author: Miriam Moszczynska
Steam Guides Turned Into Pathology; Valve Unleashes Banhammer
Guides on Steam are pure chaos. Mixed in with those that have been polished are those that didn't even stand on a shelf with the word „helpful.” Valve reacted and one of the guide scammers was kicked out of the community.
Source: Valve
For some, guides on Steam are not a source of knowledge, but points that can be earned to then used to get rewards. This causes their quality to decline and the content to become nothing more than copy-paste. A perfect example of this evolution can be found at the center of the CSGO community.
How to get the green trust factor?
Browsing through guides for the FPS from Valve, you will find a ton of identical tutorials, which, if they do differ in anything, it's usually icons. Some took advantage of the lack of vigilance of Steam employees, publishing one guide after another and using bots to boost them..
One of the most popular guide creators has just been banned. We are talking about the profile 76561199267921926, whose works can still be found in the community center. Interestingly, his ID is marm0kYT, which could suggest that the account belongs to youtuber Marmok.
Source: Reddit
To be clear - this is not the case. The real account of the creator is Mookki, and the banned user was most likely impersonating him. However, the case went further, because 76561199267921926 was supposed to use bots not only in guides, but also in graphic works that did not belong to him.
In any case, the profile was banned and the guide section in CSGO has now one cheater less.
Are copy-pastes really a problem?
Among the guides, one can, for good measure, distinguish two categories - the one with valuable but copy-pasted content, and the one where the advices are completely useless. According to the players, it is the latter group that is a much bigger problem.
"Yeah, the worst ones are the stupid "How to move forward" or "How to jump" one-liner guides that flood the more popular games. I can't believe that people actually think these are funny/entertaining, it's just the same stupid memes regurgitated over and over," wrote vivisect6.
"You act like this hasn't been a problem since the beginning. That's why I don't use them anymore. Most are either stupid memes like "How to uninstall!!!" or just plain nonsense," wrote PhillySteakAndCheese.
Finally, it is worth noting that guides, for the most part (even if they are only translated), do provide help for new players. What's more, in many cases the guides are well-prepared, and players don't make jokes, the likes of which are mentioned by users.