Valve Bans Another Shady Developer


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In what appears to be a more coordinated approach to quality assurance, Valve has banned yet another shady developer on Steam. Developer Kut Stupid, at least as he is credited on the game’s store page, has one title on Steam: Lemurzin. It’s been on sale since November 2015 at the price of $1.99 and carries a “mostly positive” 78% approval rating.

The game is also unavailable for purchase. I’ve noted Lemurzin a couple of times over the past week for the fact that the game has a highly suspicious DLC package, the “Pterodactyl Edition.” For $99.99, you receive an upgrade to the game that changes the propeller to a dead pterodactyl. Yep, that’s it.

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One hundred smackers for that. You may notice that Lemurzin is the exact same game as ZombieRush, another game that was recently shut down by Valve, down to the fact that both games even use the “dried pterodactyl” image. There have been allegations that Kut Stupid and Arthur Kariev may be the same person/group, but there is equal likelihood that both are using the same asset pack.

ZombieRush is credited to Arthur Kariev, however it was originally submitted by Rai Studio Games, another developer that recently had its games removed from Steam for unscrupulous activity including review botting. It is indeed possible that Arthur Kariev and Rai Studio Games are the same people, and by that understanding so could be Kut Stupid.

It’s important to note that since their games have been removed, there has been no comment from any of these developers.

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Valve Bans Rai Studio Games Over Fraudulent Reviews


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Say hello to the new Digital Homicide.

Electric Zombies got a very small nod here at MMO Fallout last week where we discussed the game Zombie Rush and how it was definitely buying reviews. I mentioned at the time that the legion of bots were busy farming time on a game Electric Zombies by Rai Studio Games. I made a note to keep an eye on Rai Studio Games over the weekend, knowing that sooner or later the chickens would come home to roost and we’d be seeing a tidal wave of positive reviews for their games.

Well the weekend has come and gone, and it’s time to check the hen house. Electric Zombies is now available for purchase, although you can’t buy it. In fact, you can’t buy any of Rai Studio Games’, uh, games. Over the course of the weekend, the purchase button has been completely removed. Unfortunately that means no more Base Squad 49, no more Lands of Devastation, or Rapid Squirrels either. Presumably, RSG’s current list of Greenlight titles will not be eligible for release.

Some more good news: The apparent leaders of the bot group are this guy, this guy, and this guy. The group that the bots congregated around is gone, however the bot accounts are still present with many having been given community bans.

There has been some speculation that these games are being used for money laundering purposes, the game Lemurzin has a $100 DLC that does basically nothing.

MMO Fallout will be keeping an eye out on the legion of review bots (that we know of) and will keep you abreast of any updates as they arise.