Valve has removed about 1000 games from Steam

Valve has removed about a 1,000 games from Steam systems, according to the list on Steam Tools. Quite few of these games have been on the platform for months and even years. One of these games is Glasswinged Ascension which has been on Steam from 2017. Electric highways, an experience/adventure game, has been fairly well received on Steam with over 1300 positive reviews. Masha Rescues Grandma which is an informal puzzle-adventure launched in 2016 has also been removed from Steam.

Developer Alexandra Frock replied to PC Gamer’s article Tweet stating: “A good chunk of them are linked to a single publisher in Russia (I think “Dagestan Technology” is the first name they use) going under a very large number of different names.”

A good chunk of them are linked to a single publisher in Russia (I think "Dagestan Technology" is the first name they use) going under a very large number of different names. Here's a tool that points out dev/pub relationships by support contact info: https://t.co/EqJQN9F2n1

— Alexandra Frock (@ntigravities) November 26, 2019

Alexandra Frock continued in a second tweet, “Also worth noting is that Valve themselves admit they can’t verify publishers that come from Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, the Ukraine, and Russia very well”

Also worth noting is that Valve themselves admit they can't verify publishers that come from Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, the Ukraine, and Russia very well (this looks to be a script that monitors for fake game items): https://t.co/2kQ2CQ5ajK

— Alexandra Frock (@ntigravities) November 26, 2019

A cached version of the Dagestan Technology Steam Curator page lists 48 games and 4 DLCs, but this live page is now empty. The consensus is that a number of publishers abuse the Steamworks tools. The catalogs for these publishers have now been removed from Steam. an estimated 982 games have been removed from Steam as of yet.

Valve did not go into the specifics of the transgressions or the companies. However, it is being theorized that Dagestan Technology isn’t the only publisher involved. Valve has indirectly confirmed this when a representative for the company stated that the purge was a result of bad behavior by multiple publishers. “We recently discovered a handful of partners that were abusing some Steamworks tools. We emailed all the affected partners.”

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