A free-to-play title called PirateFi was released with little fanfare on Steam earlier this month. But the only reason many players will ever hear about it is because the game has been pulled from the platform for spreading malicious malware to unsuspecting gamers who downloaded it.
As reported by PC Magazine, Valve has been notifying players who downloaded PirateFi about the takedown. In the screenshot reproduced below from SteamDB, Valve encourages PirateFi players to run a full-system scan with anti-virus software. The company also suggests considering a full reformat of players’ operating system in order to remove any malicious programs that may linger.
A game called PirateFi released on Steam last week and it contained malware. Valve have removed the game two days ago.
Users that played the game have received the following email: pic.twitter.com/B98BFs0WbK— SteamDB (@SteamDB) February 12, 2025
It’s unclear how many players’ computers were infected by PirateFi. Although SteamDB only lists five players at PirateFi’s peak, users on Steam’s board indicated that the game wouldn’t launch. If that’s the case, then most of those users wouldn’t show up as active players on SteamDB. PC Magazine notes that there was a job offer on Telegram for an in-game chat moderator for PirateFi, and the user who shared that story believes that the game developer’s account was run by an AI program.
Steam recently released a survey that revealed almost half of Steam’s users are still using Windows 10 despite the operating system’s impending support shutdown this fall. Additionally, it appears that Valve has banned games on Steam that force users to watch ads to play them.