I want to give a special shout out to a couple of members of the group, firstly to Shattered Mind who compiled a mega thread together of their findings on this developer and also to Occular Malice for providing some extra links and also attempted to take action on the developer but got caught in the firing line, which we'll get into in a bit.


The developer that's the focus of today is Hard Shark Games. Now, technically, we have discussed Hard Shark Games before all the way back in 2021. Back then, they went under their regular name 'Johnny Ginard'. Before I go into the context behind Mr. Ginard here, I just want to establish the connection between these two entites. Not only are there SteamDB change logs registering the name change[steamdb.info], but Mr.Ginard is the owner and only member of the official Hard Shark Games Steam group. Now, unfortunately, Mr.Ginard was already made aware we were looking into Hard Shark, and he put the group onto lockdown and privated his profile, so unfortunately the only things you can go off for this is both Shattered Mind's post in which they vouch that Ginard was the owner, and my own personal word because I verified he was the owner before he made the group private. So this is definitely not just a case of a developer selling their game off to another company, it is the same individual using a different name.


As I mentioned, we did talk about Ginard all the way back 4 years ago. In our article we highlighted that he had been lying about how he'd made his games. They were nothing but asset flips[assetstore.unity.com], and was trying to convince users that the games had been put together by him as a labour of love; as tributes to games he enjoyed when he was a kid. He also banned users who attempted to point this out, admitting that he didn't like those messages because it meant no one would buy the game, and then insulted users that called them out saying they were "whiny bitches", wishing death on other users' families and I also showcased Ginard was using homophobic language against his detractors[x.com], and Ginard had been[venturebeat.com]lying about awards[expo.nikkeibp.co.jp] his games won, an outright misrepresentation of the games on the Store page.

After my article went up as well, Ginard also sent me a very colourful email[x.com] in which he wanted to rape my mother, accused me of living in Canada (I've never even visited) accuses me of lying, destroying his career, and wished I got Covid and die.

Fast forward 4 years, my mother is well, I'm healthy and alive and this guy has crawled out of the woodwork for us to talk about him again today!


So, Ginard went very quiet on Steam after our initial article, but he has resurfaced as of late under his new company name 'Hard Shark Games'. Ginard released a couple games in 2022, however, in 2025, just at the start of this month, Ginard's been in overdrive mode. He released a whopping 36 GAMES IN 1 DAY. On March 3rd, he spat out 36 games onto Steam, all in Early Access, all with the same copy/paste early access descriptions.

Not just that, but after they got called out on the Sentinels forums, Hard Shark moved some of their games to a "TBD" developer tag. Now, not all of these belong to Ginard, but all of the games that have just a black Steam store image are his (with the exception of the game DOTS). The support page lists Hard Shark's email address as the support contact on them all, and the games all have the same copy/paste early access descriptions, and the change of the developer name is listed in all of the games' SteamDB logs[steamdb.info].


Now, why are some of the store pages blanked out you might be asking? Well, as Shattered Mind highlighted, it appears that a number of these games that Ginard attempted to upload were not his, and I'm not talking about in an asset flip capacity, I'm talking straight up theft. Shattered Mind highlighted in their discussion post that the game currently listed as PIWS(archive version from before the page got wiped[web.archive.org]) is in fact a game on GitHub by Sarah Kwon[github.com] called Potion Shopkeeper. According to Shattered Mind, they reached out and alerted Sarah and she indicated that she would be filing a DMCA takedown on the game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3304710/PIWS/

Two other examples of this happening was with the game 'Mansion Mayhem' (archive[web.archive.org]) and 'Axe Slasher' (archive[web.archive.org]) which were both stolen off of an itch.io developer called booleet. Mansion Mayhem is in fact the game Mansion Warrior[booleet.itch.io] and Axe Slasher is in fact Dungeon Warrior[booleet.itch.io].

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3240020/Masses/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3236030/FORS/


Ginard has also been partaking in review manipulation of his games. Annoyingly, Steam have taken action on some of the reviewers (note: not all of them), but hasn't taken action on Ginard himself. Now, something else interesting of note, since Shattered Mind called some of these reviewers out, a lot of their profiles have since been privated (funny how that happens) but I've linked below the accounts that are still publicly visible and, as with all other links in this article, I have made archives of them in case they get altered in the future. If you want the full list, including the since privated profiles, do check out Shattered Mind's discussion forum.

• Reviewer 1
  
• Reviewer 2
  
• Reviewer 3
  
• Reviewer 4
  
• Reviewer 5
  
• Reviewer 6

Now, I'm sure many seasoned users are also able to tell, but the games that aren't stolen are asset flip games. I'm not going to list them all out here, because we'd be here all day, but I will include the asset kit name on each curation listing we put up!


Now, we got made aware of Ginard a couple of weeks ago, but because of my own ban that I was combating at the time, I put everything on hold to try and focus on getting that removed from my account. In the meanwhile, our moderator Occular Malice took an interest in the story and went ahead and made postings on some of the games' discussion forums to alert users to Shattered Mind's findings. However, literally the day after I got my ban removed, Occular alerted me that Ginard had placed that many bans[imgur.com] on Occular for his forum posting that it triggered an automated Steam Community Ban on his account (redacted Occular's email).[imgur.com]

Thankfully, this was just a 1 day temporary ban as it was the first one that had been triggered for Occular, however, I did advise him to contact Steam Support about it anyway, as I was aware when I got a community ban, that they do stack up and each time one gets triggered, it will extend the duration each time, leading up to a permanent ban. Think of it a bit like a strike system.

Occular did exactly this, and thankfully, Steam support did rule in his favour[imgur.com] and clarified that, while the ban had expired by this point, they agreed that the bans weren't justified and that it wouldn't reflect negatively on his account when it came to any ban stacks in the future.

Occular thankfully does have his community posting privileges back and has been reinstated as a moderator on our group (as if you receive a community ban, you get temporarily hidden from all community groups you're in.) I am pleased Steam did agree with Occular, however, I have to admit I am disappointed that Support haven't taken tighter action on this developer. At the bare minimum, they have been shown to be aware they are abusing their ban system, have been manipulating reviews, and they have also been potentially alerted they have stolen games. And yet, Steam are still doing business with him.


Ginard has expressed outright contempt towards his critics. He has levied personal attacks against members of the Steam community, including myself. He was responsible for my moderator Occular eating a community wide ban that even Steam agreed was unjustified. He has spammed the Steam store with both asset flips and stolen games from other developers that put in hard work and Ginard came along, put some tacky AI artwork alongside the game and then called it a day while he is still currently receiving payments off the back of them. He has manipulated reviews to trick the consumer, and really is someone that I'd think Valve should have enforced tighter restrictions on by now.

For the time being though, please do share the word about this developer. Do not endorse his games: they are not his. He has attempted to hide behind alter egos, conceal his involvement, censor his critics, attack community members and attempted to trick you: the consumer. I'll be making sure to tag all of Hard Shark Games' titles on our Steam curator along with asset flip listings where appropriate.

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