• A free to play survival game downloaded around 800 times was found to be full of malware.
• Steam contacted infected users, warning them that their systems were compromised.
• One user found that the game tried to execute a trojan on their PC.

At least 800 people downloaded a free to play survival game on Steam called PirateFi, which was later discovered to be full of viruses. The game looked like any of the countless open world survival-crafting indie games on Valve’s marketplace, but the company revealed that the game’s developers had used it to transmit “suspected malware.”

According to XDA, Valve only managed to discover the hidden danger of the game and removed it from Steam four days after it first launched on the platform. The company then began sending emails to users that had downloaded the game.

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

“We are contacting because you recently launched PirateFi on Steam. The Steam account of the developer for this game uploaded builds to Steam that contained suspected malware,” these emails read.

“You played PirateFi on Steam while these builds were active so it is likely that these malicious files launched on your computer.”

Valve recommended that players run anti-virus scans on their machines and even consider doing a reformatting of their operating systems if they had installed and run the game.

According to its Steam page before it was pulled from the marketplace, the game’s description read, “Step into PirateFi, a survival game where the open sea is your playground. Whether you’re braving the adventure solo or teaming up with others in multiplayer, there’s always something to discover. Master the art of fishing to keep your crew fed. Explore what PirateFi has to offer.”

It is the only game from “Seaworth Interactive” on Steam. No other information is known about the developers, but it is being considered that it was always meant to be method to infect people’s PCs with malware by a hacker group.

Per XDA, a user reported that attempting to launch the game prompted their antivirus software to flag it as “Trojan.Win32.Lazzzy.gen.” When the user attempted to open the game’s files they received the message “Steam – Hardware Error: Steam has detected a potential hardware failure that may impact game performance. Please check your system settings”.

While not the first time malware was uploaded to the Steam marketplace, it’s still worrisome that it took Valve four days to identify an issue. However, seeing that Steam has nearly 90 000 individual pieces of software available on its storefront, it is likely extremely difficult to police every single title, especially tiny, seemingly unimportant indie games like PirateFi.

With Steam often hosting sales for cheap titles and sometimes boosting free to play games, shoppers should always at do a little bit of research before downloading any product from the store.