11 Bit Studios believes that most key requests come from resellers.

Frostpunk developer 11 Bit Studios says it has stopped providing game keys to Steam Curators primarily due to the risk of resellers masquerading as reviewers, echoing a recent wave of complaints about key extortion on Valve’s platform.

“Starting today we won’t be granting game keys to Steam curators,” the studio said in a tweet.

“Based on our and other devs’ experiences, most of the requests come from fake accounts used to gather and resell the keys and the published reviews don’t seem to bring any value for the community anyway. Apparently, those issues have caught [Valve’s] attention so hopefully we’ll be able to see some improvements to the curator feature soon,” they added.

11 Bit Studios is the maker of This War of Mine and the publisher of other indie hits such as Children of Morta and Moonlighter, so its stance here carries some weight. However, several users – including some other game developers – pointed out that Steam’s Curator Connect feature allows developers to give trusted curators direct access to games rather than giving them keys that need to be activated and can then be resold. This system can better filter out resellers, although Steam only allows up to 100 copies to be shared in this way.

“We know it,” said Wujek Grga, the studio’s head of PR, in response. “But it was easy to send them the old-school way. Not working anymore though.”

The comments from 11 Bit Studios come in the wake of a recent wave of bans allegedly targeting key resellers by another indie studio, Brok the InvestiGator developer Cowcat.

Source: Twitter

Starting today we won’t be granting game keys to Steam curators. Based on our and other devs' experiences, most of the requests come from fake accounts used to gather and resell the keys and the published reviews don't seem to bring any value for the community anyway.

— 11 bit studios (@11bitstudios) September 2, 2022

Sure thing, we know it. But it was easy to send them the old-school way. Not working anymore tho.

— Wujek Grga but you can call me Wujek Grga (@Wujek_Grga) September 2, 2022