Steam PC gaming platform known for housing an extensive range of computer games and developers has come under fire after a free game called Abstractism was singled out by users to mine cryptocurrency without their knowledge.
The game was available for download since its release on March 15 this year. But now, Steam has taken the game off its platform after users began to complain that CPU’s and GPU’s of users computers would become heavily loaded while playing the game.
Despite the claims form the developers, that this was due to “high graphics settings”, simple games like this never need so much processing power. Also, the fact that the game encouraged users to keep the game on for longer periods got the community suspicious. Some users conducted their own investigations and concluded that the game was programmed to infect computers to mine Monero.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Last September, 200 games developed by Silicon Echo Studios were removed from Steam after they turned out to be fake. But turning computers into cryptocurrency miners during gameplay is new.
Steam is one of the large gaming communities as reportedly over 18 million people log on and 7 million of them playing games on daily basis.