They Wanted Free Steam Keys, Now They Review Bomb

Developer of a video game intentionally sent incorrect Steam keys to fake curators. They took revenge on him in the reviews.

At the time of writing, BROK the InvestiGator boasts 100% positive player ratings on Steam, even though it debuted only recently, on August 26 of this year. The successful point'n'click adventure game from independent indie developer COWCAT Games has not garnered equally good reviews from Steam curators. The game's developer knows the reason for this, and described the whole story on Twitter.

BROK - why?

Before the game's release, the developer received a ton of emails from curators asking to receive a Steam key for the game. Suspecting that most of them might be scammers looking to resell these keys on various websites, he came up with an interesting solution. The creator of Brok the InvestiGator - in order to distinguish scammers from honest reviewers - decided to send everyone the keys to the game's prologue, rather than the full version. He thought that it was impossible to distinguish between the two releases before activating the key on Steam, so the real curators would come back to him asking about this mistake, and the scammers would put the wrong key for sale without verifying it first.

The author's plan worked, but it resulted in a flood of negative reviews from dishonest curators, who were probably attacked by pissed off customers of intermediate websites. Among many of these reviewers Brok the InvestiGator is the only discouraged game, and COWCAT Games even suspects that one person is behind the wave of these negative reviews.

"Hurts to look at, hurts even more to play . 'Old-school point'n'click adventure..." No. No point'n'click adventures were this bad. Review score: 1/10," writes one curator

How to battle scammers on Steam?

The game's developer encourages others to report fake curators and believes that it's unacceptable on the part of Steam to allow these reviewers to continue such activity, which involves harassing and blackmailing independent developers in order to obtain a key. He also advises against acquiring game keys from intermediate websites - explaining that they come from theft, from which the scammers, not the game developers, make money.