Another Malicious Game Found on Steam

Last month, Valve removed the game PirateFi from Steam after it was found to contain malware. Now, users have found another game in the store that bypassed Steam's rules and redirected players to a third-party site to download a demo version containing an infostealer.

According to the British publication TheGamer , the attention of Reddit users was drawn to the strange behavior of the game Sniper: Phantom's Resolution.

Technically, this game isn't out yet, its Steam page states that it's scheduled for release in Q2 2025. However, it appears that the game doesn't exist at all and the Steam page is just a decoy, as the promotional materials are clearly copied from other games.

The first to point out the problem was a user named Feral_Wasp, who noticed that although the game is unavailable on Steam, its store page contains a direct link to a half-empty and highly suspicious website. On this website, the player can allegedly download a demo version of Sniper: Phantom's Resolution, after which something nasty is installed on the victim's computer.

An analysis of the "beta" files by user meantbent3 showed that the malware gains administrator privileges on the infected machine, bypasses the Windows credential encryption system, and steals information from the victim's computer.

At the same time, the malware is poorly detected by the security solutions presented on VirusTotal.

Meantbent3 notes that anyone who downloaded this "beta" version would be better off deleting all the files it created and then changing the passwords for all existing accounts.

Another Reddit user, Erroredv1, reported that a fake beta version of Sniper: Phantom's Resolution is causing Firefox to consume around 10GB of RAM for some unknown reason.

There is currently a warning on the Steam page stating that "Sniper: Phantom's Resolution is no longer available on the Steam store."

Valve representatives have not yet given any official comments on this situation.