Since its inception in the mid-2000s, Steam became one ofthe largest digital game distributionsavailable on PC, with tens of thousands of games included within its massive library. Outside of purchasing games within the Steam client itself, one of the many ways Steam users can obtain copies of video games is through the redemption of Steam keys. These Steam keys are usually purchasable through trusted third-party retailers. Other times, they are distributed through giveaways.
Unfortunately, it can be difficult for a developer to keep track of where their Steam keys end up, especially when left in the hands of a publisher, as was the case for the strategy gameOverfall. Players who signed on to Steam yesterday may have received a message that their access toOverfallwas revoked and removed from their account. Some players initially assumedit was an April Fool’s joke, however, developer Pera Games went to the Steam community boards to clear up the confusion.
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One of the staff members for Pera Games, Ali, posted a statement amidst the confusion, citing the reason behindOverfall’s revocation. Years ago, Pera Games made a deal with an unidentified publisher as a way to make “Overfallknown to a wider audience.” The publisher wanted 30,000 keys and the developer was promised payment post-sale. As it turns out, the publisher in question merely resold the keys to various sites, some legitand others considered “grey market.”
Fortunately, the developer was able to catch some of the keys being resold on the fraudulent websites, which led to it revoking all 30,000 keys from players' Steam accounts. Unfortunately, it was impossible to determine which of the 30,000 keys were legit as it was akin to finding several needles in a haystack. Prior to the developer’s post, several players had identified the date of the original purchase as October 2018, which was the same time Fanatical had included this gameas part of its many game bundles.
The developer had stated that it is aware the majority of its players had copies ofOverfallthrough Fanatical and that they were not the culprits in the scam. Currently, Pera Games is working with Fanatical to redistribute the codes players have bought through the Fanatical bundle back in 2018 in the near future.
While Pera Games was lucky enough to identify the source of the scam and find a solution that benefited both players and developers alike, other companies weren’t as fortunate. In February, Ubisoft was under fire from several phishing scammers who used an official Ubisoft address to trickFar Cry 6fans into a “beta” link.Unsuspecting players were greeted with a virusthat tracked their data and personal information, although the intended targets were popular content creators at the time.
