Frostpunk developer 11 Bit Studios says it has stopped providing game keys to Steam curators, largely due to the risk of resellers posing as reviewers, echoing a recent wave of complaints about key extortion on Valve’s platform.
“Starting today we will no longer grant game keys to Steam curators,” the studio said in a statement tweet (opens in a new tab). “In our experiences and those of other developers, most requests come from fake accounts used to collect and resell keys and the reviews posted don’t seem to add any value to the community anyway. Apparently , these issues have been detected. [Valve’s] attention, so hopefully we can see some improvements to the curator function soon,” he added.
11 Bit Studios is also the creator of This War of Mine and the publisher of other indie hits like Children of Morta and Moonlighter, so their position here carries some weight. However, several users (some other game developers among them) were quick to point out that Steam’s Curator Connect feature allows developers to grant trusted curators direct access to games instead of giving them keys that must be activate and therefore can be resold. This system can better weed out resellers, although Steam only allows up to 100 copies to be shared this way.
“We know,” said Wujek Grga, head of public relations for 11 Bit Studios answer (opens in a new tab). “But it was easy to send them old school, but it wasn’t working anymore.”
“You’d be surprised how many emails we get with something like, ‘Hi, this is Curator Dude from Totally Legit Curator on Steam.’ I really love your game and Totally Legit Curator fans. You are waiting for a review. Send at least 5 keys!'” 11 Bit Studios said (opens in a new tab) in another tweet.
11 Bit Studios comments come after a wave of bans targeting suspected key distributors (opens in a new tab) highlighted by another independent studio, Brok, the developer of InvestiGator, Cowcat.
Shortly after Brok’s release, Cowcat noticed that some Steam curators had changed their reviews of the game from positive to negative; interestingly, the same commissioners who had received demo keys instead of full game keys. Cowcat sent demo keys to curators suspecting that legitimate reviewers would keep looking for a full key, while resellers would be overwhelmed by passing incomplete copies to third-party websites. Considering the result, he argued that the negative reviews were left unscathed.
“These reviews are 100% fake because considering I sent them prologue keys, they couldn’t play the full game,” said Cowcat. “However, I was surprised. Somehow these curators were able to post reviews of the game on the full version page.”
A total of 20 curator groups, all apparently linked to a few bad actors overseeing multiple fraudulent accounts, were banned shortly after Cowcat’s complaints surfaced. Of course, 20 bans is a drop in the ocean for a platform like Steam, and it remains to be seen if developments like these will lead to firmer action or even a direct response from Valve.
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