One would imagine that, outside the circumstance of a sole developer dying, someone alive has access to the account despite the business no longer being functional, and also likes money, so would probably withdraw it. I doubt stranded money happens that often.

Interesting. In theory it would just sit there forever, eh?

@robilar5500 Steam take their 30% and the remaining amount is kept in a holding account for the developer/publisher to cash out still. So really, it goes nowhere.

Question: when a dev/studio/pub goes out of business and Valve no longer has a means to pay somebody for their game being sold, where does that money go?

Yeah, same - both Fantasyland and CrazyCar.
Both games were removed from library, posts that I've made in both games' community groups are deleted and I'm banned.
Not that it affects me much, but it's such a scam moves...
Result?
All games from that so-called "developer" are marked to be ignored in the store.

He just banned me from Fantasyland discussions.
I called him out for revoking the game + the dlc. First he deletes the comments ,then he bans you.

Hi @ragnarocker!

We have several discussions ongoing in our forums regarding these games, feel free to share your experience(s) here:

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/discussions/22/

Fantasyland
https://steamcommunity.com/id/robilar5500/recommended/833300
The developer revoked all licenses for this game and the DLC today (Nov 11, 2025). And then raised the price on the product page, lol. Please report this dev and game.

same for:
The first thrust of God
Seek Love
Seek Love All Jetpaks
Seek Love All Weapons

We don't support or encorage review manipulation Paul. What you're asking for goes against the entire point of this community.

Lol

It's a "joke game". Since Steam Direct lets anyone publish anything on Steam for $100, and Valve has practically zero QA, there's a lot of people who publish things that barely classify as games onto the platform, in the hopes people will engage, and it will "Go viral" because it's "So bad, it's good".

Can someone tell me what this is?
You should take a look at it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3962070/Juego_de_mierda_no_lo_juegues/

THX

Thanks @tom- If you could make a discussion post in one of our forums, that'd be great and we can see about tagging the game on our curator!

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/discussions/22/

Thanks!

Yeah, the way the Metacritic entry works is you just type in your game and pick from a list. Its not verified by Valve because like most the features they release they don't assume people will abuse it because realistically why would any normal developer put a fake game in?
♥♥♥♥ like this is why we can't have Summer Sale events, trading cards, pins on profiles etc without jumping through hoops. I'm getting fairly sick of it.

So they did. I guess the Metacritic score section of the store page just asks the developer for a URL, and there's no verification from Valve to ensure the URL corresponds to the game itself.

This is dodgy and is intended to mislead gamers for profit, and should be reported.

There is a game that somehow has embedded the metacritic score of GTA V on its store page, and a bunch of nonsense awards: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1907400/Captain_Gazman_Day_Of_The_Rage/

@Mellow_Online1

Thanks, i've posted to where you've redirected me.

Cheers

There's a method to report games that don't work (and this is not so uncommon, with multiplayer games, developers often pull the plug on the back end servers), but as always, Valve don't tend to action when games get reported most of the time. Usually they only act if it's blatantly illegal stuff that they themselves could be culpable for hosting.

Hi @VaLiuM - Our forums would be the best place to post about this: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/discussions/20/

Giveaway here to celebrate 4k members!

Open for 25 hours.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/768200/Smalland_Survive_the_Wilds/

https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/859AL/smalland-survive-the-wilds

Yep, and the Russian "developer" behind those asset flips, Rosa Special Studio got banned from Steam and re-appeared wearing a fake moustache as "Blessing Company" and a couple of other shell accounts.

It seems like the Russian syndicates pushing all the fake games, plus our friend Atomic Fabrik and a few others, after their first bans, got wise and started using multiple accounts and working harder to hide their identity.

Spreading their asset flips over more accounts reduces the impact should Valve ever action any of the reports made against them.

Many of those asset flips from "Blessing Company" are priced at $50 or more and carry fake/paid reviews from Obzor/Mipped.

This reviewer made good list of asset flips on Steam which is using same template https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198030784015/recommended/1412120/

And here's the squeaky clean safe for Steam version: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/announcements/detail/543365188100817645

Oof, that damn automatic content check had recently even made locked my dev’s account because of a false detection until i contacted Support, first time seen that, didn’t think it’s possible :) And you can’t access any dev/publisher-related things while locked, so getting that at the wrong time can hurt. So i’d recommend to devs to have a reserve account set up, or to use a separate account for CM/moderator/social stuff from the start.
Sorry for a bit of offtopic

UPDATE - The article still appears to have been censored by Steam for an unknown reason.

It appears to be dipping in and out, which suggests to me it's not a human issue, but an automated content checking bot freaking out.

Some can access it, others can't, but there appears to be no rhyme or reason as to who can access and how. We've experimented with it with some of the Steam Sentinels team, and some can access it, and then 5 minutes later, it can't be accessed, and then it comes back shortly after. It seems the admins have a higher chance of accessing it than our mods/members.

Attempted to repost the article, but it too has been hidden.

I've written to Steam to work out why this is happening. It's not a Steam-wide problem with announcements, as our article talking about the de-indexing is still up, no bother.

We're working to get our latest article back up for everyone to view. Please bear with us as we work through these uncharted waters.

Hi all!

Our latest announcement has unfortunately been de-indexed by Steam, meaning it isn't showing up in many areas where you all usually find them, namely our front page here.

Please find it here, and please do share it, as the only way to read it is via this link: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/announcements/detail/543365188100817486

anyone look into ready or not?
they did some major changes that have fans unhappy


I will explain that censorship was just the initial issue. They also downgraded the graphics, made lobby connections more unstable, nerfed some guns and made them more 'casual' like, bugs galore, AI got even worse...

taken from an user in the forums, sounds like its becoming a big problem

Nobody goes through the effort of hiring a team of asset creators for a game that gets a peak player count of 2 people.

Yeah thats fair, all good!
and to answer your question, yeah I also think it belongs here, even just for archival purposes :D

Thanks for explaining and that's why I said "I dunno, if it belongs." Because, it created a mild ruckus (and I know that Aimlab does things professionally as far as games in early access goes).

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the developer is saying.
They're saying that its a data platform for you. You do tasks repetitively and compare your own data.

No one is buying/selling Aim Trainer data because developers collect their own analytics on their games and its useless to anyone else.

https://x.com/vF_AIMER7/status/1285222748051120130

I found this about 'Aimlab'. I dunno if it's worthy to be here though.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1283220/Devolverland_Expo/
reminds me of this and various games mention other games in there other games
some commonly on the frontpage, some mention new dlc
advertising in games is a old thing

This is an ad disguised as game. Advertising Boltgun 2. Store page never disclosed that info. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3533730/Warhammer_40000_Boltgun__Words_of_Vengeance/

None of it was Valve information, its not a Valve/Steam leak. Valves comment was basically "Yes, there was a leak. Its not us or your steam account."
so the TLDR is that the leak was Twilio and Valve don't use Twilio

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/533224478739530145?l=english

You do not need to change your password but MAKE SURE YOU HAVE STEAM GUARD ENABLED!!!

You should change your Steam password and make sure that you use 2FA through the Steam mobile app.

what happens with steam seciruty breach?

thats what i said, you should be

You talkin bout me? I am not calling any sort of authorities

i think, some authorities should be interested. have you tried, to offer it to them?

I made a video that uncovers how fake games are being used on G2A to sell random keys if anyone is interested in checking it out!

https://youtu.be/Zkdte2bwaD8?si=ydFtdJevyY9lECg-

gaming

Our next gaming night: Rocket League!

Saturday, May 17th 00:30 BST

(Remember to check your timezone conversion!) :)

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/events/543356943483275266

Because you know, Steam group forum chats are a bastion of privacy and security, amirite? :D

They probably don't want their illicit activities logged so they only lurk in Steam group forum pages. The funny thing is they've yet to even say why discord is "dubious" notwithstanding "dubious" is far from actually dangerous. Really goes to show that Steam for some reason harbors people who have no clue how technology functions.

More of a molehill to die on if you ask me!

Saying that using Discord is "Promoting a dubious 3rd platform" is certainly a hill to die on.

Also that same pretentious and stuck-up "I am right and everybody else is wrong and stupid" attitude that made me stop commenting regularly.

I don't even know WTF lx is doing. You can't even farm Jester Awards in group comments.

dont be sad, be truthful to your own cause

@lx Sure dude, have a good rest of your day.

sentinels of the store - journaling the state of affairs since 2017.
demonstrating his incorrectness is pointless.
im completely correct too. thanks for not mentioning it ;)