I don’t need to explain the review system on Steam to anyone here reading this article, but in case I do, here is the briefest of summaries. Underneath every Steam game is a section dedicated to user reviews. Under each review is a section where Steam users can respond to a review, letting the rest of the community know if they found it helpful, which is where our story begins today.
Usually, this review system works out great. Users can reward reviews with various awards for being helpful, funny, or just a waste of time. The idea behind this system is that if enough users vote that reviews aren’t beneficial, then the user who wrote the review can find their ability to post restricted, helping to make a more pleasant and accurate review space.
However, it has been revealed that over 2,439 people who labelled a negative review of Warlander as helpful have found themselves in deep water with the Steam overloads.
Now for those who don’t know the game, Warlander is a free-to-play multiplayer hacking, slashing, and magicking game and like other online games, it makes use of anti-cheat software, in this case, Sentry Anti-Cheat, and as with many other games that use similar software, some players hate it.
One such player, a Steam user named FREEDOMS117, posted a negative review earlier this year, calling the anti-cheat system suspicious and claiming that it stays on your machine long after the game has been closed.
In their review, FREEDOMS117 then explained how to uninstall Sentry Anti-Cheat completely, including instructions on removing anything still left in your registry, and 2,439 promptly reacted to this review labelling it as helpful and pushing it to the top of the game’s most helpful review tag.
That was until a few days ago when Steam banned the review for violating the Terms of Service. Moreover, FREEDOMS117’s Steam account was restricted for 30 days, locking them out of all Steam community features. This restriction included everyone who gave the original review a thumbs up.
Since the news of this mass restriction started leaking out onto the internet, Steam has walked back on their decision and removed all restrictions of parties involved stating they mistook the original review as instructions on how to avoid anti-cheat software:
“Our moderators watch for content that describes how to cheat or describes how to tamper with anti-cheat systems. Those are against our rules, and it looks like that is what our moderation team incorrectly identified with this case, leading to the banned review. I agree with your evaluation that this review does not fit that criteria.
Furthermore, the mod identified this review as potentially dangerous to other players due to some of the steps requiring registry edits. This led to the additional lock that was placed on your account and voter accounts. I can see that your review does not contain phishing links, attempts to scam or deceive players, or anything else that warrants a lock.”
Warlander also posted a support article saying Sentry Anti-Cheat had a bug where Sentry fails to unregister the icon displayed in the task tray when Sentry Anti-Cheat Task Tray closes, which leaves the icon displayed and makes it appear that Sentry is still running. They also wrote that Sentry Anti-Cheat did not collect any personal information, as Sentry Anti-Cheat does not need to handle any personal information and included their own instructions on how to uninstall it.