“We have sometimes been conducting our business with practices people may call shady,” says fake game publisher whose Steam games got nuked

By Sherif Saed

The developer whose games were removed from Steam for being nothing more than asset flips, says its reputation was “destroyed beyond repair”.

Silicon Echo, the studio responsible for over a hundred of shovelware, asset flips, and other low-effort releases, had its games removed from Steam in a big swoop last week. Since then, Valve has terminated its relationship with the studio.

The company was not totally happy with this decision, mostly because of the way Valve handled it. A representative of Silicon Echo’s told Polygon that the move has destroyed the company.

“The only information we have been given is that our games were consistently at the top of user reported titles primarily for practices that are deceptive to the customers,” the rep said. “This did not fully explain the reason for complete account and business termination, so naturally we sent an email to Valve politely asking some additional questions.”

In the email, Silicon Echo explained that it’s not the same company as Zonitron Productions – the other developer whose games also got removed in the same crackdown. According to the publisher, the two companies are “connected in some ways” but are “completely separate”. Although Zonitron Productions got a warning before the removal, Silicon Echo claims it did not.

“We are no heroes, we have indeed sometimes been conducting our business with some practices people may call shady,” Silicon Echo said.

“For example, creating more developer names even though they were on the same account and listed under the same publisher. This was done primarily for easier statistical tracking as we did not believe it to be a problem since all the games were publicly listed under the same publisher and there was no deception included.”

The publisher added that the games’ removal has “completely destroyed everything we have been working for in the past three years”.

“We are forced to give up game development at this point for more than [sic] one reason. Mainly because our reputation is destroyed beyond repair, but also for financial reasons. We wish we have been warned about this before, in that case we would focus on a different business plan of development.”