Alien Food Frenzy Launches on Steam, Doesn’t Include Game File

It seems like you can’t go more than a month without Steam revealing more and more about its broken approval process for games. Now the botched release of Alien Food Frenzy drives the point home once more.

As we know, all it takes to get a game published on steam is 100 dollars and an upload. This clandestine system brought us the release of Gay World, a homophobic game that mocks the struggles of LGBT people forced to go through conversion therapy by trivializing and flipping the script. By the way, Gay World is still on the store. It even received a new mod that let players murder feminists, trans people, and anyone affiliated with left wing politics. Thankfully the mod was removed. Still, it appears that no humans inspect the product before it goes live on the storefront.

What’s going on this time? Well, there was a game published to the Steam marketplace called Alien Food Frenzy. Technically, there was nothing wrong with the actual content of the game, mostly because the game file wasn’t actually included.

Steam user, penguinz0 from YouTube, discovered that when the game is launched Steam informs players that the game is missing its executable. Basically the file (labeled .exe) which is the actual software itself wasn’t included in the download. The game didn’t include the game.

Somewhat of an Oversight

Upon discovering this penquinz0 called the developer out about it on the forums. Their question was quickly deleted and the game updated to include the missing file. Problem solved, but how did this happen in the first place?

 

The issue isn’t so much with the developer as it is with Steam. The platform is known for having little to no human interaction during the approval and publishing process on its storefront. Now, it appears they don’t have much on the automatic end either.

If the Steam app is able to detect that a game is missing its executable why wouldn’t it mention this to the devs when they published it? Maybe they felt it was too obvious  a safeguard to include? All we can say for sure is that it’s entirely possible to publish and sell a game on Steam without including a game.

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Nichole Johnson

Hello, I’m Nichole and I’m a 27 year old transgender woman. I’ve been gaming since I was 8 years old and currently have every major platform. You can find me on Xbox One, PS4, and the Nintendo Switch. I love co-op, souls-likes, roguelikes, action, and rpg games. I play a large variety of games though and I’m playing something different every week, it’d be easier to list the genres I don’t like. Despite my experience and work I consider myself more of a casual gamer because I feel the definition of hardcore gamer has changed over the past couple of years. If you want to watch me play stuff live you can find me on Twitch as QueenHellcat.

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