https://www.steamgifts.com/game/USFuM/model-building-restoration
Edit: Oh woops, copied the wrong link there... can't remember what I meant to report now >_>
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Edit: Oh, already here, didn't check the previous page.
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Already posted: https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/nyQJoK3
Edit: You noticed :D
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Yeah, that was fast. Should've noticed earlier though. :)
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Another $200 masterpiece - 3D PUZZLE - Battle Royal
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I don't know what's going on with the Steam store for that dev, but their games all have the wrong prices. Some games are $200, but they are listed for $8 or $10 in the search results. Others are also $200, but they are listed as $800 on a 97% off sale for $24.80 or $200 or $300 and on sale at 99% off for $2. They're all messed up.
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=PUZZLE+Games
The publisher's games are the same way. There's a few $2400 games on sale for 99% off. You can't beat 99% off, maybe I'll buy some, lol
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Hede
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I think what's happening is that search results and publisher/dev pages show the lowest price you could buy a game for, including from bundles which is often significantly cheaper than buying a game individually.
For example: Hidden Western Frontier TopDown 3D is $120 ($200 -40%) on its own, but it's $7.6 ($800 -99%) if you get it through this bundle.
It's kind of wild that there's such a huge price discrepancy: $120 for a single game vs $7.6 for four games. These whacky prices are complete nonsense.
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Oh, that makes sense. I saw the bundles, but still didn't understand where they were getting the prices from. The full price of the game in the search result is actually showing the full price of the entire bundle which is why some of them are so high.
Steam is kind of misrepresenting the cost of the game because the search result is telling you that a single game cost a certain amount before the sale, but that is actually the total cost of an entire bundle of games.
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I wouldn't say it's misrepresenting as you'd get the game from bundle and it shows cheapeast price (same stuff happens with Steam API and due to that CV/points in Steamgifts)
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I meant the price they show as the full price. Let's say there is a bundle with a few games in it and the full price of the bundle is $60. That bundle is now on sale for 85% off and is selling for $9. Those individual games that make up the bundle may normally have a full price of $10-$20 each, but anytime they show up in a search result on the Steam store, they will say the game is regularly $60 on sale at 85% off for $9. There is no mention on the search result for a bundle, they are just representing the individual game as a $60 game on sale at 85% off.
It's not a big deal because once you click on the game you will see the actual price, but it still seems like it is misrepresenting the full value of the game by claiming the individual game in the search result is worth the full price of the bundle.
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oh never thought from that angle, that some people "depend" on discount not game value/price itself :D
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Oh boy. Good thing is: it has already been reduced to 0 CV!
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[Fly Fly Dragon!](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2471620/) | Atomic Fabrik | [Link](https://www.steamgifts.com/app/2471620) | Full | [$199.99](https://www.steamdb.info/app/2471620) | Oct 4, 2023 | Oct , 2023
[Impossible Stunts](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2471600/) | PUBLISHER_NAME | [Link](https://www.steamgifts.com/app/2471600) | Full| [$199.99](https://www.steamdb.info/app/2471600) | Oct 4, 2023 | Oct , 2023
first GA date is either 9 or 10 Oct :)
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I see others already collected links to the new batch of fake games, they work harder than the "devs" :P
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The Summary Table has been updated (Added: 7, Removed: 0, Total: 120)
Thank you to everyone for their contributions.
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[Bowave](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2565190/) | Neki4 Electronics | [Link](https://www.steamgifts.com/app/2565190) | Full | [$39.99](https://www.steamdb.info/app/2565190) | Sep 6, 2023 | Sep 28, 2023
[Slimeria](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2521760/) | Kvass Da Valenki | [Link](https://www.steamgifts.com/app/2521760) | Full | [$39.99](https://www.steamdb.info/app/2521760) | Sep 6, 2023 | Sep 28, 2023
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This video offers a good explanation to why those games exist.
There are "devs" that churn out "games" every other day - the idea here is that the "devs" get the bunch of dev keys Steam can provide them (Steam can generate like thousands of those), and sell them to gray market sites, so those keys will be a part of "mystery bundles".
The steam price is very high so people are unlikely to buy them, keeping the reviews positive with a lot of thumbs up from people involved in the scheme - it means the sites selling the "mystery bundles" can claim every game you can possibly get have positive review scores, so they must be legit :)
TL;DR: those overpriced games are created just to make a quick buck in mystery bundle thingies, they don't want you to buy them on steam anyway
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Very interesting video. Thanks :)
I don't know much about how releasing games on Steam works, but that does make sense for the high prices. They reskin someone else's mobile game or a game template, release it on Steam, immediately give it fake positive reviews, and then increase the price to something that nobody would pay. Now the games have high review scores and they can sell the games in garbage random game key bundles and they won't immediately look like garbage.
Then if people get these keys for garbage games and leave a negative review, their negative review won't count against the review score because they didn't buy the game directly from Steam. Because the game cost is so high on Steam, nobody will buy it there and the game will stay rated high from the original fake reviews.
Anyone that buys game keys and gets these fake garbage games should demand a refund and if the website refuses, they should do a chargeback. I don't feel bad at all for the websites getting charge backs because they know exactly what they are doing when screwing over their customers and they deserve a much more sever punishment than a chargeback.
I also don't know why Steam is allowing this. They are part of the problem as well. There must be people reporting these games as direct copies of other games and it is clear what they are doing when you look at a dev or publisher and they are releasing games every day. It is easy to spot the fake reviews and these same patterns being applied to dozens if not hundreds of different dev and publisher accounts, yet they have been on Steam for a long time and nothing is being done.
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Unfortunately blatant plagiarism is only addressed if the devs from the original game take legal action, but that is often more trouble than it's worth :(
Steam has a "free market" ideology that can be seen as naive and/or lazy depending on how you look at it, letting the platform "curate itself", so they probably won't do anything, specially considering the people getting bad bundles and stuff aren't buying from them, so technically aren't even their customers. The "average gamer" probably doesn't care about searching for hidden gems or small indie titles, so the disaster can be easily covered up by the front page algorithm.
Those external platforms and gray markets are very much a huge chunk of the problem here. I don't even know why folks buy mystery bundles. To inflate their "owned games" number on their profiles? Or is that a gambling problem? They know they will probably get shovelware, don't they?
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That's true. I guess most people buying these mystery bundles probably don't care about the quality of the games. They don't know what's happening and probably won't even install the game, so they are just happy about the number of games they own on Steam going up for cheap. Even if they do know that they are garbage games, they might not even care because they just want the number to go up.
I thought I remember Steam banning devs or publishers for fake reviews though. They seemed to care about it a few years ago.
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VERY often you'll see a game going for 10x what it should. It's pretty common for those to have overseas devs who may have simply misplaced the decimal point Devs/distributors choose the regional pricing for games.
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I understand that type of mistake happens, but that is definitely not what is happening with these games reported here. This is an organized operation that has been going on for a long time. These are junk games that are illegal reskins of mobile games or game asset templates that are cheap or free that are being slightly changed and sold as a real game. They are quickly thrown together and the dev usually keeps producing more of the same type of game and just reskinning them to make it look different. They all have 10 or 11 fake positive reviews, start out cheap, and then increase the price to something that nobody would ever pay. Keys for the games are sold for extremely cheap (pennies) on shady sites which is why people create giveaway here with them to farm CV.
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Today I learn what is the purpose of those games.
This comment perfectly explains their main purpose.
I think farming for CV is a side effect, which can be mitigate by setting the games with high price, low number of total votes, and profile features limited to No CV, automatically.
Games can be moved out of No CV if they evolve, and allow for manual override.
The admin doesn't care, though.
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I saying since ages that either steam direct cost should be increased from 100$ to 1000$ (ok, perhaps a bit less) and the maximal price change could be each year only max 100%, so if game released on 1st november with 0,99$, then it could be increased only to 1,98$ on like 1st december , and then could be only 3,96$ on next years 1st december again. While they earning with these scheme, they wouldnt earn with much higher steam direct cost and with this price increasement restriction.
Or actually, it could be like with reviews. If you change a recommended to not recommended you lose the upvotes, so if price is changed then game cant include reviews in review score from reviews by buyers with lower game price.
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But selling games at high price increases Valve profit, and increasing Steam entry fee will make them lose developer, hence less profit.
Valve only changes the Steam trading card market, although shovelwares abuse it for years, after it makes it into the news, and officials threaten to sue them.
Corporations will not change to decrease their profit.
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i agree that 100 is already a fair price but do you really thin people pay like 60 or 100 or more for these games - if people wait for sales on real games like ones from Marvel or Bandi or the likes then no -one pays $199 for "long truck simulator" do they
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100$ is the fee to publish one's game on Steam.
Valve has already increased it once.
Before you only pay one time, now you will pay for each title.
I don't get in which part of my comment implies that I really think people pay like 60$, 100$, or more for these games.
In case someone buy these games by mistake, Valve will gain profit, won't it?
No one buy these games now, Valve makes no profit.
There is no incentive for Valve to spend its resources to implement any thing, well, to make no gain.
Do you understand my points now?
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the bit a the start where you say "But selling games at high price increases Valve profit"
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The Summary Table has been updated (Added: 5, Removed: 15, Remaining: 110)
Some good progress this week! 15 games were set to no CV and removed from the table. I have minor quibbles with some of the dates chosen for the reduced and no CV designations, but overall, I'm very happy with the results 🙂 We whittled down the table a little bit. Thank you to the mod(s) who made the changes.
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It's nice to know that they are still working on it. At least things are moving in the right direction :)
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We're down to just 59 entries in the Summary Table since the last update.
There were 0 new additions to the table because everything that was mentioned in this thread in the past 2 weeks was fixed by Gaffi on the spot.
Thanks for all the good work!
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Mafia in Town | Atomic Fabrik | Link | Full | $44.99
[Mafia in Town](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2312030/Mafia_in_Town/) | Atomic Fabrik | [Link](https://www.steamgifts.com/game/nXIre/mafia-in-town) | Full | [$44.99](https://steamdb.info/app/2312030/)
Horror Amusement Park | Baron | Link | Full | $44.99
[Horror Amusement Park](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2412290/Horror_Amusement_Park/) | Baron | [Link](https://www.steamgifts.com/game/KL0FJ/horror-amusement-park) | Full | [$44.99](https://steamdb.info/app/2412290/)
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Just stumbled upon these too. That was either a very quick mod reaction or they've been set to 0CV yesterday already. Either way: good news! :)
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Thanks for acting fast.
Valve needs to do something about these, I feel like there are more shovelwares than actual games on Steam now.
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Thanks for the super quick response Gaffi!
In case you haven't seen it, I created a summary of all the games that have been reported in this thread here
I've noticed that many of the games on that list were set to 0CV recently, so maybe you're aware of its existence already. I'll try to keep the page up-to-date with your changes.
Thanks for dedicating time to work on these CV-related problems that have been bugging many of us for a long time. I really appreciate it!
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wow u are so fast ... !! XD im reporting those games on steam too
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Usually when I notice these games they're already in this thread. This time I came upon them first I guess. :)
I also report them on Steam but haven't got a response from Valve yet. :/
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ive reported about 50 of this "games" never got any response... xD
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uhmm, there are multiple places to check without giveaway
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Older methods:
- https://www.steamgifts.com/bundle-games
- Go to "Create a New Giveaway" section and start tipping the game name, if it shows * or ** next to it then reduced CV and no CV, respectively
New and most comfortable way:
When you see running giveaway then you can press magnifying glass in the same row as game name, screenshots button...
When you want to check game directly from Steam, in URL replace "store.steampowered" with "steamgifts" and remove everything after appid (not word but actual numeric ID), go to location...
...both lead to Steamgifts game page
Also when you look above there are multiple references to game page
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EVE Online 20000 PLEX $650 Link to SG Page
I came across a user in one of my giveaways who used 2 copies of the DLC above to reach level 7 and to pass the SGTools ratio checks that I had put into place. It would be great if this highly overpriced trash gets to set to 0.
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I'm guessing you are the one that banned the accounts and already know this, but there is probably no need to reduce the value of the item since it looks like it was a fake invite only giveaway and 5 fake accounts entering the giveaway. If there is no way for people to get the item really cheap to give away here to cheat the CV system, then there shouldn't be any reason to reduce it's value.
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Oh, I didn't understand why you were reducing it's value. I didn't know that some items could get reduced just because they are very expensive. I thought that was only done with the type of games in this thread because they are priced artificially high and people are able to get keys for them to give away here.
This specific item shouldn't cause any issues now because people do not have the ability to obtain it to give away, but if you want to reduce the value now to prevent any issues if there was a promotion in the future, I have no problem with that and I think that would be a good thing to do to all expensive games. I don't think it would be a bad idea to just set a max possible CV limit site wide on all giveaways, but I'm sure that would come with a lot of debate on what that limit should be.
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But you know there is no reason for this item to be abused now and are talking about reducing the value to prevent it from possibly being abused in the future. There is no reason to assume that this item has a higher change of being abused in the future over any other expensive item in the Steam store. So if you want to reduce this one, you should logically also want to reduce all other expensive items sold on Steam.
If that is going to cause a big debate on what the max value of an item can be, it is probably better to just do things how it has always been done and wait for an issue to show up before action is taken, which would mean this item should stay full CV.
In the end, support gets to decide and I don't really mind which way it goes.
Edit: Also, thanks for putting in the time reducing the value of the games in this thread to make the site a better place. I'm sure you have better things you could be doing with your time and I know I wouldn't have the drive to do it. Everyone likes to bash on the support members for not doing enough, but I appreciate anything any of you do because I know I wouldn't want to do it.
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Also, I am surprised that this user was able to use the site for 5 months. I would have thought that there would be some kind of automated checks in place for new accounts. Did the user register each account with a different IP address? If all 6 accounts registered in a short time on the same IP, I would think that would be a red flag and should notify someone to look at the accounts. Then they would have seen the expensive invite only giveaway with all the new accounts from the same IP entering.
The site should also give support members a warning if a giveaway gets an entry from a user that has the same IP address as the giveaway creator, especially an invite only giveaway. Or if that is too much to check, just check the winners IP against the giveaway creator when the giveaway ends.
These things sound very simple to me, but I don't know anything about coding or creating websites, so maybe it isn't as easy to implement as I would think.
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ROFL
Automatic checks.....
They can come in with accounts that have all the same name and only a 1, 2, 3, 4 at the end is different.
Nothing happens.
Sadly no joke, that example is from a real case that i reported in the past. And, if i don't remember wrong, Gaffi handled it and perma suspended the involved accounts
And yes, i assumed in the past too that such checks and red flags happens too...
...maybe it will with a other admin.
Till that time the mods fight alone, with bound hands on the back.
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Thanks for the fast handling, the public explaining your thoughts and steps and that you try a precedent for now and the future.
Top work :o)
It looks as some Demos and Playtests are calculated for the $100 that he used to join the site, so setting them on the correct "nothing for the $100 calculation" list would be helpful too.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199500606472
I want to throw in a recommendation that the mods and cg could discuss...
A new rule/setting that force new accounts to do their first few GAs (3? 5?) a public ones.
This would prevent that new accounts would be used for shady stuff.
The bad boys would need to invest more time, money (a few cents are better as nothing...) and it would be much harder to do all complete undetected as it happened in this case.
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I feel like this doesn't fit in this thread because it is not a fake game with an inflated price, but how did they get this to give away? If someone is cheating the CV system, they should be able to get the overpriced item for really cheap somewhere? Was there some kind of promotion that gave out keys for this DLC for free or really cheap?
Edit: I see that the giveaway was created 10 minutes after the account was registered, it was a 1 hour invite only giveaway, it got exactly 5 entries, and the user is now permanently suspended. I can't view the other users that entered, but I am guessing it was a fake giveaway with fake accounts entering so they can mark it as received to cheat the CV system. Because people do not have the ability to obtain this item for cheap and give it away to cheat the CV system, I don't see any reason to reduce it's value. This was just the case of a bad user.
Edit 2: The 2 winners accounts were created within about 20 minutes of the giveaway creator and they are also both permanently suspended now. I am guessing this was just done after you posted this comment and brought attention to the fake accounts.
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You're right. It doesn't fit in this thread since it's a legitimate DLC for a real, popular game. I'm not too familiar with EVE Online and didn't realize that new expensive content was being released for it, so when I saw the price tag on this one, I jumped to the conclusion that it was overpriced "junk". Having said that, it does fit in the category of extremely expensive full CV games that could be used to farm CV so it's tangentially related to the spirit of this thread.
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Already reported a month ago and in the list but still full CV:
https://www.steamgifts.com/game/OpgQ7/the-imposters
@PoeticKatana: not that it really matters, but The Imposters was also by Atomic Fabrik before they deleted the dev/publisher from the game, not by Hede like it says in the list.
New:
Find the Way Out Samurai! | ? (was Atomic Fabrik) | Link | Full | $39.99
Aliens Tower Defense | ? (was Atomic Fabrik) | Link | Full | $44.99
Crazy Goat | ? (was Atomic Fabrik) | Link | Full | $44.99
[Find the Way Out Samurai!](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2364270/Find_the_Way_Out_Samurai/) | ? (was Atomic Fabrik) | [Link](https://www.steamgifts.com/game/CmoVl/find-the-way-out-samurai) | Full | [$39.99](https://steamdb.info/app/2364270/)
[Aliens Tower Defense](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2400750/Aliens_Tower_Defense/) | ? (was Atomic Fabrik) | [Link](https://www.steamgifts.com/game/f9OeO/aliens-tower-defense) | Full | [$44.99](https://steamdb.info/app/2400750/)
[Crazy Goat](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2387800/Crazy_Goat/) | ? (was Atomic Fabrik) | [Link](https://www.steamgifts.com/game/WYAKe/crazy-goat) | Full | [$44.99](https://steamdb.info/app/2387800/)
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Nice find! I don't think any of these have made it to SG yet but I'd love to see them all set to 0 CV preemptively.
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Please read this part before linking a game: If you are going to link a game here, please check to make sure that it has not already had it's CV removed. Support has already removed the CV from a very large number of these type of games. People can still create giveaways for the games, they just won't get any credit for them. There are a few different ways you can check. If you see a giveaway, you can just click the magnifying glass icon to the right of the game name and it will bring you to a page that will show a date next to "No Value" if it has already been reduced to give 0 CV. You can also go to the bundle game list here and search the name of the game or it's Steam ID. It will show a date in the "No Value" column if it has already had it's CV removed. The last way you can check is to go to the page to create a giveaway here and type in the name of the game or the Steam ID. The game has already had it's CV removed if there are 2 red asterisks next to the name of the game.
A lot of games have been reported in this thread that have not had their value reduced. To make it easier to see if a full CV game has already been reported here in the past, PoeticKatana has taken the time to go through the entire thread and check all the reported games. He found a large number of games that have not been reduced and created a table with a list of all the games and other helpful info about them.
Gelweo has taken over and is updating the list of games that have already been reported.
List of reported games that have not had their CV removed yet
List of reported games that have already been reduced to 0 CV
Update: Thanks to the support members who are looking into this. I noticed that many of the games listed below have been set to reduced or no value. Dropping the games to no value is great, but letting them get reduced value on fake $50 games is still kind of crazy. They are still getting $7.50 real CV each for dozens of copies of $50 games. It would be nice if those could be reduced more, but at least something is being done. Thanks for helping :)
Update 2: Big thanks again to support. A comment has been posted to let us know that all the games listed here have been added to the free list so they don't give anyone CV at these crazy prices. I just checked the dates on all the games compared to the date of the first GA anyone created for them on SG and I am happy to report that every game listed here has been set so that nobody will get any CV from these games no matter when they created the GAs.
Update 3: I just want to point out that this thread is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all of these type of games. I stopped adding games to the list here a long time ago. I originally created the thread to try and figure out why these games are being priced so high and if there was something that could be done to prevent users from abusing them to cheat the CV system. There is a large number of these games being created and support has been working to remove the CV from them. There are probably hundreds of these games at this point and I have no intention of trying to keep track of them all.
I am not a support member, so I personally cannot modify the value of these games. If you want to report one of these games that has not had it's value reduced yet, support members may be watching this thread and posting about the game here may get their attention, but I am not positive. I believe the official way to report these games is to file a support ticket in the "Add game to list" category.
Also, if you notice that some of the games listed here are not expensive anymore, they were at one time and probably will be again. I do not know why they change the prices so drastically. The game may be $2 one day and $200 the next.
Original Thread
I just noticed users giving away multiple copies of games that are full CV with a value of $50 (a lot are $50, some are $25-45) and they look like they should cost $1 or $2. There is no way anyone would pay that much for these games and they all have around 10-12 review that are 100% or 90% positive.
Is someone creating these games for the purpose of cheating the CV system here or is there some other reason why they would be created and somehow users here got keys to give away?
I am not saying that everyone who gives away one of these games is bad since I can understand if a user normally creates giveaways for any free keys they get and happens to get one of these from somewhere, but I checked one user's account and they are creating multiple GAs of most of these games and another account that is giving away 5 copies each of a lot of them.
I'm not sure what can be done, but maybe support could manually set the value of games like these to $1 or just mark them as free so they don't give any CV. I don't think anyone would have much to complain about because I doubt anyone is actually paying much if anything for these. The only ones that would be upset would be the ones who lose their fake CV, but they have nothing to complain about.
I just want to point out that the majority of users, like myself, have been here for many years slowly working our way up through the levels. I am almost level 8 after 8 years, but if I knew where to buy these games on grey market sites for pennies, I could be level 10 tomorrow. I don't want to do that though because it is wrong and if everyone started doing it, it would hurt the site. If a new level 0 user gives away 5 copies each of 12 of the $50 games listed, they would be level 9. It would probably only cost them around $10 to do this where it would cost the average user giving away their spare Humble Monthly games around $1200 or someone who looks for decent sales or bundles that give about 4 times what they pay in CV around $750. (Edit: It is no longer just $50 games, there is now a very large number of these games giving $200 CV)
This is just a short list of examples from when I created the thread. There are hundreds more that follow the same pattern.
Aoihana
Art your brains
Ball Torture
BeachRun
Bots City
CHICKWEED
cookies СOOkies COOKIES
CowboysShowdown
Crazy Zoo
DOLPHIN HUSTLE
DonutCrabs
Dr. Science quest
DUCK Mission
Eagle Simulator
Fishy Business
Fortitude invasion
Grot Slasher
helicopter 2.0
Hot Summer
Ink World
The Last Metal Shooter
Limousine Parking Simulator
Magic War
Mechaguard
MOVERS IN THE WAREHOUSE
My Sweet Ants!
Need for Spirit: Off-Road Edition
Over City
Panda Run
Pixel Pirate
PLANETOIDS
Police Hot Pursuit
Puzzles with nature
Ragedanger Earth
Rich Taste of Ecchi
SCALEPLANET
SpearFrog
SPLAIT RAGE
Super Arkanoid
TOTO Quest
Underwater battles
Villwars
Voice Shooter "Pif Paf"
What do you hear?? Yanny vs Laurel
Yuonger Adventure
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