While many gamers were asleep, Steam quietly decided to remove close to one thousand games from Steamworks. Gamers have been keeping track of exactly which games are being removed using the Steam Tools website.
Most of the games are related to Dagestan Technology, a publisher based in Russia. Their library of games had almost 50 games plus four DLC.
The official Steamworks website states: “Steamworks is a set of tools and services that help game developers and publishers build their games and get the most out of distributing on Steam.”
Developers can bring their games to a much wider audience, manage their gaming business, implement gameplay features, and more. Games that do particularly well gain access to the Steam Workshop, where fans can create mods and more.
Steam didn’t go into detail regarding if specific publishers and developers were targeted, or why they decided to remove the games last night quietly. Everyone who had their games removed was notified via email.
Many gamers who use Steam know that there are several games on Steam that aren’t the same quality as other titles. The community has reached out to Steam for better moderation. It isn’t uncommon to see games reusing the same assets, or worse, stealing them and having them active on Steam until someone reports it. For example, one recently removed title, Angry Farm, looks almost exactly like the popular app game Angry Birds.
Most of these titles were sold for less than 50-cents but included large amounts of paid DLC and simple achievements to fill a Steam user’s wall.
Not all of the titles have a terrible past attached. Many of the games have been around for years with thousands of positive user reviews.
Removing almost one thousand games overnight appears to be their first step into cleaning house before the start of any holiday sales.
Steam Tools has estimated that almost three thousand games total have been banned so far on the platform over the course of the past two years.
It’s unknown if publishers will be able to fight their ban decision and have their game restored on Steamworks. For many small publishers, Steam is a huge global platform that is indie-friendly.
Valve has not yet made a public statement on their social media accounts notifying users about the removal of games.
