Lately, Valve seems to have become more careful about the products listed for sale on its Steam store. After refusing to publish games with indefinite copyright on AI-generated content, the company has now removed 90 games because they are shovelware, that is, products of very low quality.
Browsing through the Steam catalog, you will surely come across games that are simple asset-flips, that is, very simple games made using the same assets, often bought on stock sites. Often these games have titles that are reminiscent of other, more well-known products, or contain buzzwords such as Zombie Defense TD or Play Football. They are essentially very cheap fakes designed to fool a few unsuspecting buyers who have been tolerated until now.
Since Steam opened publishing to just about everyone, “shovelware” games have become a problem, as has intellectual property theft. Among the remote games stand out, for example, 3D Pacman, which was unlikely to have an official license from Bandai Namco, and Flappy Bird, but without the consent of the author Dong Nguyen.
In addition to games, developer accounts were also blocked. This is definitely a positive decision for Steam, demonstrating more attention from Valve to issues that the community has been paying attention to for years. There is a suspicion that something is going on behind the scenes given the recent initiatives including new features and limitations.
