Steam has removed a large number of games from a variety of genres, but they all seem to have one thing in common. This may seem like a bit of a nasty designation, but we've all seen the types of things this ban wave has targeted: very basic asset-flipping titles with popular words in their names, such as "Zombie Defense TD" and "Play Football", They are just trying to make a few pennies off the unsuspecting.

This has been a problem ever since Valve opened up Steam and will continue to be. For developers and players alike, Steam's biggest problem these days is discoverability, and massive amounts of shovelware is a big part of that. The latest wave of bans seems to have removed a total of 90 games (SteamDb's tracker of removed apps, available via Discord), but that's still a drop in the ocean.

Not all of these titles were removed for the same reason; it is unlikely that 3D Pacman was an official Namco Bandai title (it is surprising that it was an official Namco Bandai title in the first place), and it appears that Flappy Bird was also removed.

It seems that not only the game itself, but also most of the developer accounts involved have been banned. This is obviously a good thing for the wider ecosystem. Obviously everyone has to start somewhere, and developers who learn on the job often create games in an established style, using readily available assets. But most developers don't try to sell such poorly made games, and the fact that Steam puts a veneer of legitimacy on even the most dreary-looking titles means that players have no doubt been duped into buying such titles in the past.

It is clear that something is going on behind the scenes at Steam right now. This wave of banning has been a while since the last ban, and follows Valve's beginning to take a harder look at games that use AI-created assets on Steam (this is not an all-out ban, as has been widely reported). There have been major changes recently as well, with many new features added (some of which could be exploited by clever counterstrike players and easily won).