Allegedly, over 40,000 players are playing the 62-year-old game “Spacewar” on Steam, but this is used to disguise software piracy.
What kind of game is it? Spacewar is one of the first video games ever developed, alongside “Tennis for Two,” and was released in 1962 – even 10 years before “Pong,” the first commercially successful video game.
Spacewar is a multiplayer game where two players control two spaceships and orbit a star. This star has its own gravitational pull, so players must try to avoid crashing into the celestial body. The first one to crash loses.
Additionally, Spacewar is used as a demo application in Steam’s API (Application Programming Interface), which is why a fully functional version of the game is available for free to every Steam user.
Using Spacewar, developers who want to publish a game on Steam can test various APIs and Steamworks features. This includes features like voice chat and game search, as well as leaderboards, statistics, and achievements (via steamgames.com).
However, if you want to play Spacewar yourself, you won’t find it simply in the Steam store. It doesn’t exist there.
To install Spacewar, you need to type “run” (without quotes) into the Windows search bar. A new window will open, where you enter “steam://run/480” (again without quotes) and then confirm with “ok.”
Then Steam will ask you in a familiar installation window whether you want to install Spacewar. You can confidently confirm that.
Spacewar is used as a mirage to deceive Steam
What does this have to do with pirates? Spacewar had an average of 41,903 players on Steam over the past 30 days. The peak number of concurrently active players during this period even reached 102,634 (via Steamcharts). Hence, Spacewar would be played by more players on Steam than Destiny 2, DayZ, or Overwatch 2.
You can probably guess that not really nearly 42,000 players are actively playing a 62-year-old game or developers testing voice chat or similar. Spacewar is actually used by pirates as a cover.
What role does Spacewar play for pirates? Steam checks ownership rights to a game using a DRM wrapper and verifies that you have indeed purchased the license to play. This ensures the proper execution of Steamworks features by requiring Steam to be started before launching the game.
This prevents you from simply installing a game from a friend’s external hard drive and then being able to play it on your PC (via steamgames.com).
Pirates therefore want to prevent Steam from starting when launching a game. The “problem” is that they can usually only play these games offline. However, this doesn’t benefit them much if they’re targeting multiplayer games like Call of Duty or GTA Online.
Now Spacewar comes into play. Since every Steam user can play Spacewar and it has access to all Steamworks features as a demo application, it serves as the perfect cover for pirates to play online games while utilizing all online functions. The pirates thus deceive Steam into believing that their illegal copy of a game is instead Spacewar.
So if you see a friend playing Spacewar on Steam, there are three possibilities for what he is actually doing:
- he is playing a 62-year-old game
- he is a game developer testing a feature
- he is a pirate concealing his activities
The developers of a surprise hit on Steam even showed understanding for pirates in December 2023, but with one request: Those who enjoy the game should buy it at a later date once they have the financial means. You can read the full story here: Couple lands hit on Steam, allows players to download their game illegally
