Steam banned my game without any reason

[talentplace]

Hi,

On the past week I found that my game Fly Corp is hided from Steam store and when I try to open the page in Steamworks it shows "Access Denied". Fly Corp had good rating (87% positive from almost thousand reviews) and pretty big amount of players. The game was in Early Access and community of players wants to see updates and patches. I am independent developer and spent 3 years of developing it and I spent money for marketing. And now the game is banned without any reason.

I wrote to Steam support and after a week of waiting they answered:

"After review, we found that Fly Corp was a resubmission of a previously banned app/ While we strive to ship most titles submitted to us, we found that this title is a re-submission of a product that we had previously declined to ship.
We are not interested in reviewing submissions that are just modifications to products we have previously banned.
This app has been banned and cannot be reused."

This is lie. I didn’t publish Fly Corp on Steam before and there wasn’t another application similar to it. It is completely original without any assets used in other games!

So what I can do in this absolutely outrageous situation? Do I need to proof somehow that I didn't publish Fly Corp or similar game before or do I need to ask Steam to show any evidences of re-submission? How I can speak with Steam Support when they lie to me? Or is it incompetence of specific worker of Support?

[my new friend]

Only Valve can help you at this time. No one on the forums can do anything about a game being removed from Steam by Valve.
You failed to mention the other games "you" made that were also removed.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

This is a user forum, not customer service. You have to contact support about this issue.

[nullable]

Most of the users who participate on this forum haven't published games on Steam so won't be able to speak from experience.

And as others have mentioned it's a user forum, not customer support. So if you want rando opinions and guesses, then this topic will work fine. But if you really want to address the issue you'll need to deal with developer customer support.

Mistakes can happen. But conversely users, like yourself, aren't always completely honest and often leave out inconvenient details.

[kitt]

you/people you work for/with got a lot of games banned..

"VCB: Why City 4k
Bus Driver Simulator
Metro Simulator
Fly Corp
WordKiller: Revolution
Grindzones
Helpless Zombies
Golf Extreme
Lovers ' Smiles 2
Lovers ' Smiles
Dots & Girls
Crazy Alien
Deadly Runner
Klondike & Girls
Watch Tower
Gurney to Gurney
Cleaner
Home defender
Mailbox
City Zombies
Gangster War "

just to name a few.

https://steamhunters.com/apps?developer=Sergej110
https://steamhunters.com/id/kittkiller/games?developer=S%27Games&state=all
https://steamhunters.com/id/kittkiller/games?publisher=Lucky+Games&state=all
https://steamhunters.com/apps?publisher=KishMish+Games&sort=title


releasing games under different names (Dev/Publisher names) and then not even bothering to change the Icons (Golf Extreme https://ibb.co/b7z6X6J ) is a bad move and doesnt help.




Anyway, I personally don't care. I own quite some games but playing games with VALVE will lead to problems at some points.

[Judgmental Amaterasu]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από kitt:

you/people you work for/with got a lot of games banned..

"VCB: Why City 4k
Bus Driver Simulator
Metro Simulator
Fly Corp
WordKiller: Revolution
Grindzones
Helpless Zombies
Golf Extreme
Lovers ' Smiles 2
Lovers ' Smiles
Dots & Girls
Crazy Alien
Deadly Runner
Klondike & Girls
Watch Tower
Gurney to Gurney
Cleaner
Home defender
Mailbox
City Zombies
Gangster War "

just to name a few.

https://steamhunters.com/apps?developer=Sergej110
https://steamhunters.com/id/kittkiller/games?developer=S%27Games&state=all
https://steamhunters.com/id/kittkiller/games?publisher=Lucky+Games&state=all
https://steamhunters.com/apps?publisher=KishMish+Games&sort=title


releasing games under different names and then not even bothering to change the Icons (Golf Extreme https://ibb.co/b7z6X6J ) is a bad move and doesnt help.




Anyway, I personally don't care. I own quite some games but playing games with VALVE will lead to problem at some points.

They really have no shame lol. They have "Metro Simulator 2" scheduled for 2022 and it is LITERALLY the already bopped Metro Simulator.

[talentplace]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από kitt:

you/people you work for/with got a lot of games banned..

I don't know their situation. Except Metro Simulator and Bus Driver Simulator - I worked on it as well and account of my partner with those games was banned at the same time with Fly Corp. I contacted with him and he doesn't know why he was banned - there wasn't any messages from Steam.

[talentplace]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Big Bridge.mp4:

They really have no shame lol. They have "Metro Simulator 2" scheduled for 2022 and it is LITERALLY the already bopped Metro Simulator.

This is not true. "Metro Simulator 2" is my game. Сompared with the first game it has another metro line with more than 20 stations, another train and different render pipeline. I work on it for two years.

[KalGimpa]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από talentplace:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από kitt:

you/people you work for/with got a lot of games banned..

I don't know their situation. Except Metro Simulator and Bus Driver Simulator - I worked on it as well and account of my partner with those games was banned at the same time with Fly Corp. I contacted with him and he doesn't know why he was banned - there wasn't any messages from Steam.

yeah, not sure if i believe that. they pretty much let you know about anything they do to an account. at least a user account like mine.

i find it hard to believe that a dev got no notice as to why their game was pulled

i could be wrong

[Leonardo Da Pinchi]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από talentplace:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από kitt:

you/people you work for/with got a lot of games banned..

I don't know their situation. Except Metro Simulator and Bus Driver Simulator - I worked on it as well and account of my partner with those games was banned at the same time with Fly Corp. I contacted with him and he doesn't know why he was banned - there wasn't any messages from Steam.

From the looks of it, the dev/publisher got all their games banned for re-uploading previously banned games.

Sergej110 uploaded a bunch of games originally as a dev, then tried to re-publish them after they got banned, under Lucky Games/S'Games.

Re-releasing previously banned games isn't allowed, and likely Serge is banned entirely from Steam as a dev.

[talentplace]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από <Insert Kazoo Circus Music Here>:

Sergej110 uploaded a bunch of games originally as a dev, then tried to re-publish them after they got banned, under Lucky Games/S'Games.

Re-releasing previously banned games isn't allowed, and likely Serge is banned entirely from Steam as a dev.

But I honestly don't know who is Sergej110 and Lucky Games/S'Games and how he is related to me. I only know another my partner who also works under KishMish Games brand. We are co-authors of few games.

[my new friend]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από talentplace:

I don't know their situation. Except Metro Simulator and Bus Driver Simulator - I worked on it as well and account of my partner with those games was banned at the same time with Fly Corp. I contacted with him and he doesn't know why he was banned - there wasn't any messages from Steam.

You or your partner is lying. Valve always sends an email stating why.

[Leonardo Da Pinchi]

Your company has a handful of banned games...

Metro Simulator
Bus Driver Simulator
Grindzones
VCB: Why City 4k
Helpless Zombies x2
VCB: Why City
World Killer Revolution
Grind Zones (really?)
World Killer: Zorgilonian Chronicles



And your press site, still advertises several of these games.

[rawWwRrr]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από talentplace:

So what I can do in this absolutely outrageous situation? Do I need to proof somehow that I didn't publish Fly Corp or similar game before or do I need to ask Steam to show any evidences of re-submission? How I can speak with Steam Support when they lie to me? Or is it incompetence of specific worker of Support?

Valve is not obligated to host/ship your game if they have reason to believe there is something wrong with it. Their reasons do not even need to be valid. It's their service and they have no plans to jeopardize Steam in any way.

[Ducks on Fire]

Your only option is to contact support. No one here can help you. And really what did you expect? Did you think a bunch of random users would jump to defend you and get what appears to be some shovelware crap put back on the store?

[coenvijge]

I would like to add something to this interesting discussion. Until recently I enjoyed playing the game 'Fly Corp' that I bought.

I would like to state that of course I cannot judge whether one or both parties are reporting the (entire) truth or 'lie' or distort the truth more or less. But at this point I have no reason to believe that the developer of the game is providing incorrect information to the players. I have not received any communication from Steam.

What I do know for sure is that around one year ago I bought the game 'Fly Corp' on Steam. I wasn't aware of some problems with the game or the publisher. Should I? I think I may expect that a game can be sold and is and remains playable on Steam. It's EA but the dev has been busy supporting the game to date. It is definitely evolving and has gotten better over time. I like it and see in the discussions that there are a lot of players that like it.


It seems that for some reason, unknown to me, Steam has now decided to no longer sell the game through Steam and also to make support for the game impossible. Apparently Steam (after a period of one year!!) found out that the game was 'banned' earlier and decided not to sell the game anymore. That's probably a right reserved for Steam. What I don't understand is that the developer of the game is no longer given the opportunity to maintain the game. As a result, I now have an unplayable game.

What annoys me even more than the simple fact that I've now paid for a game that I can't play anymore is the complete lack of notification from Steam. It seems to me that I am the customer and therefore entitled to information if a product I have purchased no longer will be supported.

But maybe that's a weird idea?

I believe that before a game is sold via Steam, Steam should check whether that game meets the conditions that are set. If in exceptional cases Steam later finds out that the game (apparently) does not meet the requirements, Steam should actively inform the users of the game and take the initiative for a correction of an error that has been made.

What makes this case even weirder is the fact that the developer is claiming that he is not aware of the reasons for blocking this game. If Steam has informed the developer of the 'how and why' of this action, I think it is a breeze to inform the players in a copy of the notification(s) from Steam to the developers.

I hope and expect that this will be resolved soon.

Sincerely,
Coen Vijge,
your customer.



(edit: added missing info ('bought game 1 year ago'))