A game called 'Cyberprank 2069' was removed from Steam

(Image credit: Cyberpath)

Cyberprank 2069 (formerly known as Cyberpunk 2069) was a real game you could buy on Steam up until a couple of days ago. Its original store description summed it up like so: "This is a new generation RPG game. True simulation of life in the world of the future. In 2069, people will be enslaved by a race of intelligent computers. Now it is cyberghetto. The main character is a cop from the past. His task is to become the most wealthy resident of the city of the future."

There are plenty of cheap-looking neon aesthetic games on Steam, but what got Cyberprank 2069 in trouble is that, after changing the store description a few times, developer Cyberpath settled on this:

(Image credit: Steam)

Which sure makes it sound like an attempt to bribe people into writing Steam reviews for a chance to win a collector's edition of Cyberpunk 2077. Obviously, that's against Steam's policies even without the suggestion that everybody who bought this game for $US10 was going to get a free copy of Cyberpunk 2077 for Christmas.

Do we need to point out that's pretty unlikely? That's pretty unlikely.

Cyberprank 2069 has since been removed from Steam, but players who did buy it are reporting that the executable keeps running even after the game is closed, perhaps in an attempt to artificially inflate playtime past the two-hour refund window.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.