Following his trial for defamation of the families of the children and school staff killed in the Sandy Hook massacre, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is using Valve Corp.’s Steam, the world’s largest digital distribution platform for PC games, to sell an Infowars-themed video game. Jones claims to have earned hundreds of thousands in revenue from the video game, yet he has refused to pay the Sandy Hook families. Alex Jones: NWO Wars also mirrors and cartoonishly repackages the conspiracy theorist’s regularly violent, hateful rhetoric despite the platform’s policies against hate speech.
Alex Jones got to his position by gaming the advertisement system for self-promotion. I can’t say I’m shocked to see his video game once again exploiting the Steam store’s algorithm, just like he’d gamed the YouTube and Twitter algorithms before.
You’ll see Ann Coulter do the same thing with book sales. Have someone straw-purchase 10,000 copies of “Smelly: The Liberal Campaign To Fart A Lot And How It Is Destroying America”, and rocket to the top of the Best Seller Lists.
I think Regnery Press does that last bit all the time…I don’t know if people that maintain such lists take that kind of thing into account or not. And yeah, I have no trouble believing that Lil Alex found some demon willing to help him game the Steam system.
It takes more work to find out who is purchasing the books, particularly if the publisher includes straw-purchases as part of its marketing strategy and therefore has an incentive to report their number inaccurately.
He’s got enough money to simply do it himself (or outsource the process to professionals). Sort of a priming-the-pump method to marketing. Its very possible that the vig Steam gets from your straw purchases is less than the cost of paying them upfront to advertise your game. Also possible he’s doing both, in which case Steam has a strong economic incentive not to discourage this behavior.
At one time the NY Times bestseller list put this dagger (†) icon at the end of the summary when it happened. That way people in the know would get it was because of bulk sales.
But I think NYT changed how they do their best seller list to be a survey of booksellers, and probably just don’t include bulk sales at all anymore. But I don’t know. But if you see a dagger on a bestseller list, it means shenanigans are afoot. (†)
Don’t under estimate how many conspiracy theorists and conservatives are on Steam. A good portion of my friends list is fractured after 2016 and 2020
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