Indie Game, Abstractism Gets Removed From Gaming Platform On Accusations Of Cryptojacking.

As per Motherboard’s reporting, Steam game, Abstractism has officially been removed from a gaming platform due to strong allegations that the game illegally mined crypto by compromising users’ computers. According to the report, the developer was also banned from the platform.

An investigation was underway as many users were quick to report random occurrences of a setup file that contained Trojan viruses and malware, which were hidden under “steam.exe.” It turns out that the game was used as a way to mine Monero by tainting one’s computer.

Abstractism was first launched on March 15, by the combined efforts of developer, Okalo Union and publisher dead.team. The duo has previously advised users on how games should be played, with many of their advises being rather unusual. An example that was shared via Coin Telegraph noted that the team told gamers that they should not quit the game even when they are not tending to it. Apparently, this was encouraged because of the possible incentives that were awaiting such users.

A particular user, along with several gamers were quick to realize that two in-game items had the same name, which was shared as part of “Team Fortress 2”. Because gamers are attracted to such rare items, the crypto miners must have assumed that individuals will be willing to pay high rates. Eventually, one will realize that the purchase made was in fact useless to Team Fortress 2.

A said YouTuber, SidAlpha decided to test the claims made by downloading and installing the game. Turns out, upon testing the system, he was struck with a message that stated the existence of a Trojan virus. Other users were quick to note the unusual resource consumption, especially that of GPU and CPU.

The Abstractism team have challenged the accusations made, through a statement that made it seem like the fault might be on the gamers’ side. In particular, they said:

“Probably you are playing on high graphic settings, because they take a bit of CPU and GPU power, required for post-processing effects rendering.”

In response to this explanation, a YouTube follower, Matheus Muller noted that the resource consumption had nothing to do with “graphical rendering”, as the problem at hand continues even when the game is not active.

Another user called out Okalo Union by calling the developers statement,

“Bull Sh*t”. Furthermore, the user seems to be distressed with their crypto-mining hack and expressed immense disgust in their actions, as such viruses have been embedded “knowingly, [which] screwed them [users] over for monetary gain.”

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