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Steam Game Pulled From Store After Allegations of Cryptocurrency Mining (polygon.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the nefarious-schemes dept.

Valve decided to remove a game from Steam after it was found to be turning players' computers into cryptocurrency miners. An anonymous reader shares the report from Polygon: The game is called Abstractism, which was said to not only infiltrate players' computers with mining software, but also dupe them through falsified items on the Steam Marketplace. But not long after these accusations started circulating, it has been taken off Steam. When Abstractism was up on the store, it was marketed as a "relaxing" platformer with a simple design. But YouTuber SidAlpha noticed that something was afoot, when someone on the Team Fortress 2 forums posted about how the game was tied into an item scam.

Players also noticed that the game used massive amounts of CPU and GPU, which Abstractism's developers claimed was because of the game's "high graphics settings," something quite uncharacteristic for a simple platformer. High CPU and GPU usage is another tell-tale sign that a computer is being used to mine cryptocurrency. Just hours after SidAlpha's video and the associated forum posts began to spread, Valve removed Abstractism from Steam, and the developer has been banned from Steam. All previously purchased Abstractism items have been tagged with "This item can no longer be bought or sold on the Community Market."

26 comments

  1. Man I'm Steamed... by bobbied · · Score: 2

    Mining currency w/o my permission? Really? It wasn't a good game anyway.

    I'm really steamed about this.

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    1. Re:Man I'm Steamed... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And do it with permission is near dumb, because speciallized hardware are so better than GPUs that current mining value though GPU is under current energy prices, and that without count the dismissing value of the GPU itself.

      Only very specific circunstances, when energy cost are very low or even negative this could have sense.

      Of course is different if it's without permission. The software author is stealing energy and turn into cryptocurrency. Even if it's a very inneficient way to do it, stolen energy was "free" (to the thief)

    2. Re:Man I'm Steamed... by sherr · · Score: 1

      What are you talking about? It's zero energy cost to the game developer regardless of if they had permission or not.

    3. Re:Man I'm Steamed... by Highdude702 · · Score: 1

      False. If gpu mining was costing money people wouldn't do it. Yet millions do.

    4. Re:Man I'm Steamed... by bobbied · · Score: 1

      False. If gpu mining was costing money people wouldn't do it. Yet millions do.

      I'm not convinced that GPU mining is actually a valid business model with acceptable ROI. I know a number of guys try to make it pay, but I seriously doubt that when you factor in energy costs, hardware costs and management costs the time it takes to pay your costs is about that of the hardware's useful life span. If you live where you have to use A/C units to keep things cool and you are paying your own electric bill, there is zero chance of making mining pay. Now, if you live someplace where it's cold outside and/or where electricity is substantially lower cost than most, you might make a go of it.

      You got to go big and watch every penny, because the established players are sucking all the O2 out of the room and they can hash circles around you. Adding hash capacity to the cloud only drives the return rate down even more, making the small time operator less and less profitable and driving them off. So the big guys love it and you end up helping them make money by driving off the competition and operating your system at a loss.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    5. Re:Man I'm Steamed... by Highdude702 · · Score: 1

      Not at all what happens. I am a small miner and so is my brother. As far as ROI goes depending on what you mine and if you're stupid or not, it's about 90 days. And effective life of the hardware? You can mine on 960's and still be profitable if you do your homework. I know a few of the larger miners, and yes you won't fine large operations in places like Las Vegas because of the heat. However Washington and Oregon.. They have some of the largest mining warehouses around and are a large majority gpu's. Just because someone has more hash power than you doesn't mean they make more money than you when you divide by hash rate. The more you know the more you realize how biased people are against it because they don't know what it is. Buddy of mine has had issues with the old folks where his farm is and people saying crypto is "the Devils money" it isn't for the faint of heart for sure. But it's helping augment my marijuana bill so if it only covers that I'm still happy. Also I got in when prices were high for gpu's and coins. My ROI was 60 days because I had no power cost. And for the last 6 months has been pure profit. I run one single 6 card mining rig.

    6. Re:Man I'm Steamed... by bobbied · · Score: 1

      IF you where paying for your power, you'd not have a 60 day ROI. Not by a mile.

      I challenge you to actually look at how much power you use and figure out what you could pay and turn a profit. I'm guessing your return per KWH wouldn't be enough to turn a profit at the average power costs in the USA. Just a guess, but it would be interesting to know actuals. I was watching a guy discussing his multiple rig mining setup (I think he had like 5, running a dozen GPU's each) and he was discussing how running the box fan to keep things cool was a significant enough power cost to notice in hos returns. That's pitiful.

      I live in Texas. You can get power at the residential rate of about 11 cents per KWH flat rate. If you are paying for power to remove the heat along with the power to run your GPU's AND for the hardware, it's going to be really tough to make a go of it. You'd be better off sinking your money into CD's at the local bank.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    7. Re:Man I'm Steamed... by Highdude702 · · Score: 1

      heres a shitty formatted link, but look at eth, that is what i run at cards, hash and power wise on the rig. and the 1060 is only a shitty 3gb model. that price may be a little higher cause of the market today, but what i get calculated from what to mine is almost spot on to the observations. but you have t o also think about fluxuation in the market so thats where the gamble comes in. and choosing your coin and spending the time to optimize.

      https://whattomine.com/coins?u...

  2. Check it out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    While the cache is still up, look at it. In game purchases for Pepe, Putin, and something Russian, developed by who knows who, and only $.50? There are a lot of great, cheap, indie games on Steam, but I've always suspected there were some fishy ones out there too around the fringes. Caveat emptor.

    1. Re:Check it out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well this was my biggest concern when Steam said they'd allow anything on their platform in an attempt to highlight their free speech credentials, it was always clear that means a lot of dodgy software is going to end up on there as a result.

      And here's the thing, I have no problem with free speech and fully support it - uncensored messageboards are great, and should be protected and exist. But when I go to look for and buy a video game I'm not looking for a political statement, I just want something that's fun, and so by turning Steam into an every goes dump it becomes just that, a big fucking dump with shit like this on it.

      Then along comes the irony - Steam is now saying it's going to ban stuff like this, and games like this, so what happened to free speech? Is crypto currency mining an exception to their idea of everything goes free speech on their platform? If so why? What else is an exception? At that point, they're admitting that it's not actually free speech, it's not actually everything goes, you can't actually write a game embedded with malware to make a statement about the gullibility of humans installing software or any such thing.

      Thus, they should just go back to making sure they do what they did well - providing a store front that makes it easy to find great games but also gives you confidence that what's on there is safe for your system, because that's all most people really want. They don't want an uncensored but actually censored free speech but not really store. If they want free speech they'll go to 4chan or similar - free speech doesn't mean you have to peddle every little bit of shit on other people's behalf, they know that, which is why they're banning crap like this, so why even bother pretending otherwise? Just to fool a bunch of gullible libertarians into believing they're doing something they're not, at the expense of the average Joe no longer being able to have confidence that stuff you buy on Steam isn't riddled with malware? Doesn't seem smart or helpful for anyone.

  3. Steam is a app store by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 2

    Looking at this and the story above in the index, it seems like a lot of app stores are realizing they need to view the code of third-party apps.

    1. Re:Steam is a app store by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Shocking huh. I guess that walled garden idea was a good one.

      Here's a better idea. They should allow crypocurrency miners if I can get a cut. When I'm not using my gaming rig, mine away. Give me 50%. Crowd source that and everyone will be fat and happy.

    2. Re: Steam is a app store by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why the hell should I not get 100%!
      Quit being an apologist for scammers you weak spinster.

    3. Re:Steam is a app store by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The people who pay for your electricity might mind.

    4. Re: Steam is a app store by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      His parents, you mean.

    5. Re:Steam is a app store by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or that would be completely impractical and a reasonable state of affairs is reached by simply being reactive as today.

      How many lives lost as a result of Valve not reading through all the code of every game? How large have the economic losses been? How many working hours lost? Insignificantly little. You are trying to align reality with your mental model of "perfect security", even when completely impractical.

    6. Re:Steam is a app store by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shocking huh. I guess that walled garden idea was a good one.

      Nope, a walled garden is an awful idea and wouldn't help with this in the slightest.

      You might be thinking of "curation", a different concept.

  4. Valve allowed a trojan on Steam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Need to virus scan new downloads from Steam before first run. You'd think Valve would, but I guess not.
    https://steamcommunity.com/app...

  5. What if it were legitimate? by TheNetworkMonkey · · Score: 2

    Maybe that could be a legitimate source of revenue for free-to-play games, if it was a consensual agreement. Gamers typically have high-performance hardware, so why not use excess capability while playing a game, as long as it doesn't interfere with gameplay. Sure, cryptocurrency is generally not worth the electricity it wastes to produce. However, it may be a better alternative to ads or traditional payment schemes.

    1. Re:What if it were legitimate? by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      Maybe that could be a legitimate source of revenue for free-to-play games, if it was a consensual agreement. Gamers typically have high-performance hardware, so why not use excess capability while playing a game, as long as it doesn't interfere with gameplay. Sure, cryptocurrency is generally not worth the electricity it wastes to produce. However, it may be a better alternative to ads or traditional payment schemes.

      Except the game wasn't free. You paid for it.

      And people will generally be OK with it if you were open about it - you mention in the description up front that it will mine cryptocurrency. You don't go and run it quietly - be up front and fully open about what you do and why.

      And of course, you offer the option to disable it would also be desirable.

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  7. Civ V... by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 1

    Ahhh... so that's why Civ V in the early days ran so slow and used up so much CPU and GPU despite having relatively simple graphics... Firaxis were mining cryptocurrency before it was cool.

    / shouldn't have to say this... but yes I'm joking and not really blaming Firaxis for really running a cryptomining scam

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    1. Re:Civ V... by lexman098 · · Score: 1

      It's hard not to think it these days. Before the latest update Rocket League would increase my GPU fan speed to max *only* when sitting idle in some menu where nothing was really being rendered. Kind of suspicious.

  8. Look into Dota 2 and CS:GO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    because they turn my computer's fan into a screeching beats. Something is definitely not right in there.

  9. Not why it was pulled. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems much more likely that the game was pulled because the developer made tradeable items that looked like valuable items from other games and then attempted to use them to trade scam people. The cryptocurrency mining is the most minor thing they have done.

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