This War Of Mine And Frostpunk Dev To Stop Giving Steam Curators Keys Following Cowcat Scam

thegamer.com:

11 Bit Studios will no longer issue game keys to Steam curators. The game developer behind This War Of Mine, Frostpunk, and the Anomaly franchise made the statement on Twitter today following a report from fellow indie developer Cowcat that many Steam curators are actually scammers re-selling distributed keys on third-party websites.

"Starting today we won’t be granting game keys to Steam curators," wrote 11 Bit Studios. "Based on our and other devs' experiences, most of the requests come from fake accounts used to gather and resell the keys and the published reviews don't seem to bring any value for the community anyway."

Related: Listening To Jazz And Driving In The Rain Remains The Definitive Cyberpunk 2077 Experience

Earlier this week, Brok the InvestiGator developer Cowcat announced it would cease offering Steam keys to curators following a sort of sting operation that proved just how many of them were actually being re-sold on third-party sites. When Cowcat handed out keys for Brok the InvestiGator, trusted curators received legit keys while untrusted curators received demo keys. Soon after, Brok the InvestiGator was review bombed, with Cowcat alleging the negative reviews were from Steam curators who tried to resell demo keys.

Cowcat analyzed the negative reviews and found they all came from a brand-new Steam account that shared the same admin. That was enough evidence to go to Valve to get those accounts--and those of the untrustworthy Steam curators--banned.

"Never buy keys on grey sites, folks," wrote Cowcat in its statement. "Indie devs get no money at all from them. They are stolen keys. You're only giving your money to leeches."

11 Bit noted that Valve is aware of the issues surrounding the Steam curators