BOT FARMS - what do you plan to do with with them ?

[lesjeuxdemilen]

Good day,

in the last week I made a research on internet and found many important discoveries :

- bots can wishlist games to simulate activity and make a game appear on "Popular upcoming"

- bots can download demos, Prologues and free game to make a game appear on "Popular new releases"

- bots can start demos and then close it to lower down the "Median time played" of a game of the concurence

- bots can start demos and leave it open for hours to simulate playerbase of a game

- bots can change tags on games sabotaging games of the concurence

- and many more ...

Do you have any plan to deal with the bots sabotaging the small indie game devs ?

[Start_Running]

THEY CAN doesn't mean THEY ARE.
To show that they are you'd have to show evidence. and that the activity is having any actual impact.

[William Shakesman]

Valve seldom reads and never answers here so this board cannot and will not ever give you the answers you are asking for. I cannot imagine they would want to randomly disclose plans that might be more useful if secret too.

After seeing for myself the sheer mind boggling magnitude of bots scraping twitter (to the point where all the silly outside account restrictions on it and Facebook now make perfect sense to me), I am sure every major corporation has some plan or counter measure for their own bandwidth integrity.

[lesjeuxdemilen]

William Shakesman eredeti hozzászólása:

After seeing for myself the sheer mind boggling magnitude of bots scraping twitter

Some investigation YouTuber made a video about it bofore a few years.

[lesjeuxdemilen]

EPIC STORE placed a ReCaptcha for this reason and it's working fine ...

[Crazy Tiger]

So, from the examples given in the OP most stuff the bots do is harmless.

Anyway, as said, Valve doesn't respond here. They do seem to have various measures against bots going, though it always is questionable how much Valve sees such things as a problem. After all, users and Valve can easily see things differently.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

As a developer, you should be asking this in the Steamworks group discussions for game developers.

[CANCELCULTURE]

bots are being used for leaving fake illegal DOTA 2 user reviews, probably being used for farming inventory for the many unregulated skin gambling sites that Valve allows people to log in to using Steam. https://help.steampowered.com/en/accountdata/ThirdPartyLogins

Harmless as long as Valve profits and ignores their own rules.

https://store.steampowered.com/online_conduct/ - gambling - user review manipulation, - automated account creation - (no shortage of GitHub projects for that huh, Valve?}

never mind the bots in several chat rooms again today posting their URL scams non stop scripted while Valve ignores their illegal activity. hope no one is being harmed by bot url scams today Valve.

[Tito Shivan]

lesjeuxdemilen eredeti hozzászólása:

EPIC STORE placed a ReCaptcha for this reason and it's working fine ...

If a recaptcha is enough to (allegedly) stop bots from misbehaving at the Epic store, they weren't very interested to begin with.

Steam once implemented recaptcha to stop bots from stealing items from hijacked accounts.
It was rendered useless in less than 24 hours.

[Brian9824]

lesjeuxdemilen eredeti hozzászólása:

EPIC STORE placed a ReCaptcha for this reason and it's working fine ...

Repcatcha are easy to bypass, and most indie games don't even have a demo, and there is no evidence of this occuring.

A random youtuber making claims is not proof of anything.

I would also add that demo's have a different appid from the game so it won't do what you think it does, and looking at the popular new releases the overwhelming majority have no demo.

[lesjeuxdemilen]

Crazy Tiger eredeti hozzászólása:

it always is questionable how much Valve sees such things as a problem. After all, users and Valve can easily see things differently.

How users see bots : This games is famous, must be good, let's buy it

How devs see bots : This game is using bots to be on the top lists, while my game with real metrics is burried and nobody heras about it

How ***** seeс bots : The bots are creating an illusion of players online thus making more devs wanting to sell games on *** platform, making ** rich, this feels so good !

* Any resemblance to real people or corporations is purely coincidental

[lesjeuxdemilen]

cSg|mc-Hotsauce eredeti hozzászólása:

As a developer, you should be asking this in the Steamworks group discussions for game developers.

The official support answered me that they can't share any information about this with me and that I must write here - they gave me the link to this forum (saying the Steam devs are often reading the posts here).

[Tito Shivan]

lesjeuxdemilen eredeti hozzászólása:

The official support answered me that they can't share any information about this with me and that I must write here - they gave me the link to this forum (saying the Steam devs are often reading the posts here).

I guess you mean Steam Support, for whom this is not a subject in in their 'jurisdiction'... That's a subject more fitting for either the Steamworks Development Steam group
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks
Or by contacting directly to your Steam rep.

[lesjeuxdemilen]

Tito Shivan eredeti hozzászólása:

Or by contacting directly to your Steam rep.

How to contact him/her ?

[Start_Running]

lesjeuxdemilen eredeti hozzászólása:

EPIC STORE placed a ReCaptcha for this reason and it's working fine ...

How would you know.
Bots have been able to bypass reCaptcha for sometime. And since the bots behave ina manner not unlike most humans...yueah. How would you know they aren't running rampant on the EGS either . Hmm?

lesjeuxdemilen eredeti hozzászólása:

cSg|mc-Hotsauce eredeti hozzászólása:

As a developer, you should be asking this in the Steamworks group discussions for game developers.

The official support answered me that they can't share any information about this with me and that I must write here - they gave me the link to this forum (saying the Steam devs are often reading the posts here).

Translation.
"Go away Stop Bothering us. We have actual issues to deal with"

[76561199648916059]

Well it's scary and it undermines real statistical value of games, but it does provide appeal to users to see large populations in games to entice them to join or buy the game.

The major issue is when the bot population isn't able to share the reality of no population games.

I know several people who played Diablo are real people but started to bot farm items during work or sleeping, they would always get the accounts banned half way through the season, resulting in buying another account spending more money while upticking the games sale.

The business model has always seemed to be , let them cheat or bot , ban them when they do, then hope they repurchase the title.

It's extremely toxic to the games community but reality is all these game have limited appeal and population, super over inflation of population sells better then a game truthfully declaring they have under 1000 people interested in it.