Steam users were surprised to see a game called "Watch Paint Dry" make it to Steam's home page with a description which suggested that the game was really about nothing more but watching paint dry.
Unsurprisingly, Valve fans backlashed against the company and accused it of compromising its quality control standards and endangering the entire Steam platform by endorsing subpar games for whatever hidden agenda they had. But the truth is, the game never made it through Steam's review process.
The game was actually made as a prank with an ulterior motive of revealing vulnerabilities in Steam's review process which allowed any registered developer to submit his game and move it through the review process with some minor hacks without it ever getting past a single Valve employee.
The game – and the prank – were done by Ruby Nealon who worked with Valve to close the loopholes he used before narrating the whole story in a blog post on Medium.com.
"This is no more than a prank and was merely to test something I’ve been trying to report to Valve for the past few months — the ability to get any game you want on Steam, without Valve ever even having a look at it," said Ruby before confirming that he has worked with Valve to close the vulnerability before revealing how he did it. "This is an already outdated guide as Valve have fixed these issues, but if you were to travel back in time then this is a definitive guide on how to release your game!"
VIA: Medium
