Talk about a Dirty Dev™®.
MMO Fallout has covered some shady people selling stuff on Steam, but this one might just take the cake. A new piece of software hit Steam today for the high cost of $100, titled “loong’s utilities Playnite”. Who is Loong and what are his utilities, you might ask. Let me tell you.
Playnite bills itself as a “video game library manager and launcher that supports all major game libraries. Includes game emulation support to provide a unified interface for your game.” Think GOG Galaxy but in this instance with the added redundancy of being launched from Steam.
It is also a gigantic scam. Playnite is an open source library manager, which in English means it is available for free. Right here. The con artist selling the game on Steam simply took the program and threw it up on the Steam store as his own product. As of right now, the fraudulent Playnite has zero reviews and no activity, presumably because nobody is stupid enough to pay $100 for a ripoff of an open source alternative to a product that is already free (GOG Galaxy 2.0).
But developer loongjinlong isn’t completely evil, since Playnite is 5% off at the time being. You can always download it for free from the actual creator instead at the link above. The scam artist’s other game listed on Steam for a February 20 release date appears to be a ripoff of a mobile title.
Judging from the Playnite Discord, the creator is in the process of being notified. MMO Fallout will follow up with any additional information.
MMO Fallout 