Lately, a sting operation revealed that several curators on Steam were fake entities. They used to obtain video game keys by promising the video game development studios reviews and other deliverables. However, it would later be found out that the keys were obtained for selling them off at full price later. The reviews published by these entities were too low quality to provide any value to the video game developers or the community surrounding the video game.
Following this revelation, Valve, the parent company of Steam, banned 20 Steam curators from the platform. These key scammers have brought a bad name to the curator feature of Steam. It has also got several video game development studios skeptical of Steam’s features and moves.
After these developments surfaced a few days back, 11 bit studios have banned providing video game keys to any Steam curator. This move acts against the interests of Steam. However, the studio announced that the decision was based on its experiences with Steam Curators. It also considered the experiences of other video game developers with the feature.
Starting today we won’t be granting game keys to Steam curators. Based on our and other devs’ experiences, most of the requests come from fake accounts used to gather and resell the keys and the published reviews don’t seem to bring any value for the community anyway.
11 bit studios
The studio followed up stating that Valve is aware of the issue and it acknowledges the fact that the company is working on fixing the problem. The studio is waiting for the curator feature to be improved shortly.
11 bit studios are mainly known for the video games This War of Mine and Frostpunk. The studio is coming up with a sequel to the original Frostpunk game from 2018. The upcoming game is titled “Frostpunk 2.” The studios are yet to announce a launch date for this game.