Steam Free Game 100 Percent Off, but You Don't Have Forever

Gotta admit, this is probably the weirdest way I’ve ever started an article but here we go: there’s a game on Steam right now that’s free until September… and I don’t think you should add it to your library.

Whenever I write these free games articles for Steam titles, I try to leave the decision of redeeming it up to the reader.

I’ll tell you if I think it sucks or if it looks pretty or whatever, but beyond that, I simply give you the link and let you make up your own mind.

Today, however, I think this Steam title is kind of icky, and that’s entirely the fault of the developer.

The game in question is called Hardest, a deck building roguelike game from developer and publisher Rakuel.

It looks… fine. It’s clearly got some huge Yu-Gi-Oh inspiration, which should be a huge plus in my book, but the issue is that the artwork in the game is very, very clearly AI-generated.

It also appears to be ripping off actual Yu-Gi-Oh cards for said artwork, so less of a case of it being an inspiration and more of a case of it being a literal source.

Also, something about the dev behind this game is just rubbing me the wrong way. First up, he gave his own game a positive review on Steam, and even labelled it a “5/5” in said review. Ok. Sure. Pretty sure Valve won’t be too happy with that but, whatever.

Secondly, that news post on the Steam page for Hardest is just embarrassing. The dev calls Google “nazis” for not allowing his game on the Google Play store, and then states that the reason he’s going to start charging 25 dollars for the game in September is because it’s “morally superior because it benefits the whole ecosystem”.

That’s just after he states that he was going to add microtransactions to his AI-slop Yu-Gi-Oh ripoff, until Google denied his appeal to add it to the Google Play storefront.

Look, there’s a bunch of great free games on Steam. I’ll include a list after this paragraph with a slew of great options. Maybe try those instead of wasting your time on this ego-fueled ripoff.