Steam seems to have made games with ‘bot reviews’ inaccessible

Valve appears to have taken some games in its online game store Steam from sale after it was discovered that bots were used to post reviews. Earlier, the group responsible for posting the reviews was already locked.

A Reddit user posted a list of the games that are no longer for sale within Steam. For now, it appears that a Russian game developer by the name of Rai Studio Games is being held responsible for the previously discovered review fraud; all released games from the maker have been withdrawn from sale.

Because Valve itself has not provided an explanation, it remains to be seen what the exact reason is for the blockade. A large number of bot accounts associated with the blocked games were found, which probably fueled the suspicions. Whether other culprits are found remains to be seen. The bots also posted reviews on games from other developers, but it’s possible they did this to appear legit.

On Friday, the organization SteamSpy discovered that there is a large group of bots active on Steam, which are mainly engaged in posting very positive reviews. The pattern in the names and text allowed SteamSpy to identify bots. Valve then took action by blocking the group the bots were associated with.