Steam Removes Almost 200 Asset-Flip Fake Games

Valve has removed over 170 games from the Steam store. All of them were asset-flips, made by the same developer across several sock-puppet accounts. The developer, called Silicon Echo, caused so much anger, that Valve was forced to intervene.

If anybody still harbored any hopes that Steam Direct would clean up the store page, this new development should be enough to completely shatter them. Valve had to swoop in and delete a total of 173 asset-flips, all by the same developer, called Silicon Echo Studios. As YouTuber SidAlpha pointed out in his video, Silicon Echo is responsible for a jaw-dropping ten percent of all games posted to Steam in August 2017. In July and August, they published 86 games. The group has been using various sock-puppet accounts to get away with their rampant asset flips. You really have to push the envelope really far for Valve to come in and remove your games from the store, and Silicon Echo has managed to do so, probably because SidAlpha broke the story, which Polygon later picked up.

Now, Valve has spoken openly before about putting a stop to asset-flips, going so far as to call them “fake games”. That’s all really well and good, but pretty far from enough. Removing the Silicon Echo library from the store (by the way, you can still access the games if you have them in your library) is a good move. That being said, it really shouldn’t take so much for Valve to finally make a move. According to the statement that Valve released to Polygon, they have a team that monitors reports. And even so, it took Silicon Echo causing so much grief for them to jump into action. There has to be a better way to do this. That being said, I’m glad that they got rid of this asset-flipper.