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Steam Greenlight game ‘beta’ automatically downloads malware

Valve has had to pull a game from its Steam Greenlight platform, after a link on its page sent users to a link that downloaded malware, which when activated made changes to their account without permission. In one instance, it even went so far as to automatically rate the game highly and review it on Steam, in an effort it seems to further spread the infection throughout the digital distribution platform.

dynostopia
The supposed developer's page, though the image was said to be copied from elsewhere, so who knows how real it is

The ‘game' in question, was a beta for Dynostopia, which while advertised on Steam, was downloaded from an external source, not from Valve's servers. When users did so, they reported their desktop becoming locked, asking for a password by an administrator. One affected Redditor claims that restarting and attempting to regain access saw a wiped desktop and a message that read simply “nope,” appear on the screen.

Viewing his Steam profile from a different account, that same user found he had rated and reviewed the game and even changed his own profile, linking others through to the ‘beta.'

Although Valve appears to have removed the Greenlight page in question, some are worried that people may be infected without realising it and would have liked a warning sent out to visitors of that particular Greenlight page.

Regardless, exercise caution when downloading anything and running it. Especially .exe files. Even if you do think they're games.

KitGuru Says: Do you think Valve should do more to keep links like this from Greenlight, or is that asking too much? 

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17 comments

  1. To be honest, I think Valve should be held responsible for that one. Big fuck-up there.

  2. Craig Alexander McKenna

    Why? For someone not paying attention and downloading something externally outside of Valve’s systems? They took the page down, it’s the best they can do. People really should be more careful what they download, especially if they say it’s a Steam game that is actually not downloaded from within Steam. Even more so with Greenlight base games.

  3. How is Valve responsible for peoples being stupid by downloading software from peoples they don’t know. Valve made steam, not Dynopsia or whatever its name was lol. Ofcourse you might be interested but it is the same as blaming the makers of a game when someone scams you. It is basically your own stupidity. You can do some proper research before testing some game. Everything can be prevented lol.

  4. Craig and Ploopploop, I think it’s Valve’s responsibility because this happened on their platform. Why was the developer even allowed to use an external download link in lieu of having the game’s beta on the actual Steam store? Unless I’m misreading something.

  5. It isn’t really hard to program suspicious malware which can download third party software through some various provided urls. And steam allows urls in your profile, because many players have youtube channels or their own forums or stuff they want to share. Steam warns you when you visit urls outside of steam that isn’t made by Valve, so once again your own fault if you click on it.

    Not sure if you’re familiar with greenlight but I guess not. Greenlight is a community based oppertunity for indies to bring their game into the market. If it gets a lot positive feedback and publicity it will eventually get to the store. Valve has once again nothing to do with this. If someone posts an url on facebook about a free Iphone that the president of Africa has to share with you, you don’t blame facebook for it either after clicking on it do you? XD

  6. noobs will always blame others 🙂

  7. If you download something NOT from Steam then who is at fault really, Come on.

  8. I think the only thing Valve can be held responsible for is allowing users to post external links without checking them or having the users provide a full revision of the files. Other than that, if the files contain malwares, I don’t think anybody else other than the pr*ck who made them can be held accountable.

  9. No, they shouldn’t. They obviously should remove it when it happens but they give people plenty of warning about links being unofficial and potentially dangerous. You should also have common sense.

  10. Louie Andrew Capulso

    Time to update Greenlight submission system then. Valve trying to make it easy for the people, but humans just want to abuse their kindness. so, fuck it! ban that son of a bitch to internet time and space. forever! who ever is responsible for that.

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  12. “you should also have common sense” yes he should and probably does, unlike valve who obviously have a terrible system for dealing with new games and could have compromised peoples systems, it IS their responsibility as it is their site, that is common sense.

  13. its their site, they shouldnt even allow users to upload dodgey outside links, thats how.

  14. thats what i said

  15. well thats one way to reply, insulting someones intelligence for using common sense and keep it simple, we all know what greenlight is, but barring outside links from being used is not hard to do and would be steams responsibility… its that simple, facebook is a social network not a site for collecting games, there is a big difference, as people are mostly using the sight for downloading, that magic word right there, downloading, not sure why you are defending steam so hard, you fanboys are there worst, because i like steam i use steam but i still have common sense enough to see that this could have been solved by steam barring outside links and keeping traffic soley on their site.

  16. so your kid has steam and uses it for “downloading” yea thats right thats what most kids do when one there, so they then click a link that has no reason to be there that steam could simply have had barred the outside links and problem solved, you have to be realistic as the world isnt just adults with enough common sense, and im not even just talking kids many people with various problems we account for in the real world that are not considered online.

  17. The virus was never on Valves servers. It was a link that led to the malware posted on his Greenlight page. Valve gives you plenty of warning about going to external links. If you go to it and it harms your PC, that’s your own fault.

    Obviously Valve removed it when they were aware of it which is their only responsibility.