Cases of fraudsters stealing indie games and selling them under their own name have become more frequent on Steam
In most cases, these are games published on Itch.io — a platform for independent developers, where original prototypes, demos, or finished products often appear. One of the «entrepreneurial» users under the nickname «Me» managed to download more than 70 other people’s projects on Steam. Among them were both amateur projects and full-fledged releases. In fact, similar users to «Me» simply copy other people’s work, add it to Steam, sometimes without any changes, and put it up for sale.
One of the stolen projects was HardCop2, which was actually developed by Tokagrien, but its published on Steam in February 2021. Further «Me» stole Dungeon Minesweeper Chronicles by Aftertea_time. Some of these games have become paid: for example, the platformer Artificial Gravity Cat sells for $5, although others, such as Big Survivorare available free of charge.
Most of the stolen projects have already disappeared from Steam, but some are still available in the store. Until the situation is noticed by the original developer or the outraged community, Valve hardly reacts. The scheme works like this: first, someone steals an indie game, then uploads it to Steam, and then just waits for it to be removed — if it is removed at all.
The problem is not limited to PCs. The situation is similar on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, where you can often come across fakes, primitive copies, or complete clones of popular games Large platforms like Steam are not too keen on solving this problem, despite the revenues from content sales. And indie developers have to spend resources on their own to fight such violations, as they do not have strong legal protection like large companies.
Source: TechSpot
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