How a Scam Publisher Stole a Video Game

On February 20, 2025, solo developer Steekrill Studio announced the release of their game The Backrooms 1998 on the PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo game stores. That same day, the game was officially released on Steam, having been in Steam Early Access since early 2022.

However, fans almost immediately noticed a problem.

The game resembled another title, Backrooms Horror Escape, which first appeared on non-Steam platforms months before Steelkrill’s version. A week after publishing the game, Steelkrill took to X and Reddit to explain the situation.

According to Steelkrill, during the game’s development, a “sketchy” publisher approached him, offering to port the game to non-Steam platforms. He declined their offer, but shortly after, Backrooms Horror Escape appeared on the platforms and was credited to “COOL DEVS S.R.L.” as both the publisher and the developer.

Steelkrill filed a DMCA notice with all three platforms. The game was quickly removed from the Xbox and PlayStation stores, but not Nintendo’s.

In an update published last week, Steelkrill said he received an email from COOL DEVS and they claimed that they had made a “mistake.” The game has been removed from the Nintendo shop. However, it is unclear if COOL DEVS removed it or Nintendo themselves.

The situation is a nightmare for any developer, especially a small developer. However, it points to a more significant issue with the video game industry.

What (Likely) Happened

Steelkrill, for his part, is declining to point any fingers. He is primarily happy that the stolen game is not available.

But this raises a simple question: What happened?

From a technical standpoint, Steelkrill and others believe that the scammers used a program to decompile the game’s code and then take the assets to create a version for the other platforms.

This is likely exactly what happened. Because of this, Steelkrill is encouraging developers to use the IL2CPP scripting backend to make it more difficult for others to decompile the work cleanly.

However, there is another element that isn’t as frequently discussed. The Backrooms is not a concept that is unique to Steelkrill’s work. It’s a meme that began to gain popularity on 4chan in 2019. The idea focuses on unsettling rooms that are otherwise normal.

The meme has become fodder for many video games, including the best-known title, Escape the Backrooms. According to SteamDB, there are over 400 titles with the word “backrooms” in the title.

This made it much easier for the scam versions to remain unnoticed for months. With so many titles in this genre, it’s incredible that anyone discovered the similarities at all.

However, this doesn’t let the marketplaces off the hook, particularly Nintendo.

An Marketplace Problem

The video game industry has changed a great deal over the past 25 years. It has transitioned from primarily selling physical copies to online marketplaces such as Steam and the Epic Store. All the major consoles have their own digital marketplaces.

This has greatly lowered the cost of publishing games and has been a boon for independent developers.

However, the move to digital has also enabled a dearth of shady practices. For example, “asset flips,” low-quality games cobbled together with store-bought assets, often try to deceive customers.

But the problems go beyond quality control. As this case shows, it’s easy for developers to publish stolen assets or even stolen games.

Marketplaces need to foresee this kind of abuse and draft their policies accordingly. They need to protect both creators and customers from bad actors.

To that end, both the PlayStation and Xbox stores reacted quickly. Nintendo, however, did not. I can understand being careful with these issues. For example, the Dark and Darker case showcased how complicated copyright disputes can be in video game development.

But this isn’t a complicated case. The timeline of Steelkrill’s work and the images provided make it very clear what happened. There was a plenty of evidence to quickly remove the infringing game pending further investigation.

Though the story appears to be concluded for now, there are still unanswered questions. What happens to the customers who unknowingly bought infringing copies of the game? What happens to the money COOL DEVS received? Will the stores ban COOL DEVS? If so, how will they enforce that ban?

They are difficult questions that we are not likely to get answers for.

Bottom Line

While it’s easy to single out Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo here, these are issues that face every digital marketplace. Amazon has a problem with plagiarized books, Etsy with infringing storefronts and eBay with counterfeit items.

Allowing smaller sellers on large platforms is, for the most part, a boon for small creators. However, it also welcomes undesirable and infringing content and marketplaces have struggled to address those issues.

In this case, Steelkrill’s advice is pretty solid. Step one is taking technical measures to make your game more challenging to decompile. But step two would be ensuring that your game stands out and isn’t entering a crowded niche.

Scammers always thrive in crowded niches. Not only can their actions go unnoticed, but there are more eyes that they can get on their product.

Scammers are going to chase the same trends as legitimate creators, so finding a way to have your legitimate product stand out is a high priority.