Abstractism Game Allegedly Turns Customer PCs into Zombie Cryptocurrency Miners

cageymaru

cageymaru

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The game Abstractism, as sold on the Steam Store, has been accused by paying customers of turning their PCs into cryptocurrency miners. In this post, a customer asks the Steam community about Malwarebytes detecting the game as containing a virus and the developer chimes in to say,"These applications (steamservice.exe and abstractismlauncher.exe) are game launchers, that Abstractism need to drop items."
In a Steam Store post the developer explains the item drops and why you have to play a minimum of 38.5 hours a week to receive all the drops. This is to allegedly keep customers running the cryptocurrency miner for long periods of time. In this video all the semantics of how the scam works including how the company created fake Team Fortress 2 (TF2) items which allegedly fooled a Steam trader are exposed. Is it time for Valve to hire more quality control members to police the store?

Notes: Abstractism Launcher and Abstractism Inventory Service are not Bitcoin miner (and are not Monero miner too, honestly). These apps are required to connect to the Steam and grant items to your inventory. You also can run game without item drops and inventory service, just go to the Abstractism folder (*Your Steam Directory*\steamapps\common\Abstractism) and run Abstractism.exe. Game now will be started without Steam services.
 
Bitcoin miner (and are not Monero miner too, honestly).
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They seem to be very specific with their wording here. Why not say "they're not cryptominers." Which is what people are accusing them of?

Essentially, they're denying mining Bitcoin/Monero, but not specifically denying mining other crypto.
 
Well if they simply provided a description how it it worked then all would be fine and dandy and users can decide whether it's something they want to support or not but trying to cover it up is wrong IMO.
 
Minimum of 38.5 hrs/wk of playing time to receive full drops? Sounds like a full time job rather then a game. Heck, even a nominal 40 hr/wk job in the US only calls for 37.5 hrs of work due to 2.5 hrs/wk of required breaks.
 
Dead Parrot said:
Minimum of 38.5 hrs/wk of playing time to receive full drops? Sounds like a full time job rather then a game. Heck, even a nominal 40 hr/wk job in the US only calls for 37.5 hrs of work due to 2.5 hrs/wk of required breaks.
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Sounds like a lot of the "F2P" games out there that are actually P2W, sure you might get by without paying as long as you grind a lot, basically a job worth of time grinding just to keep up.
 
Spidey329 said:
They seem to be very specific with their wording here. Why not say "they're not cryptominers." Which is what people are accusing them of?

Essentially, they're denying mining Bitcoin/Monero, but not specifically denying mining other crypto.
Click to expand...
Noticed that, too. They're trying to weasel themselves out since normies equate Bitcoin to all cryptocurrencies. But there are probably hundreds of cryptocurrencies out there now.
 
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