Steam yanks title from sale, sending warning to affected customers

You’re unlikely to peruse a gaming storefront these days without stumbling across some AI slop.

Unfortunately for all of us, it’s everywhere, but it is a problem that is now beginning to be addressed.

In recent days, both Steam and the PlayStation Store have been eradicating games which break their terms of service; I’d love to see the Nintendo eShop follow suit.

It isn’t simply AI-driven plagiarism that’s leading to the banning of certain titles.

Steam is also concerned with delisting titles that force ads upon users or feature harmful malware.

The recently banned PirateFi, as reported by PCGamesN, falls into that latter category.

The game was recently made available for free, but at a great cost to unsuspecting downloaders.

It’s not all doom and gloom. Marvel Rivals is a free-to-play gem on Steam.

PirateFi launched earlier this month, on 6 February, and claimed to be a “thrilling survival game set in a vibrant, low-poly world” which players could enjoy solo or via an online mode.

It had all of the features you’d hope to find in a sandbox survival game including base building, hunting, fishing, and farming.

The problem is that while players were having a jolly time, PirateFi was potentially installing malware into their PCs.

Following the game’s delisting, users were contacted by Steam owner Valve on 10 February.

“We are contacting you because you recently launched PirateFi on Steam. The Steam account of the developer for this game uploaded builds to Steam that contained suspected malware,” the email read.

Valve went on to recommend that all affected users run a full system scan using an antivirus programme.

They added, “You may also consider fully reformatting your operating system to ensure that no malicious software remains on your machine.”

It’s great to see storefronts addressing this issue, but the fact that PirateFi was available for several days is still concerning.