Entire catalogue of ‘fake games’ removed
Silicon Echo, who had nearly 200 games removed from Steam last week, have announced that they have no option to but close down future development.
Silicon Echo’s titles have being the target of widespread accusation of being “Fake Games” Super-low budget titles created almost entirely from pre-made assets, sold cheaply with hopes of making profit through Steam’s popular trading card services.
In an email to Polygon, Silicon Echo stated that: “The only information we have been given is that our games were consistently at the top of user reported titles primarily for practices that are deceptive to the customers,” though they did also admit that they “have indeed sometimes been conducting our business with some practices people may call shady.”
Valve, commenting at the time the games were removed, stated that: “This person was mass-shipping nearly-identical products on Steam that were impacting the store’s functionality and making it harder for players interested in finding fun games to play. This developer was also abusing Steam keys and misrepresenting themselves on the Steam store.”
Steam Direct (formerly Greenlight) has come under fire in the past for having too lenient an approval system, allowing many low quality (or straight-up broken) titles to be easily listed and sold to consumers. The removal of Silicon Echo’s body of work may prove a warning to any further developers intending to embark upon a catalogue of “asset-flipped” games.
