Video game marketplace Steam removed an alleged crypto miner from its platform Monday amid user complaints, Motherboard reported.
Steamâs parent company, Valve, booted Abstracticism from Steam for hijacking gamersâ processing power to mine cryptocurrencies. The company further banned publisher dead.team and developer Okalo Union from the platform going forward.
The game also reportedly tried to scam its users by creating fake items for them to purchase or sell on grey market websites for profit, according to the report.
âWe have removed Abstractism and banned its developer from Steam for shipping unauthorized code, trolling with content, and scamming customers with deceptive in-game items,â the company said in a statement.
Abstracticismâs reported mining was called by a member of the Steam community, who warned that the game was a miner on July 29. The comment was posted as a review by user bobst3r.
YouTuber SidAlpha detailed how the game mined cryptocurrencies in detail in a video as well, prior to its removal.
In a game update posted July 23, Okalo Union claimed that the game was not mining bitcoin or monero, saying that two resource-intensive services run by the game âare required to connect to the Steam [sic] and grant items to your inventory.â
Steam image via Casimiro PT / Shutterstock