Scam patterns among Steam curators
I read the latest posts of the 1,179 Steam curators with 200 or more followers. 17% of them show three or more points of warning signs for key reselling. Here is what the signs look like across all of them. No curator is named on this page.
How often each sign shows up
Share of the 1,179 curators that trip each sign. One sign means little; an honest curator can trip one. Several together is the pattern resellers leave. Signs in red count double in their strong form.
Follower jumps and logged-key outcomes need history that started on Oct 31, 2026; they'll fill in over the coming weeks. What each sign means.
Follower quality
Steam's directory data says how many of a curator's followers it rates "high value". It doesn't say how it decides, but bought and bot accounts don't make the cut. Among the 712 curators with 1,000 or more followers, the middle of the pack sits around 50% to 59%. 251 (35%) are under 30%, and 159 are under 10%.
Show the numbers
| High-value share | Curators |
|---|---|
| 0% to 9% | 159 |
| 10% to 19% | 61 |
| 20% to 29% | 31 |
| 30% to 39% | 48 |
| 40% to 49% | 40 |
| 50% to 59% | 25 |
| 60% to 69% | 56 |
| 70% to 79% | 71 |
| 80% to 89% | 79 |
| 90% to 99% | 142 |
Warning signs by follower count
Curator Connect puts the biggest curators first. The share with several signs is highest among curators with 10,000 to 99,999 followers: 39%, against 3% for the smallest. Bought followers make a page look bigger, so the middle-sized pages are where they pile up.
Rings
134 curators with mostly low-value followers recommended 8 or more of the same games on the same days as at least one other curator. Press outlets share three to five same-day reviews because of embargoes. Eight or more, again and again, looks like one operator running several pages. The chart counts curators by the size of the group they post with.
Method
A crawler reads Steam's public curator directory daily and the latest 100 posts of every curator with 200 or more followers. Signs are computed from that data with fixed rules; the rules are on the warning signs page and in the open on every curator profile. They are guesses. Read a few of a curator's reviews before you decide. More on the method.
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Pick games like yours. The ones with several signs are hidden.
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