Pirates Bypassed Steam's Protection with a Retro Game

Pirates can launch hacked games via Steam, disguising them as the work of the retro game Spacewar built into the service, the GytHyp website reports.

GytHyp drew attention to the growing popularity of the Spacewar game on Steam.

The analytical resource began tracking statistics on Spacewar since April 2015, and during that time the project entered the 50 most popular games on Steam, in which there are about 8 thousand players every hour.

This is strange for a number of reasons: Spacewar cannot be found through a Steam catalog search. The game is indeed present on the service, but as a tool for developers, allowing them to test platform functions like the achievement system or Workshop.

The surge in popularity of Spacewar among ordinary gamers was explained by the cunning of pirates: they learned how to run hacked games by slipping the Valve AppID Spacewar into the system for detecting illegal activity instead of the real game identifier.

When an illegally purchased version of the game is launched on Steam, the system recognizes its launch as Spacewar and does not react.

Valve has not yet officially commented or reacted to this information.

The original Spacewar appeared in 1962. It is considered one of the first video games in history and was first launched on oscilloscope screens.

Source: GitHyp