Steam is the most popular platform for gaming on PC, be it for purchase or playing. With such a big community, Steam has taken measures to ensure positive behaviors. Recently, Steam has taken down a game after finding out its developer has posted fake reviews.
Steam took down game after developer posted fake reviews
Valve, the company behind Steam, has announced recently that it has taken down the game Art of Stealth. The game was very poorly-reviewed. However, as it turns out, the developer has tried to forged positive reviews for the game on Steam. After finding this out, Valve took no time at all to take action. The game was swiftly removed afterwards, and can no longer be found on Steam.
Art of Stealth’s developer, Matan Cohen, has been lashing out against negative Steam reviews prior to the incident. It all started when the famous YouTuber Jim Sterling reviewed the game. It did not turn out well, as Jim trashed the game, referring to it as “absolutely terrible rubbish”. This has caused a flame war between the YouTuber and Cohen. The developer fired back that Jim has no respect for engineers’ hard work, along with filing a DMCA takedown request for the review video, and, recently, legal threats.
Back to Valve, in its statement, the company said that Cohen seems to have created multiple Steam accounts to post positive fake reviews for his own game. The act is clearly violating Steam’s review policy. This is a desperate act, which is also very sad. Fortunately, for those who have bought the game, and still like it, the game will still remain in your Steam library. It is just impossible to purchase Art of Stealth on Steam now.
Fake reviews: Not worth doing it
Steam is the most popular platform for gaming for a reason. It takes integrity very seriously to ensure a healthy environment for both customers, developers and publishers. It is not worth it to forge fake reviews to make a game look good, as ultimately, customers will be the one to decide that.