More than a thousand Steam game bans have taken place overnight; it seems that Valve is cleaning up its storefront prior to the reported launch of the Steam Autumn Sale 2019 later today.
The website steam.madjoki.com tracks Steam game bans, and the last 24 hours have seen well over a thousand individual items removed from the platform. The culling appears to have halted as of over 17 hours ago, but it seems that many of the bans were focused on at least two particular publishers.
As noted in this submission to the /r/Steam subreddit, publishers Siberian Digital and 天元工作室 (Tianyuan Studio) appear to have the entirety of their libraries removed, reportedly due to violations of the Steam terms of service in the case of Siberian Digital. However, it seems that not everyone who was caught up in this ban wave might have deserved it.
Some Devs Claim Innocence During Steam Game Bans
Some developers are claiming that they have been erroneously banned during this recent wave of removals. One such game was OutDrive which can be seen in the image above. The developer of this game spoke up about the removal on Reddit.
"Guys, I understand that [a lot of bans are fair,] began a Reddit comment from the developer. "But my game was banned too, it’s not perfect - but I did it with my soul and she had more than two thousand positive reviews."
"Steam sent a letter that the account was banned due to the discovery abuse of the sale of bundles ... but I never abused this," the comment continued. "But that was exactly what my previous publisher did over a year ago."
"I had to figure it out for a long time to regain the rights to the game ...I wrote in Valve with a request to understand the situation, because I am being tried for mistakes made by the previous publisher."
A comment further on down the chain noted that the previous publisher of OutDrive was Siberian Digital, one of the two publishers who seem to have been majorly affected by this ban wave. However, as the developer notes, the rights to OutDrive has been reacquired. As this Google Cache of the now-removed Steam page shows, Siberian Digital was not listed as the publisher any longer.
A second person who claims to have been a developer (but failed to mention any specific game or publisher) also had a similar story.
We've reached out to Valve for comment on what's going on and we'll add their response when we receive it.
What do you think of this latest wave of Steam game bans? Why do you think these games were removed? Let us know in the comments below!
