Steam game accused of mining cryptocurrency
A game published on Steam has been accused of mining cryptocurrency without user consent, Eurogamer reported.
The game is called Abstractism and presents itself as a minimalist platformer title. Reports from users that they had been scammed by the developer and that the game contained a virus resulted in critic SidAlpha investigating.
SidAlpha’s investigation revealed that the anti-virus warnings which pop up when Abstractism is launched is likely due to cryptojacking malware.
This is corroborated by the game’s developer, Okalo Union, encouraging players to keep the game running for extended periods to receive item drops – with the likelihood of receiving rarer items increasing the longer you leave the game running.
Okalo Union attempted to explain reports of the game consuming a large portion of CPU and graphics processing power by saying it happens when players use Abstractism’s “high graphics settings”.
However, a screenshot of an earlier post on its Steam page shows the developer admitting that Abstractism mines Monero.
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