this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025

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Verified Steam game steals streamer's cancer treatment donations (www.bleepingcomputer.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/gaming@lemmy.zip

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A gamer seeking financial support for cancer treatment lost $32,000 after downloading from Steam a verified game named Block Blasters that drained his cryptocurrency wallet.

top 16 comments

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[–] MurrayL@lemmy.world 35 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Okay, so the situation majorly sucks and I hope the victim can somehow reclaim that money.

That said, the headline and article repeatedly call it a ‘verified Steam game’ but at no point do they explain what that means.

As far as I know, the only verification scheme on Steam is Steam Deck Verified, but the screenshot of the offending game’s store page shows that it was rated as ‘Unknown’.

Do they mean verified as in ‘Valve approved it for release’? Surely not, because every Steam game is approved for release so ‘verified Steam game’ would be a tautology.

Either I’m missing something, or this source is just adding meaningless words for no good reason.

[–] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Each game on Steam goes through their approval process. Especially:

Before your store page or game build can go live, there is a brief review process where we run your game, look at your store page, and check that it is configured correctly and running as expected and not doing anything harmful. This takes between 1-5 days.

https://partner.steamgames.com/steamdirect

[–] MurrayL@lemmy.world 18 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Right, so there’s no such thing as an unverified Steam game because every game has to be approved before it appears on the storefront.

So why does the article repeatedly bother to specify that this was a ‘verified Steam game’? By that metric, they’re all verified.

I’m not even mad about it, I’m just confused why they bothered adding the qualifier at all.

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

It's just a way of stressing that the author believes Valve have some culpability.

[–] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's mentioned twice by the article. And the term is probably used because that how the gamer addressed it in their post. I can only speculate, I didn't write the article.

In any case, it's a huge fuck up by Valve and not for the first time.

[–] MurrayL@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

it's a huge fuck up by Valve

Agreed! I’m kind of surprised they don’t automatically scan updates for malware. Or maybe they do but this slipped under the radar somehow? Either way the system clearly isn’t working.

[–] Baggie@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 weeks ago

I would expect they do, you can never expect anything to be flawless where cyber security is concerned unfortunately.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I was thinking it was the Deck compatibility or just the fact it was on the store front, as if there is some kind of vetting process to sell your game on it. AFAIK, you just need to agree to their terms and pay ~$100. If there is a review process, it probably just makes sure the game runs at all and isn't immediately obviously a scam.

Because there are hella scam games on Steam.

[–] xep@discuss.online 6 points 2 weeks ago

The problem was using Cryptocurrency in the first place.

[–] RedSnt@feddit.dk 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I saw this earlier today, the clip on lsf to be precise.
Modern computing sucks. I remember downloading sketchy shit from astalavista.box.sk (wiki article) all the time, and because of that I had to format c: several times a year. But these days? Scary stuff. Luckily I don't have crypto. And while proton on linux simulates a sandboxed windows environment, there's still free access to root via the Z: drive that wine sets up, so unless one uses the flatpak version which is even more sandboxed, there's still some potential danger there even as a linux user. It's just a matter of when.

[+] wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com -30 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

I only game on my steamdeck now. And it has practically zero security on it. Admin has no password. When I realized that I then came to the conclusion that Steam doesn't give a fuck about security.

I tried setting an admin password on it and it broke everything. So it's in a penalty box on my network and can't access anything except the outside internet and I do nothing with it but game.

[–] x4740N@lemmy.world 32 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

As someone who duly boots linux and windows I feel like you're bullshitting here or didn't read manpages and put in a wrong command which you thought did something you wanted but actually fucked up your system

Linux is very easy to break if you want to do it intentionally due to its freedom but I'd you know how to use it correctly it'll serve you well

[–] DarkSirrush@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, I have not a clue how they bricked their steam deck just setting a sudo password, its not exactly difficult to set. That, and stuff like SSH is disabled by default on a steam deck.

[–] cyberic@discuss.tchncs.de 29 points 3 weeks ago

I was able to change the root password on mine from the terminal in Desktop Mode and have had no issues thus far.

[–] dastanktal@hexbear.net 13 points 3 weeks ago

Not sure what you're talking about, the root password is not set, and that prevents people from being able to log into the account. Pretty standard setup on most computers nowadays where the root password isn't set on Linux.

And the entire OS is basically reaf only except for a few select folders. So for security, it's pretty solid. You can't just install a package on a steam deck, you have to use flatpack to get a package installed, or you have to install a steam game.

[–] stephen01king@piefed.zip 6 points 3 weeks ago

You don't set an admin password on Linux, you use sudo with your normal account's password if you need to do anything important. It doesn't work the same way as Windows.