Steam Hosted Malware Game that Stole $32,000 from a Cancer Patient Live on Stream
Scammers stole the crypto from a Latvian streamer battling cancer and the wider security community rallied to make him whole.
Paywalled article, not using 404media again.
Also, the $32k stolen was in crypto and not physical money I think? So I don't think if anyone has the game installed that their bank account is in danger. But change passwords just to be safe.
It is just their anti-AI thing, not a paywall. 404 are good journalists that published tonnes of great stories.
And if you have crypto on your PC, make sure it's stored safely, with encryption, as well as a cold storage backup somewhere else.
The article says he is a pump.fun streamer. That's not even real crypto. It's literally a pump and dump website where anyone can make a new fake token by giving it a name and a picture. Then the price is set algorithmically until it gets enough people buying it that it converts into a real token. There are no fundamentals or differentiating factors between the tokens. It's all a scam built upon the greater fool theory. At least different crypto currencies have different attributes and reasons to use them over others.
You wouldn't want cold storage of any tokens on that site since they'll be worthless the next day.
But, tbf, I don't know if it was pump.fun slop that was stolen or a real crypto currency.
sounds like using crypto is a huge contributor to even being affected here. Maybe next time, an ETF might be more lucrative in the long run (can't crypto-steal that) and more secure...
Can someone pleae tell me the name of the game so I can be sure I don't have it
Plavnieks had installed a game called BlockBlasters, a 2D platformer listed on Steam that launched July 31, 2025 to a small audience who’d given it positive reviews. But the game was a scam and an August patch injected malware into the game that was meant to scan a user’s hard drive for data and, ultimately, their crypto. BlockBlasters is no longer listed on Steam and has been flagged as malicious by the independent Steam archiving site SteamDB. Valve did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.
There you are.
I remember this game being promoted by a gaming article that popped up in my news feeds a few months ago. Beware of free games. Not saying they're all scams but it's worth your time to vet the authenticity. What are their motivations? What's their development history? How do they intend to make money? And if they don't intend to make money and it's not FOSS, what's in it for them? Steam charges a fee for publishing before you've even made a dime, so free games cost the developer more than just their development effort.