Earlier this year, a game onSteamwas infected with malware, putting users' personal information at risk. It happened again with a different game a month later, and now, for the third time in five months, it has happened again.
The distribution of malicious malware via early access title Chemia was discovered bythreat intelligence company Proactive Defense Against Future Threats (Prodaft). According to Prodaft, a cybercriminal who goes by EncryptHub (but is also known as Larva-208),infected Chemia with malicious files on July 28, 2025.That means if you downloaded and played the game between then and now, not only is there a chance yourPChas been infected with malware, but it almost certainly has.
Chemia has been removed from Steam, and even though we really shouldn’t have to say it, please don’t go looking for it until it has been confirmed that this issue has been resolved.
A third Steam game has been infected with very malicious malware
If you have played or downloaded Chemia, your PC needs a serious scrubbing
This latest malware infection is arguably even worse thanthe Sniper: Phantom’s Resolution one that happened in March. The prior problem required players to click a link to a “demo” that instead guided them away from Steam to a malware download. In Chemia’s case, an aptly-named Trojan downloader has been added to the game files, meaning it downloads onto your PC right alongside the game.
EncryptHub’s downloaders infect PCs with three types of malware (thanks,Malwarebytes). Vidar which accesses your social platforms to access details and data, HijackLoader, which can upload even more malware to your PC, and The Fickle, which can steal sensitive files and access cryptocurrency wallets. Needless to say, if you have downloaded Chemia, even if it was before the malware issues became a problem on July 22, you’re going to want to take some precautions immediately.
Steam users will be wondering how this keeps happening, and the simple answer is that those distributing the malware in an attempt to steal your details are creating new software and coming up with new ideas all the time. Ideas that, in cases like this, likely can’t be dealt with until they have been used for the first time, by which point someone will already be hard at work looking for the next cracks to slip between.
This just adds to what has been a rough couple of weeks for Steam.The storefront was forced to quickly cave to pressure and remove a lot of games with adult themesearlier this month. A campaign group known as Collective Shout is behind the demands, lobbying payment processors to force Steam to remove games with certain themes.itch.io has also been drastically affected by the campaign.
