Hundreds upon hundreds of games were suddenly and mysteriously pulled from Steam last night. Roughly 980 games and soundtracks were taken off of Valve's digital storefront last night. The company behind nearly all of the games involved was allegedly "abusing" its Steamworks dev tools.
PC Gamer first noticed that hundreds of games just started to vanish from Steam last night. None of the offending games could be considered mainstream titles, although some had existed on storefront for months and years, and had won a decent amount of positive reviews from users.
According to Alexandra Frock on Twitter, a "good chunk" of the games that were pulled can be traced back to Dagestan Technology - a Russian publisher that apparently operates on Steam under a "large number" of different names. The publisher's Steam Curator page had listed 48 games and four DLC packs just days ago. It's now completely empty.
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It's not immediately obvious how all of the company's games are linked, but PC Gamer noted Dagestan seemed to be connected to an awful lot of the banned titles. While Dagestan seems to be one of the main publishers involved with this unexpected Steam purge, Valve did later clarify in a statement that its mass-bans were enforced thanks to the actions of multiple publishers, and not just that one company.
"We recently discovered a handful of partners that were abusing some Steamworks tools," Valve explained. "We emailed all the affected partners."
Some initially speculated that the purge had something to do with Valve clearing the decks ahead of the rumoured Steam Autumn Sale, although Valve's spokesperson was also quick to shoot this unlikely possibility down.
It's currently unclear whether the affected games will ever return to Steam, or if the publishers and partners contacted by Valve will be allowed to continue working with and putting out games on the digital storefront.
Featured Image Credit: Valve