This year, Valve has experienced several notable malware incidents involving games on its platform, Steam, normally a highly trusted storefront for PC gaming.
How much do you trust Steam? If you download a game from Valve’s enormously popular digital storefront, do you expect it to be safe and malware-free? This is the kind of trust that Steam has built up over many years as a reliable place for digital video games, but unfortunately, issues with malware on Steam are becoming more common, and it’s eroding the trust that the platform has established. Another game was recently discovered to contain malware and has since been removed from Steam, but not before it was able to cause serious damage.
Malware is becoming more common on Steam, and it’s eroding users’ trust in the platform
Steam has hundreds of games uploaded to the storefront every month. SteamDB estimates indicate that over 18 thousand games were added in 2024, which breaks down to roughly 50 games per day. Even with these massive numbers, malware is still the kind of thing users expect Steam to be able to filter out before it becomes accessible. However, the unfortunate reality is that people are constantly working to find weak points and slip through the cracks of the system, which is how malware ends up on Steam, and the security often must be reactive as malware creators find new ways to bypass modern security measures.
That’s also not to say that Steam should be completely excused here, far from it. Regardless of Steam’s responsibility to its customers in preventing situations like this, users are less confident in using Steam than they have been. You may recall that earlier this year, a “game” called PirateFi, marketed as a pirate-themed survival crafting game, was taken down quickly after malware was identified. The latest incident, Block Blasters, which has also now been removed, is at least the fourth high-profile instance of malware on Steam’s storefront just this year.
According to a social media post from ZachXBT, a self-proclaimed investigator who looks into incidents like this, the Block Blasters malware, which was available for download on Steam, had taken over $150 thousand from victims. ZachXBT also claims that this “fake game” was “available to download for more than a month” on Steam. In the post, ZachXBT shares screenshots of the Steam page, as well as two users who claim to have had money stolen by the malware in question. In a particularly devastating case, a streamer by the name rastaland.TV appears to have had at least $32 thousand stolen by this malware during a livestream to raise funds for cancer treatment. Fortunately, after reading the replies to rastaland’s post, it seems that other donations have made up for the loss. But this should never have happened in the first place.
With all these separate occurrences this year, it’s no surprise that users no longer feel safe on Steam. Ultimately, the only way to be 100% protected is to stop using Steam altogether. But no matter where you get your PC games, there will always be a risk involved. The best practices you can take are to always take steps to verify before you download. Look for user reviews, don’t listen to strangers who offer you download codes or access to exclusive betas, and I highly recommend installing some kind of security software on your computer. Earlier this year, according to Kapersky, a user discovered that a game on Steam contained malware, was able to prevent it from infecting them, and ultimately got it removed from Steam so that others couldn’t download it either.
Hopefully, Valve can take steps to earn back trust and make Steam a safer place in the future. There will never be a completely foolproof system, though, and malware users will always be finding new ways to slip through the cracks. So, if you take anything from this article, just remember to be careful out there, even on generally trusted platforms like Steam.
暂无评论内容