Thousands of Steam users are being punished by Valve for labeling a critical review of the game Warlander as helpful, one that shows how to uninstall “suspicious” software within the game.
Steam reviews can be a useful marker of how well a game is doing according to its player base. And one of the most useful parts of Steam reviews is the ability to mark a review with various clear-cut labels. In the prompt, “Was this review helpful?” you can choose between yes, no, funny, or even hand out an award for the write-up.
However, if you mark certain types of reviews as helpful, it turns out you can potentially get your Steam account restricted. Or that’s what 2,439 users found out when they labeled a negative review of Warlander as helpful.
In late January a Steam user by the name of FREEDOMS117 left a review on the free-to-play multiplayer hack-and-slash game, Warlander, with a negative comment. Most importantly, they pointed out the game uses anti-cheat software called Sentry Anti-Cheat, which they claimed was “suspicious”.
According to PCGamer, FREEDOMS117 claimed the game’s anti-cheat is still “running even when the game is closed, including tray icons”. Adding that the anti-cheat system “seems to be sending some packets of data to Japan IPs while the game has already been closed”.
In an attempt to help other players of Warlander, this reviewer gave a tutorial on how to uninstall the anti-cheat, with further instructions on how to remove all information it had on your computer.
The negative review was well received by other players, who labeled it as helpful. Even shooting to the top of the most helpful reviews for that particular game.
It was only recently on April 14 when a user on SlashDot pointed out that not only did FREEDOM117 get their account restricted, all 2,439 users who marked the review as useful did as well.
Steam support eventually responded to FREEDOMS117’s restriction, saying the review was “potentially dangerous” as it showed “how to cheat or describes how to tamper with anti-cheat systems”.
Luckily, all the bans which resulted from the review have now been lifted by Steam. And Warlander’s devs have also issued a fix for a bug relating to FREEDOM117’s review. Even reiterating that the anti-cheat does not handle any personal information.
Confusingly enough, Warlander’s dev, Plaion, also shared a tutorial on how to uninstall their anti-cheat system in the bug fix.
