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Valve removes free game from Steam after players discover it contains malware
- cassianoleal 5mo agoWhat about all the other games with malware, like Denuvo and similar?
- 7bit 5mo ago[flagged]
- giancarlostoro 5mo agoI recommend installing Linux. If it wont play on Linux even with Proton, you shouldn't give them a single penny.
- fleroviumna 5mo ago[dead]
- freedomben 5mo agoI agree, although I've made exceptions for a very small number of games with Denuvo (actually, just Hogwarts Legacy, which in hindsight I'm glad I did even though it still hurts my soul a bit) and they can run on Linux (I have nothing else but Linux). It's mostly kernel-level anti-cheat that won't run from what I've read.
- giancarlostoro 5mo agoIf it plays on Linux I don't personally care if its got Denuvo, its isolated by Proton, so not really a big deal. I do think its really pointless, because none of these tools ever truly stop game cheating.
- freedomben 5mo agoOh yeah completely agree. They don't even stop warez either as it only takes a little while for it to be broken. Mainly all it does is punish paying users, and cost them sales (from people like me) who don't want the potential headache.
- cassianoleal 5mo agoI only game on Linux. I don’t run Windows, period. I like that it keeps those kinds of malware out of my reach, and I don’t mind skipping games that use them. I would like for it to go away entirely though. Both because I find it an appalling practice, and because I want more gamers playing more games on Linux.
- nekzn 5mo ago"drm is malware" is so 2005.
- wanzg 5mo ago"rootkits are malware" is in fact eternal.
- _imnothere 5mo agoA saying being old doesn’t make it invalid anyway. What’s your point?
- nekzn 5mo agoMy point is that this saying is the tritest of the trite, and therefore not worth being posted.
- mschuster91 5mo agoWell, Riot Games just today (!) admitted to hard-bricking cheating hardware [1]. This kind of stuff definitely is malware, and your comment aged like milk. [1] https://videocardz.com/newz/riot-games-on-valorant-dma-cheat-firmware-block-congrats-to-the-owners-of-a-brand-new-6k-paperweight https://videocardz.com/newz/riot-games-on-valorant-dma-cheat...
- nekzn 5mo ago
- nosioptar 5mo agoGog.com only sells games without DRM. Most games on itch.io are not DRMed.
- gorgmah 5mo agoThis is bound to become more and more pervasive, with supply chain attacks happening extremely frequently now. My cooleagues and me almost got caught in the latest Shai-Hulud attack due to some tanstack packages. Noone is safe now.
- qskousen 5mo agoNot sure if it was a typo or not but "colleagues" is a great word, I'm going to start using it.
- herpdyderp 5mo agoAnd yet games like Subnautica 2 do similar things and nobody stops them because it’s in the EULA.
- butvacuum 5mo ago[flagged]
- skinfaxi 5mo agoNot for nothing but have we all forgotten the sony rootkit? Actually, that would be a perfect front. Start a game company backed by a nation state, put in rootkit anti-cheat, profit.
- Cthulhu_ 5mo agoExactly because it's known - malware is only considered malware if you install it without knowing about it. But if you know about it you have a choice not to buy / install it, like with games like Subnautica 2.
- therealunreal 5mo agoWhat does Subnautica 2 have?
- john_strinlai 5mo agoi assume they are referring to denuvo. and, while denuvo and other drm for games is indeed awful, i find it silly to equate it with cryptocurrency stealing malware.
- Frieren 5mo ago> However, someone reportedly hijacked the developer’s Steam account and quickly transformed it into Beyond The Dark – changing its name, screenshots, and other store details. As Steam does not fully verify every patch made to a game, the modified version was reportedly able to go live without raising immediate red flags. It is interesting that it seems to easier to take over a legit game than trying to create a new one. I have seen this with youtube channels, inactive during a long period of time and suddenly showing mostly scams. Or the original owner became a criminal, or more probably were taken over criminals. > The malware allegedly searched for cryptocurrency wallet browser extensions, including MetaMask, before connecting to external servers and downloading additional tools. These tools were reportedly capable of stealing browser information, passwords, and cryptocurrency wallet data. Cryptocurrencies are the most insecure currency that we have even invented. It is paradoxical that is being marketed as actually safe.
- ASalazarMX 5mo agoNow it makes sense why someone in a game development group mentioned he received an offer of $100 USD for his indie game. The buyer plainly stated that they were specifically looking to buy underperforming games. The developer didn't sell, but sadly $100 was more than he made in sales a year after launch, so it must have been tempting. Maybe that's why they changed the game's name post-malware, to spam, er "promote" it as a new one and gain users quickly.
- ChoGGi 5mo agoHuh. There is the occasional paid game on steam that has a 100% off deal. Guess it's time to start being suspicion of those as well. I'm thinking of the scenario where the original devs sell the game rights off since sales are bottomed out.
- zamadatix 5mo agoThe best place to put malware is wherever people don't think they need to be suspicious of the software they run. Free games, paid games, supply chain - it doesn't really matter so long as they think they can trust it blindly.
- dude250711 5mo agoI am starting to think that perhaps their fee is not entirely justified.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5mo agoSurprised this or malicious games and updates hasn't happened sooner.
- tom_alexander 5mo agoIt has. For example, PirateFi back in 2025: https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/piratefi-game-removed-from-steam-library-for-pushing-malware https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/pirate... The FBI were seeking victims for ~8 "games" earlier this year: https://forms.fbi.gov/victims/Steam_Malware/view https://forms.fbi.gov/victims/Steam_Malware/view
- macintux 5mo agoI remember, ~20 years ago, there was some free Christmas elf game (Flash?) that went viral and everyone was playing it. Struck me as a perfect vector for malware, I was a little surprised that didn’t happen.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- ASalazarMX 5mo ago~20 years ago it was still not rare for someone to email his friends a little Flash game or greeting card wrapped in an .EXE so they could run it straight from Outlook. In retrospective, those were crazy times. We knew about viruses from the time of MS-DOS, and still happily emailed executables that not even Hotmail or Google bothered to block. All our network traffic was unencrypted, which enabled all kinds of shenanigans until the security culture seeped into corporations and the public. When stories talk about time travelers that hijack old technology instantly, it makes complete sense. Someone with modern hardware, software, and knowledge could completely break most technology back then. They better not forget their modem, though.
- flamesofphx 5mo agoELF ELF BABY.... Elf Bowling, and Frog-a-pult... I wish NSTORM Games was a big market player now.. I guess someone let him borrow the canoe he was looking for...
- galad87 5mo agoGames are an almost perfect type of software to be run in a sandbox. The question is, why aren't they already run in a sandbox?
- 1bpp 5mo agoEvery Xbox game runs in a HyperV container, maybe it's not a crazy idea for PC
- wao0uuno 5mo agoRunning games on Linux via Proton provides some isolation. It’s not technically a proper sandbox though.
- SuperNinKenDo 5mo agoAnything that wants to traverse your filesystem could do so trivially from a wineprefix, but stuff like sniffing your browser extensions might be harder depending on the technique.
- parasense 5mo agoProton is just emulation, and it will happily expose the underlying host system to the running game software. In particular the filesystem and some peripheral devices. However, Valve is moving towards sandboxing in Steam. You can already run the whole thing with a flatpak sandbox, and valve themselves are using ostree. With srvio is possible to run the whole thing in a throwaway windows vm while the graphics card is passed through
- sophrosyne42 5mo agoThis is why it was foolish to give a new name to it. It was originally called Wine Is Not an Emulator.
- zufallsheld 5mo agoIt's not a new name. Proton is Valve's fork of wine. They also contribute patches to wine.
- Ember_Wipe 5mo ago[flagged]
- embedding-shape 5mo ago> What’s interesting is that while the game itself often crashed during launch, the malicious software continued running quietly in the background. Wonder how much longer it could have remain undetected if it actually fired up a shovelware game that could run properly, things like crashing probably gave it away way faster than it could've.
- Levitating 5mo ago> things like crashing probably gave it away way faster than it could've Theres a lot of games on Steam that outright don't work. It wouldn't raise a flag with me.
- malkia 5mo agoThere is a game - Beyond The Darkness - released few weeks before the name change "Beyond the Darkness" was released on Nov 14 2024 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1728610/Beyond_The_Darkness/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1728610/Beyond_The_Darkne... "Beyond the Dark" (the malware) was released (ahem, renamed) on Dec 28 2024