Valve removes 173 'spam' games from Steam, all published by one person.

[wyattzx]

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173 games were removed from the Steam store yesterday, which may be a record. As Polygon reports, the removed games include titles such as Fruit Candypop, Rage Parking Simulator 2017, SHAPES4, SHAPES5, SHAPES6, and, who could forget, SHAPES7. Sure enough, SteamDB shows that all of the games in the list were updated about 18 hours ago, and none of them have Steam store pages anymore (though existing owners should still be able to play them).

 

Based on the titles, it seems likely that these are some of the "bad actors" Valve was talking about in May when it announced changes to Trading Cards, though we haven't yet heard from Valve or the developers of these games (Update: See Valve's response below). Back in May, Valve accused unnamed developers of releasing cheap games, sometimes just 'asset flipped' versions of previous games, solely so they could mine their own Trading Cards and then sell them.

Source: PCGamer

 

Honestly, while removing one "developer's" entire catalog is nice -- and 173 removed titles is almost 1% of all products on Steam, it still leaves me wondering whether this will continue onward, or if this was a one-off sort of deal. Ideally, I'd like to see Valve begin to scout and remove titles from their library which demonstrate qualities of being blatant cash grabs or ripoffs. 

 

That being said, what do you guys think?

[Tataffe]

I can see "But can it run SHAPES7???" become a new adage on this forum.

 

I'd use that.

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Tataffe said:

I can see "But can it run SHAPES7???" become a new adage on this forum.

 

I'd use that.

SHAPES5 was the best in the series though. 

[ARikozuM]

I do hope Steam implements a system for new games. I'm tired of trying $5 indie horror games that are only three hours long, broken as sh#t, and as scary as Reader Rabbit. 

Spoiler

Especially the ones that use stock assets without adding any production value.

 

[TrigrH]

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and 173 removed titles is almost 1% of all products on Steam

i'm sorry what??

[wyattzx]

31 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

i'm sorry what??

Steam's library consists of around 17,600 products, including software, movies, DLCs, games, etc. 

[Tsuki]

im glad they are finally cracking down on this shit.

tired of seeing super shitty games with no content flooding the store all the time.

 

they need a proper vetting system in place.

[ARikozuM]

6 minutes ago, Tsuki said:

they need a proper vetting system in place.

They do, they're called reviews...

 

Problem is they don't listen to it and they're all weighed the same. The up-vote that's "great game, 10/5" gets the same response as a down-vote that's presented well. Not only that, but the game can be given for free and reviewed for easy up-votes, though they do mention it as of this year. 

[Tsuki]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

They do, they're called reviews...

 

Problem is they don't listen to it and they're all weighed the same. The up-vote that's "great game, 10/5" gets the same response as a down-vote that's presented well. Not only that, but the game can be given for free and reviewed for easy up-votes, though they do mention it as of this year. 

 

5 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

so either program or train an algorithm/AI to find such games (if youtube still can't figure their suggestion AI... (in all fairness, it's better than what happened a few months ago now)), or hire more people (LOL, Valve in-house hiring service people?)

 

im thinking more of a system that checks the developer, and goes "oh you uploaded 50 games this month, that probably a little excessive, lets manually review this to make sure its not spam"   its like 2 lines of code.

[ARikozuM]

Just now, Tsuki said:

im thinking more of a system that checks the developer, and goes "oh you uploaded 50 games this month, that probably a little excessive, lets manually review this to make sure its not spam"   its like 2 lines of code.

That would work for some cases like this one, but there are other one-off developers that make truly terrible games that shouldn't be receiving up-votes on Steam. I would like it if Steam could start using their report system fully. Hundreds of people reported one game, but it's still there for sale (last I checked was Spring this year).

[Tsuki]

2 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

That would work for some cases like this one, but there are other one-off developers that make truly terrible games that shouldn't be receiving up-votes on Steam. I would like it if Steam could start using their report system fully. Hundreds of people reported one game, but it's still there for sale (last I checked was Spring this year).

theres a big difference between a one off dev who makes a shitty game, and dev who keep pumping out shitty games though.

and reviews mean basically nothing.

negative review: "bad game" dude has 14k hours

positive review: "lol boobs" dude has 20minutes

and that completely ignoring the review bombing for something completely irrelevant.

 

1 minute ago, VegetableStu said:

yeah you can have that. problem is the said miner (it's what that is) has multiple dev accounts:

this thing you can't rely on an automated system, at least not for now. It's probably the same kind of work an AI needs to figure out with IRL crimes

thats true. but i think each dev should also be manually reviewed at the very least, on the first game they publish.

it might make it a little hard for good, legit indie devs, but it would at least help keep away the trash.

[TVwazhere]

8 hours ago, NonaHexa said:

Steam's library consists of around 17,600 products, including software, movies, DLCs, games, etc. 

I too thought that was surprising. Dunno why, I would have thought steam had more games than that

[TVwazhere]

1 minute ago, VegetableStu said:

you thinking a million?

Not a million, but less than twenty thousand for how popular and how long steam has been around....

I would have guessed maybe 50k, just because of all the little indie games 

[MadyTehWolfie]

Good hopefully they'll remove the trash anime flash games.

[ScratchCat]

15 hours ago, coolkingler1 said:

SHAPES5 was the best in the series though. 

Don't forget SHAPES(1+(-1^0.5))

It was really imaginative though the story line was quite complex. They should have kept it real. (Maths)

 

Id like to know how someone could launch 173 games without one person thinking something is off. Not even EA or Activision has such an output. This is just as bad as bot accounts to boost a games reviews.

 

[snortingfrogs]

[ScratchCat]

34 minutes ago, snortingfrogs said:

snip

Please clarify? Much confuse

[snortingfrogs]

Just now, ScratchCat said:

Please clarify? Much confuse

Steam finally acting.

[Kamina]

Probably money laundering. 

[Shreyas1]

" Fruit candypop" sounds like a bad clone of a bad clone of candy crush

[elfensky]

On 9/27/2017 at 6:27 AM, NonaHexa said:

Steam's library consists of around 17,600 products, including software, movies, DLCs, games, etc. 

Huh. That number is hella lower than I expected tbh.

[christianled59]

18 hours ago, ElfenSky said:

Huh. That number is hella lower than I expected tbh.

What's crazy is like 90 percent of those are from the past 5 years though. They used to have a few hundred a year like Xbox or Playstation. Now its like 4,000 a year. Which isn't good since most of them are really bad. 

[elfensky]

1 hour ago, christianled59 said:

What's crazy is like 90 percent of those are from the past 5 years though. They used to have a few hundred a year like Xbox or Playstation. Now its like 4,000 a year. Which isn't good since most of them are really bad. 

Yeah, I know. I just expected that number to be much higher, like 50-100k.

[Notional]

Can they please retroactively remove all those achievement spam games too?