Polish studio Acram Digital, who have released games such as Steam: Rails to Riches and Eight-Minute Empire, have had all their content scrubbed from Steam after Valve caught them posting fake reviews of their own games.
Purchasers of the company’s games – PC conversions of board game classics – had been complaining of not just the fake reviews (which have since been removed), but also abusive behaviour towards negative reviewers from company employees.
We’ve received a number of reports for Steam review manipulation on the titles Steam: Rails to Riches and Eight-Minute Empire, from Acram Digital. After investigating these reports we have found that the developer, Grzegorz Kubas, has been trying to inflate the user review score for his titles. This is against our policy, and something we take very seriously.
Because of Grzegorz’s actions, we have removed all games/DLC developed by Acram from our store, and will no longer be doing business with him. Existing owners will be able to keep their titles.
In response, Kubas commented below Valve’s update, saying that he alone is to blame, not the entire studio, and that Acram is attempting to argue the decision in emails to Valve.
Dear Players,
You are right. I’m guilty. It came from my frustration of few bad, unfair reviews on Valve’s Steam only. It was stupid action, not something planned. This is my individual, bad behaviour, not the team, so I would like to blame me, not the devs. It’s a lesson for the rest of my life and it will not happen again, ever.
We have NEVER paid for any positive reviews. It was only my 6 fake accounts on Steam, done in amateur way, from the same computer, the same method of payment, the same IP. I was very frustrated.
We have great developers, passionate in board games. They work very hard to deliver quality games. We listen to the players and we have implemented the features they asked for.
We have sent the email to Valve regarding this issue and we are waiting for the answer.
Blame me, not the devs please.
I’m very sorry,
Grzegorz Kubas
It isn’t every day that Steam gets kicked off Steam.
Comments
6 responses to “Developer Kicked Off Steam For Posting Fake Reviews”
I understand where he’s coming from but to seperate yourself from the company you would actually have to resign no?
I feel bad for the devs but their steam presence is toast. If I were Steam I’d reject their repeal.
While I normally believe its important to seperate what someone says from their working life, when you do something as a part of your working life there are going to be consequences; in this case the consequence is very likely the annihilation of his games chances to grow a healthy customer base.
This may kill the company. Indies aren’t locked into Steam, but the potential consumer base Steam brings to bear is so enormous it eclipses other sales channels. It really sucks for the other people working there, but Valve doesn’t really have a choice unless they want to set a precedent that ‘oops it was my personal fault’ is a valid way to avoid a company ban, and if they did set that precedent you know it’d be abused so hard by the bottom-feeders.
It is one of those situations where being lenient isn’t really a viable option in the face of how Valve are trying to clean up Steam’s image.
They stuffed up and Steam has shown they are not to be messed with. I personally think they deserve a second chance