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Valve finally has removed from Steam there demos stealing of the game of superman by Tyson Butler-Boschma, putting an end to what was in effect a scam towards unaware users.
If you want to try it, the demo (which is more to be considered a prototype) remains available on itch.io, where you can download it for free, as always desired by the author.
Original news:
Fraudsters have stolen a demo of a hypothetical game Superman made by Tyson Butler-Boschma with theUnreal Engine 5 putting it up for sale on Steam for around €10, without Valve doing anything to block them. The author is waging a one-man battle to get the fake game removed from sale, but for now he’s still there. It has been since 1 November 2022, to be precise, i.e. for fourteen days.
Of course we won’t provide you with links to the game, as we don’t want to support anything like this, worse than piracy itself, but it’s amazing that Valve hasn’t done anything about it yet.
There demos it was uploaded to itch.io, where it still resides and is free for anyone to download. Tyson simply wanted anyone to be able to try it, given the general interest. But someone must have sensed the deal and reloaded the demo on Steam, putting it up for sale in his name.
Tyson filed a DMCA with Steam on November 7, 2022, but Gabe Newell’s company has not yet responded. To make matters worse, the scammers took to sending Tyson violent and abusive messages, bombing his DCMA YouTube channel. The scammers claim that Tyson worked for them and that he wanted to keep the game to himself. But Tyson never demanded money for the demo and even now he simply wants people not to be scammed into paying for something he made that is available for free.
At present the real problem is that Tyson can not challenge the DMCA, unless you provide your personal data to YouTube and scammers. Basically, asserting his rights would be equivalent to providing not only name and surname, but also address and telephone number to those people, with all the possible repercussions of the case.
For those who were wondering, Tyson proved to be the author of the demo, showing the data of the downloads from itch.io and other elements that ascertain it beyond any doubt.
Meanwhile scammers are actively removing comments from the game’s page to continue selling it.
It remains a mystery why Valve has not yet intervened (we have already said it, but it is better to repeat it), given that verifying Tyson’s words is really very easy. Indeed, it is not clear how he allowed the sale of a demo of Superman without being presented with any license.
