with posting these links,” said Valve in a statement to Kotaku. It’s not the first time this has happened. Polygon reported a similar instance of game cloning last month, after which Valve again took action.
”Our Community Moderators responded quickly by removing all malicious links from the fake Greenlight material and then we banned the submissions,” said Valve’s Doug Lombardi at the time. ”We are taking further steps to deal with anyone involved in posting the links. We’d like to thank those who reported the issue in addition to our Community Moderators, and we encourage everyone to report any suspicious activity in the future by using the flag icon located throughout the Steam Community.”
So yes, it’s best to be extra careful when shopping on Greenlight, as Valve’s not been the quickest at identifying and taking these clone store pages down. I’d recommend searching for potential duplicates in the library before downloading anything from the store, at least until Valve gets a hold on this.
