Brok's developer unmasked scam Steam curators by sending them Prologue keys, not full ones

In an August 2022 Ars Technica report, Brok the Investigator developer Fabrice Breton describes a Twitter thread about the free game-key requests he received from Steam curators after launch. He suspected many came from scammers using inflated curator pages to get keys, which could be sold on gray-market resellers such as G2A, eating into legitimate sales.

To tell scammers from real curators, Breton sent keys for the free, limited Prologue version instead of the full game. Keys would be indistinguishable before redemption, and a curator who really played would soon reach out about the problem. Only a few did, which Breton says confirmed most of the requests were from scammers who had not activated the keys before posting a review.

He then noticed a good chunk of suspicious negative reviews from curators who got Prologue keys; he says these were fake since they could not have played the full game. Ars notes Steam's user reviews require ownership and play, but curator pages can recommend or pan any game.

Curator pages can review any Steam game without owning or playing it.

Gray-market key resale gives scammers a way to cash out free keys.

A Prologue key behaves identically until it is redeemed.

To separate real users from fraud, give everyone a canary that only genuine use would reveal.

Ars reports Valve removed a handful of the curator pages, apparently for violating Steam Community Rules and Guidelines, after a Reddit user found shared creation dates and admins among them. Valve did not detail its reasons in the excerpt, and Breton says he felt slight guilt over the scammers' removal.