Steam Game Pulled From Store After Allegations of Cryptocurrency Mining

Valve decided to remove a game from Steam after it was found to be turning players' computers into cryptocurrency miners. An anonymous reader shares the report from Polygon: The game is called Abstractism, which was said to not only infiltrate players' computers with mining software, but also dupe them through falsified items on the Steam Marketplace. But not long after these accusations started circulating, it has been taken off Steam. When Abstractism was up on the store, it was marketed as a "relaxing" platformer with a simple design. But YouTuber SidAlpha noticed that something was afoot, when someone on the Team Fortress 2 forums posted about how the game was tied into an item scam.

Players also noticed that the game used massive amounts of CPU and GPU, which Abstractism's developers claimed was because of the game's "high graphics settings," something quite uncharacteristic for a simple platformer. High CPU and GPU usage is another tell-tale sign that a computer is being used to mine cryptocurrency. Just hours after SidAlpha's video and the associated forum posts began to spread, Valve removed Abstractism from Steam, and the developer has been banned from Steam. All previously purchased Abstractism items have been tagged with "This item can no longer be bought or sold on the Community Market."