Steam Game Pulled From Store After Allegations of Cryptocurrency Mining

Valve decided to remove a game from Steam after it was found to be turning players' computers into cryptocurrency miners. An anonymous reader shares the report from Polygon: The game is called Abstractism, which was said to not only infiltrate players' computers with mining software, but also dupe them through falsified items on the Steam Marketplace. But not long after these accusations started circulating, it has been taken off Steam. When Abstractism was up on the store, it was marketed as a "relaxing" platformer with a simple design. But YouTuber SidAlpha noticed that something was afoot, when someone on the Team Fortress 2 forums posted about how the game was tied into an item scam.

Players also noticed that the game used massive amounts of CPU and GPU, which Abstractism's developers claimed was because of the game's "high graphics settings," something quite uncharacteristic for a simple platformer. High CPU and GPU usage is another tell-tale sign that a computer is being used to mine cryptocurrency. Just hours after SidAlpha's video and the associated forum posts began to spread, Valve removed Abstractism from Steam, and the developer has been banned from Steam. All previously purchased Abstractism items have been tagged with "This item can no longer be bought or sold on the Community Market."

Man I'm Steamed...

[bobbied]

Mining currency w/o my permission? Really? It wasn't a good game anyway.

I'm really steamed about this.

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[sherr]

What are you talking about? It's zero energy cost to the game developer regardless of if they had permission or not.

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[Highdude702]

False. If gpu mining was costing money people wouldn't do it. Yet millions do.

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[bobbied]

False. If gpu mining was costing money people wouldn't do it. Yet millions do.

I'm not convinced that GPU mining is actually a valid business model with acceptable ROI. I know a number of guys try to make it pay, but I seriously doubt that when you factor in energy costs, hardware costs and management costs the time it takes to pay your costs is about that of the hardware's useful life span. If you live where you have to use A/C units to keep things cool and you are paying your own electric bill, there is zero chance of making mining pay. Now, if you live someplace where it's cold o

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[Highdude702]

Not at all what happens. I am a small miner and so is my brother. As far as ROI goes depending on what you mine and if you're stupid or not, it's about 90 days. And effective life of the hardware? You can mine on 960's and still be profitable if you do your homework. I know a few of the larger miners, and yes you won't fine large operations in places like Las Vegas because of the heat. However Washington and Oregon.. They have some of the largest mining warehouses around and are a large majority gpu's. Just

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[bobbied]

IF you where paying for your power, you'd not have a 60 day ROI. Not by a mile.

I challenge you to actually look at how much power you use and figure out what you could pay and turn a profit. I'm guessing your return per KWH wouldn't be enough to turn a profit at the average power costs in the USA. Just a guess, but it would be interesting to know actuals. I was watching a guy discussing his multiple rig mining setup (I think he had like 5, running a dozen GPU's each) and he was discussing how running the

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[Highdude702]

heres a shitty formatted link, but look at eth, that is what i run at cards, hash and power wise on the rig. and the 1060 is only a shitty 3gb model. that price may be a little higher cause of the market today, but what i get calculated from what to mine is almost spot on to the observations. but you have t o also think about fluxuation in the market so thats where the gamble comes in. and choosing your coin and spending the time to optimize.

https://whattomine.com/coins?u... [whattomine.com]

Check it out

[Anonymous Coward]

While the cache is still up, look at it. [googleusercontent.com] In game purchases for Pepe, Putin, and something Russian, developed by who knows who, and only $.50? There are a lot of great, cheap, indie games on Steam, but I've always suspected there were some fishy ones out there too around the fringes. Caveat emptor.

Steam is a app store

[The New Guy 2.0]

Looking at this and the story above in the index, it seems like a lot of app stores are realizing they need to view the code of third-party apps.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Shocking huh. I guess that walled garden idea was a good one.

Here's a better idea. They should allow crypocurrency miners if I can get a cut. When I'm not using my gaming rig, mine away. Give me 50%. Crowd source that and everyone will be fat and happy.

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[Anonymous Coward]

The people who pay for your electricity might mind.

Re: Steam is a app store

[Anonymous Coward]

His parents, you mean.

What if it were legitimate?

[TheNetworkMonkey]

Maybe that could be a legitimate source of revenue for free-to-play games, if it was a consensual agreement. Gamers typically have high-performance hardware, so why not use excess capability while playing a game, as long as it doesn't interfere with gameplay. Sure, cryptocurrency is generally not worth the electricity it wastes to produce. However, it may be a better alternative to ads or traditional payment schemes.

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[tlhIngan]

Maybe that could be a legitimate source of revenue for free-to-play games, if it was a consensual agreement. Gamers typically have high-performance hardware, so why not use excess capability while playing a game, as long as it doesn't interfere with gameplay. Sure, cryptocurrency is generally not worth the electricity it wastes to produce. However, it may be a better alternative to ads or traditional payment schemes.

Except the game wasn't free. You paid for it.

And people will generally be OK with it if you

Civ V...

[Oswald McWeany]

Ahhh... so that's why Civ V in the early days ran so slow and used up so much CPU and GPU despite having relatively simple graphics... Firaxis were mining cryptocurrency before it was cool.

/ shouldn't have to say this... but yes I'm joking and not really blaming Firaxis for really running a cryptomining scam

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[lexman098]

It's hard not to think it these days. Before the latest update Rocket League would increase my GPU fan speed to max *only* when sitting idle in some menu where nothing was really being rendered. Kind of suspicious.

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[johsmick]

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