PSA: Check if your game is being sold by this developer

[Archeia]

Recently, it has come to my attention that a developer called Garnudo Games is either selling or rereleasing old rpg maker games in steam. One of my friends, @OceansDream 's game was even included in it. Check if your game included in it and ask for a DMCA takedown. https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Garnudo Games

 

[Poryg]

That's funny. The person doesn't even check the legality of such games. He resells or publishes even games with ripped resources.

 

[Otto]

Can't tell if it's sheer genious or plain stupidity

 

[Poryg]

It's on steam, where he has to pay the $100 steam direct fee for every game. The amount of published games suggests that this person just has too much money.

 

[Shaz]

The person doesn't even check the legality of such games. He resells or publishes even games with ripped resources.

If he's going to steal other people's games and sell them, I doubt he cares much whether the resources were ripped or not.

 

[Tuomo L]

None of my games are stolen.


You should report this person to Steam directly, they will ban him and his games.

 

[Storyteller-Hero]

It's on steam, where he has to pay the $100 steam direct fee for every game. The amount of published games suggests that this person just has too much money.

Half of those games are still waiting approval or were posted recently. If the user gets a permanent ban, which seems likely, those fees are likely never going to be made back, assuming I correctly understand how it works.

 

[Kyuukon]

Emh... that doesn't seem like a good business strategy from his part lol.

 

[dragoonwys]

From what I can tell, this guy might be an asset flipper. A number of these games feel very--- unity asset store placeholder-ish too, but I can't be sure till I find the packs.

Edit: I looked at some of their older games and there are comments where people pointed out that it is indeed an asset flip with links to the actual packs. This guy is doing no good from the start.

 

[bgillisp]

Someone should mention this one to sidalpha, it would be a good one for his dirty devs series on youtube.

 

[Traverse]

Check out those prices. $0.99. Talk about undercutting the market.

He'd need to sell exactly 101 copies of every game just to make back the Direct fee (even without considering other costs). Guy might've thinking nobody would pick up on this for a long time if ever since so many of the games are old and obscure, but even so 100 copies for old games like these would likely take months to shift.

Either that or this is some journalist/activist trying to probe the Direct system and find out how much oversight there is and/or easy it is to screw with.

 

[Poryg]

Actually, more than 101 copies. Steam takes a cut of the profits, some say it's at 30%. If that'd be the case, he'd need 132 copies at least to cover the costs. Which is now more difficult than ever on Steam due to the influx of crappy games. Also, it's not necessary to probe the Steam direct system, since it's been known for some time that Steam will let out any game where you pay the $100 Direct fee without any background check.

 

[Traverse]

Well, to be fair, if he somehow sells 1000 copies of a game ($1000 worth of the game), he gets back the initial $100 fee on it, so he could also have been banking on them somehow staying up uncontested long enough for it to happen. Probably would need a year+ for it, which is a long time to not get caught but nobody said he was smart.

Steam has also recently been copping a bunch of flack for being too hands-off and lassez faire in their management. I think even the developer of one RMMV game who has an account on here (Yitzi, the dev of Nepenthe) got on record in a Polygon article saying how unimpressed he was with Steam's support. So I think the current climate would probably make it good clickbait if someone were to run a sudden shock article about how Steam lets random people sell pirated games that they don't own, so long as they get paid their $100.

There's probably people with enough of a grudge against Valve to spend $3000+ to set the whole thing up.

 

[Jomarcenter]

Either that or this is some journalist/activist trying to probe the Direct system and find out how much oversight there is and/or easy it is to screw with.

Highly unlikely since we got mutiple case of those all the time.

 

[Traverse]

Highly unlikely since we got mutiple case of those all the time.

If there has been any case where somebody has taken 30+ games from different people all at the same time to try and sell on Steam, I haven't heard of it yet. Big bundles of asset-flips, yes (usually linked to trading card abuse) and one or two full games getting plagiarized. But not 30+ full games all at once.

This one is the first one on this scale that I have heard of.

 

[Amane Kagari]

This guy's the 99 cents guy. Wow.......

Check out those prices. $0.99. Talk about undercutting the market.
Either that or this is some journalist/activist trying to probe the Direct system and find out how much oversight there is and/or easy it is to screw with.

This guy sounds like a troll rather than some "journalist/activists". I mean trolls these days would go to any lengths to get a few "kicks" even ripping people off and stealing things then reselling them for low low low price.

Either that or this guy is one of those "price avengers" thinks he's some sort of Robin Hood. I've seen a ton of these guys on Steam. Some of these guys even made it to the top of "new releases" (probably from fake buys (it does happen even on steam.) to bump themselves up to get attention). These guys may also be bots used for the internet version of smurfing (basically multiple fakes selling stolen stuff for low prices but all link to one person and/or group). Bots can be sophisticated enough to pass security sweeps even on Steam (Steam's kinda lax to certain people.). These guys definitely ain't dumb. Vigilance is the only way to stop these guys. (Report and spread the news! Hopefully Steam will crackdown on these folks.) It's a pain in the neck. You see one ban and dozens others come out to do it again. To be honest, I'm really tired of seeing these bs. Anyways, I'll try to be on the lookout as well and if I see something familiar, I'll try to report if that helps.

 

[XIIIthHarbinger]

& here I was looking for a place to post a thread to sound the alarm, & it turns out it's already been sounded.

Looks like he is up to thirty four games thus far, largely a collection of unity asset flips & RPG Maker projects made by other creators. At a rather impressive rate.

He has actually already been reported to Steam, but Steam hasn't taken any action, against him as a user/developer, nor against even the games where the original creator has spoken up.

Update:

Haven't been able to track the actual user yet, they don't have an actual developer page, were smart enough not to interact or post any content on any of the community forums of their game, or on their store pages. Also there doesn't appear to be any linked social media accounts to this Garnudo Games, no real surprise there really.

They've apparently been reported multiple times, two Steam Curators have already covered that he is an asset flipper, fake developer, etcetera, links below.

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/27507830-Sentinels-of-the-Store/

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/18710490-The-Trash-Pit/

Profit doesn't seem to be his actual motive though, as he is apparently giving away Steam Keys to users by the literal thousands for his flipped & pirated resources, on a website called the gamecode.com. Links below.

https://gamecode.win/

Given the number of games released & the time table involved, i.e. thirty four games or $3,400 US in a little over thirty days; coupled with giving away Steam Keys by the thousands I believe malice/mischief is far more likely to be his goal. Specifically, someone who is bored & can afford to throw away literal thousands of dollars for no other reason than presumably the amusement value from the consternation it will cause others.

I suspect that if you find your game posted up on Steam, you'll also find it on the other usual sites. However, I haven't been able to confirm that, because he doesn't appear to be using the title Garnudo Games on sites like Itch.io or Gamejolt.

However, I also haven't run through Garnudo Games' Steam "title catalog" on the other usual sites to see what comes up if anything.

 

[Amane Kagari]

Profit doesn't seem to be his actual motive though, as he is apparently giving away Steam Keys to users by the literal thousands for his flipped & pirated resources, on a website called the gamecode.com. Links below.

https://gamecode.win/

Oh wait. I saw this guy before. This guy I think was on youtube and a few places (I believe he had a Twitch account before somebody got him banned.) a few times he posted with a different site with similar names and designs that claims to have given "free steam codes" but if you do try to click on it, you actually have to pay for it with "offers" (those that steals your info but leaves you with nothing.). He even got a few of his friends to troll post to convince people to go to his site. He got suspended (I believe both by the host of his websites and youtube) and came back over and over. Steam just appears to be his latest ploy to scam people. When I go there and saw those "free codes" click bait and the design, it was a tell-tale sign that this guy's pretty familiar. And I believe that he does have some copycats copying his schemes too or it could be his backups. Apparently people tried to sound the alarm to his schemes but he manage to either use fake accounts or "friends" (maybe a few people he paid? I won't speculate but I'm guessing it's that.) to drown out the complaints with good compliments. I'm not sure if he does that in Steam also. Yeah, hope Steam can also get rid of this guy too. It looks like he's running out of places to post and he's desperate now.

I knew this guy sounded a bit familiar. But this guy.... First he was "giving out" other game codes (for "free" game cash and items) now he's going for actual game thievery. He's seriously this desperate.

 

[Slam Entertainment]

I reactivated my old account to post this.

MusicalAntiHero did a video on the incident, Link is below:

However, I have compiled a list of RPG Maker games that this developer claimed to have made. I will need your help in identifying the original authors of the work. The completed list will be forwarded around my circles and posted on my blog.

Prison Break RPG

Island Sky RPG

Stationary

Lost and Found RPG

Sunshine RPG

The Blight

Three Treason Theories RPG

Shadows Light RPG

Slimes RPG

Orpheus

That is 11 additional RPGs that I can tell at first glance are RPG Maker in nature. The 13th RPG I have identified as non-RPG Maker, BUT Mellow_Online1 of Sentinels of the Store has identified that it is indeed an asset flip.

 

[Caitlin]

I found a YOUTUBE video with the same video as PRISON BREAK RPG and have confirmed that it is the same game. Here's the video and link: The site is Game Top and found that it is listed on https://rpgmaker.net/games/3686/ The owner and creator is railgun545

Island Sky RPG is by Ocean

Stationary is by Ionacer

Lost and Found RPG can be found on THIS website: https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/lost-found.16851/

Couldn't find SUNSHINE RPG

The Blight again was found on RPGMaker.net https://rpgmaker.net/games/4788/ by Monkeydesu

Three Treason Theories was another one that I couldn't locate

Shadows Light RPG was another one that I couldn't locate

Slimes RPG was too generic to locate as slimes are every where. lol

Orpheus was located on RPGMaker.net https://rpgmaker.net/games/4890/ and created by Almagesto

It seems that a vast majority of these games were found on RPGMaker.net with the exception of one being found on this site. I couldn't locate a couple of them, but I hope that other people recognize them, so we can figure out what belongs to who.