Note: This article contains aspects of humanity that could scar readers – discretion is advised, and no images will be linked in this article. Note that Steam brought the offending game and trading cards down once this was made public.
It has come to light that a specific title called Bomberman (of extremely loose comparison to the Bomberman franchise) has been published on Steam, and allegedly the developer offered up his dev API to the public. This specific aspect is currently not proven; it’s more than plausible that the developer themselves continued to change the cards from innocent (and game-related) to disgusting.
The trading cards first were silly memes, and very quickly spiraled into child pornography, images of George Floyd, and in the final zenith of debauchery, showing the images of the murder of Bianca Davis, featuring the seventeen-year-old woman with her throat slit – images that were shared publically on a Discord channel and other social media channels by Bianca’s killer in a bizarre fit of braggadocio from her killer, which ended with harsh criticisms of those social media outlets.
The extremely graphic cards sold well throughout its short-lived history, with one card reaching a whopping $785 from a buyer in mid-December for the image.
Images that are on the card can be saved to PCs by users inspecting the card within their Steam platform inventory, making Steam a bizarre means of transferring these images while seeming to lay the entirety of the blame at the feet of Valve.
This brings us to an even headier conclusion – Valve ultimately made money on child pornography and gore (inactively) by not having stringent checks on images that are uploaded to the player base of tens of millions.
‘This, legally, could be a bit of an issue’ if we’re looking for the understatement of 2021.
The Steam trading cards, as they were crafted, was a brilliant idea that damn-near allowed Valve to print money. Cards crafted by developers would offer graphics or reference game-specific mechanics which players could then trade to craft badges – the purchase of these cards was then taxed by Valve which allowed them to profit what from doesn’t tangibly exist.
Yet the cards offered by the title Bomberman turned the entire system sour, and users are concerned about what could possibly come next from the trading cards as Steam opens its doors to tiny development platforms on an international scale.
This could result in the same fashion as PornHub – blocking everyone but the largest and well-verified of publishers so they don’t open themselves up for needless litigation, meaning indie development would die a sudden death unless a platform could be suddenly established that can hold a candle to the 23 million users of Steam.
There is inevitably going to be a fallout from this incident, but precisely how it trickles down to users and developers is currently left only to speculation.
