It's certainly been a busy few days in the aftermath of our latest article. For those who missed it, I'd recommend giving it a read first , because this is going to be a direct follow-up covering ArtD...

Ladies and gents, I come before you once again to blabber on a bit about review manipulation. Not the Obzor kind this time , we're going a bit more old school with this one: the old-fashioned bribing ...

For many PC players, modding is one of the best things about the platform. Mods can fix problems developers never addressed, restore cut content, introduce entirely new mechanics and extend the life o...

Hey there, everybody! Just over two months later, my extensive work contract has now come to an end - and we should be back to business as usual! It’s been great to see the activity that has continued...

Intro Hey folks, SirViolentDeath here with a short article while our fearless leader, Mellow, is busy reorganizing his tea collection. This week I wanted to talk about Valve’s Steam Store tags, since ...

Hi all! This is just a quick announcement to say that I’m going to be stepping away for a short while. For those who don’t know, my day job is freelance media work, and I’ve got a very intensive coupl...

Back in March 2025, we published an article on Hard Shark Games , the current alias of Johnny Ginard, a developer we had previously covered in 2021 . At the time, the situation was already extreme: do...

NukeArts have now formally responded to the EUIPO challenge against their “ Hidden Cats ” trademark application. This response marks the next stage in what is now a live dispute over whether the term ...

Today, I can confirm that a third-party observation has been received and logged by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) in relation to the “ Hidden Cats ” trademark application by ...

The Sentinels of the Store is a group founded on the core values of transparency, fairness, and consumer protection. Our journey began when we saw the urgent need to address the growing concerns withi...

Hey folks, SirViolentDeath here with another article while Mellow is out harvesting tea. This week, I want to continue talking about some of the changes Valve has made , focusing on the user review sy...

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As some of you may be aware, back in August 2025 we published a couple of articles covering the fallout between Steam & major payment processors including Paypal, Visa & Mastercard. For those ...

Asset flips are something we cover quite a lot on the curator, but not as much in our articles - and there’s a reason for that. Most cases are straightforward. “This game is a Unity template.” “This g...

“ Hidden Cats ” is a micro-genre within the broader hidden object (HOG) space: illustrated puzzle games where players search detailed scenes to find concealed cats. Over the past several years, multip...

Steam is under mainstream scrutiny this week following a detailed report in The Guardian titled “‘ This shouldn’t be normal’: developers speak out about bigotry on Steam, the world’s biggest PC gaming...

First of all, apologies for my absence the last few weeks - work was hectic and I was briefly out of action with chicken pox. Back to business as usual now. Almost two years ago, Atomic Fabrik was rem...

Yesterday, a large batch of nearly 100 games were removed from Steam. This followed an exchange of information between ourselves and Steam regarding Obzor and review manipulation activity on the platf...

We’re pleased to officially welcome Summit Reviews into the Sentinel Network. Summit Reviews are an independent, international collective of experienced writers known for their professional, in-depth ...

Today, Sentinels of the Store turns 9 years old. Nine years ago, on January 17th 2017, I made the decision to create this group. The world was very different back then. Steam was very different. I was...

Hi all, First of all, a quick apology in advance: there are going to be a few announcements going up this week. The first landed yesterday with our latest podcast episode , where we discussed a range ...

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2026 marks our ninth year as a community. A year where we hope to continue growing, strengthening our work, and advancing consumer awareness on Steam. But it is also the year we are committing to tack...

Looking back on 2025, what stands out isn’t a single defining moment - it’s how often the same questions had to be answered again and again. This was a year spent circling trust: how it’s earned, how ...

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We’ve had a particularly interesting couple weeks of delisted releases on Steam - especially given that a significant number of them have been high-profile releases. While it's not uncommon to see gam...

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On Sunday, November 23rd at 11pm GMT, Mellow, Ratchet and SirViolentDeath of Sentinels of the Store will be doing a live Q&A in addition to their podcast discussions. The live stream will be done in ...

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Self Proclaimed Video Game Pundit and Computer Nerd. She/her pronouns.

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The Sentinels of the Store is a group founded on the core values of transparency, fairness, and consumer protection. Our journey began when we saw the urgent need to address the growing concerns withi...

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In a piece I wrote a couple of days ago (which you may have missed because Steam’s automated systems temporarily flagged it), we discussed a growing problem: developers revoking legitimately purchased...

https://techraptor.net/gaming/guides/steamwatch-steam-key-revoking-system-is-problem Back in 2019, I wrote a TechRaptor piece warning that Steam’s key-revocation system was wide open to abuse - that b...

What is your opinion? Vote now: Cancer Research - Cancer prevention, treatment, and research, Alzheimer's Society - Support and research for people affected by dementia, Crohn’s & Co

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Scarface: The World is Yours - a classic licensed game which is held in high regard was going to be unauthorisedly released onto Steam. There's been a lot of buzz over the last couple of days, at leas...

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Hey folks! SirViolentDeath here with another intermittent article while our fearless leader Mellow is out on a tea run. Back in 2019, I wrote a retrospective on the changes Valve had made back in 2017...