'Shovelware' Games Publisher Quits Steam, Games Business
Last week, Valve took down over 200 games published by Silicon Echo Studios off the Steam distribution platform. This move prompted the studio, notorious for putting out shoddy "shovelware" games, to quit the business entirely.
Silicon Echo Studios hit Valve for taking down their games, even as the Studio prepares to shutter down. The company behind Steam had just obliterated most if not all of their catalog of games, which users have been reporting as "fake games."
The proliferation of "shovelware," or "fake" games that were not intended to sell well, has been a problem that Valve has been fighting to get off of their Steam distribution platform. These are the low cost, low effort titles churned out by the hundreds and sown wholesale on the Steam website by enterprising developers, according to Polygon.
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These games are either given away for free or bundled up by the dozens for low prices. Steam users or bots can pick these up for free Steam trading cards, which they can then trade in for things of actual value: discount coupons for top-tier games.
These trading cards can be sold on third party "gray markets" as well, and redeeming them earns the developers a hefty cut. This incentive could have led Silicon Echo to release 86 games in July and August this year, accounting for more than ten percent of titles released on the platform for those two months.
"The only information we have been given is that our games were consistently at the top of user reported titles primarily for practices that are deceptive to the customers," Silicon Echo said via email.
They did admit to some questionable practices, such as making up multiple developer names for the same team. This changes little for the studio, however.
"This situation has completely destroyed everything we have been working for in the past 3 years and we are forced to give up game development at this point for more that [sic] one reason," the company said, as they give up the idea of moving to another platform like GOG or UPlay, which don't have trading cards.
The video below shows prominent YouTube user SidAlpha presenting his research on the activities of Silicon Echo on Steam.
