Steam just killed a game that was installing Windows malware

One of the appeals of a centralized platform like the App Store, Google Play Store, or Steam is that you can generally rely upon the maintainer to keep harmful stuff out so you can download software with confidence. At least, that’s the idea. But every once in a while it doesn’t work out — like when a free-to-play game gets through Steam’s various safeguards and delivers malware to unsuspecting players.

That’s what happened with PirateFi (that’s an archive.org link), which hit the Steam store a week ago with some stolen screenshots. It was available for a few days before Valve found out it was delivering “suspected malware” to downloadeders. Valve pulled the game and banhammered the developer, but at least a few players appear to have received malware, triggering their antivirus programs. One said that it managed to snipe their Microsoft and Steam passwords, stealing some game currency before they managed to recover.

SteamDB (via PCMag) estimates that about 800 users downloaded the game-slash-malware, but it’s unclear how many were actually impacted. If you happen to be one of them, check your email because Valve may have sent you an alert. Affected users are instructed to run a full virus scan (or completely format the PC) to get rid of any lingering nastiness.

SteamDB

This sort of thing is atypical for Steam. The automated systems for game updates can sometimes crash PCs when the updates are problematic, but so far Valve has done a very good job of keeping actual malware out of the Steam store. (Can’t say the same for Apple, Google, or Microsoft.)

But with Steam only getting bigger as a platform — over 15,000 new games released last year — Valve’s responsibility to protect its users from malware is only getting more difficult to fulfill.