In a move that has banished the catalogs of multiple publishers, Steam and Half-Life developer Valve has removed roughly 1,000 games from Steam due to publishers abusing Steamworks.
Originally reported by Andy Chalk at PC Gamer, consumers can track the removals using Steam Tools. While none of the games that have been removed are popular AAA titles, some of them have been available on Steam for years, such as Glasswinged Ascension or Electric Highways.
Via Twitter, developer Alexandra Frock pointed out that “a good chunk” of the removed games are linked to a single publisher in Russia known as Dagestan Technology, though, they operate under a multitude of different names. In addition, Frock notes that “Valve themselves admit they can’t verify publishers that come from Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, the Ukraine, and Russia very well.”
Speaking to PCGamer about the situation, a Valve representative explained, “We recently discovered a handful of partners that were abusing some Steamworks tools. We emailed all affected parties.” Valve did not provide names of the other companies besides Dagestan involved in the abuse or the bans.
Valve was founded in 1996 and is known for popular titles such as Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and more.
Valve’s Steam was launched in September 2003 after having been announced in 2002. Since its inception, Steam has become one of the primary distribution channels for digital PC games, with over 150 million registered accounts as of January 2018.
Moreover, Valve is the developer and publisher behind the acclaimed Half-Life series, with the newest installment—Half-Life: Alyx— due out in March 2020 as a VR exclusive. In addition, Valve developed Steam VR to support the HTC Vive, the VR headset.
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