Japanese indie dev issues warning about sophisticated Steam Key scam 

Shunsuke Miyake, the developer behind the multiplayer puzzle game Pico Park, took to X to warn others about a recent Steam Key scam. His cautionary tale highlights a less obvious way that scammers are using to claim Steam Keys (i.e. free games) from indie devs and sell them on for profit.  

It is not unusual for indie game developers to find their inboxes full of requests for Steam Keys. While some of these are potentially genuine, most tend to be sent by scammers posing as journalists, influencers or curators, who then sell the code on, or people who simply just want a free game (leading devs like Denneko Yuugi’s Housenka to sharply refuse such requests). These scams are pretty well known. 

Shunsuke Miyake explains that his company Teco Park gave out Steam Keys by email to requesters with YouTube Channels deemed trustworthy, i.e. they were verified, had a certain number of subscribers, and had been updating the channel regularly with videos that had views and comments. Sometime after sending out the Steam Keys, Miyake went to check up on these channels, only to find that 70% of them had suddenly disappeared. This led Miyake to conclude that these channels were created with the aim of claiming and reselling Steam Keys, as it’s unlikely that they all decided to quit at the same time. 

Steam Key scam warning

Upon investigating the matter further, Miyake discovered that YouTube has a system that potential Steam Key thieves can exploit to create a trustworthy-looking channel. On YouTube, channels can change their name up to three times every 90 days. Although this means the channel loses its verification badge, it provides an easy way for channels to seemingly “vanish” when the victim of the scam attempts to find them again. However, if you know the channel’s unique ID (i.e. their URL) you can still track them as Unique IDs cannot be changed (unless they simply deleted their account). Of course, subscribers, views and comments can all be bought, making it easy to create a trustworthy-looking YouTube channel. 

Miyake concludes that it was a mistake that he didn’t check the channels’ links to social media platforms to see if they had a presence there. He says that he will be more careful next time, and refrain from giving Steam Keys to those who style themselves as reviewers.  

Teco Park’s latest game, Pico Park 2, is available on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PC/Mac (Steam).