$999 for 10 minutes of just writing your name on a wall: An absurd game is currently sparking debate on Steam.
All kinds of weird stuff pops up on Steam every week, but rarely does any of it charge so much money for so little asCongratulations On Your Purchase. The title costs $1,000, lasts—if we’re being generous—about ten minutes, and there’s absolutely no gameplay in the traditional sense.
Behind the game are the studio Minimum Viable Prestige and the publisher Worth It Studio, who have been offering their work in the store since May 28, 2026. On the German Steam page, it’s priced at 858 euros.
But no matter how you look at it: For the price of a decent backlog of games that would last for years, you’re being served quite a sham here.
What you get for almost $1,000
The developers make no secret of the content: You enter a palace, walk down a red carpet, get stared at by hideously ugly NPCs behind barriers, and get to write your name on a wall at the end. Everyone who buys the game after you will see it. The whole thing is over in ten minutes at the latest.
As a reward, you’ll receive a single achievement with the message that you now belong—adorned with the number 999.
The store description reads like a mix of an art project and a slap in the face: “The price is not a mistake. It’s the point,” it says in true ChatGPT style. Elsewhere, the developers calmly explain that whether the whole thing is worth its nearly $1,000 is a question that can’t be answered philosophically—after all, value is a construct and prices are arbitrary anyway.
Almost funny: The minimum system requirements list a GTX 1060. For a quick stroll through the simplest 3D graphics, that’s about as necessary as a Porsche for a trip to the bakery around the corner. Incidentally, according to the developers, the artwork on the store page also comes from generative AI tools.
Shouldn’t Valve just ban something like this?
Obvious question, short answer: Valve doesn’t have to do anything at all—yet. Steam has no price cap, and there’s no rule against an absurdly high price. The company has not yet commented on the case.
Steam provides its actual protection elsewhere anyway:Anyone who has played a game for less than two hours and purchased it less than 14 days ago gets their money back. With a playtime of ten minutes, the refund should be a mere formality.
But that’s exactly where the rub lies:What’s being sold here as a “luxury experience” is a half-hearted asset flip cobbled together with a few clicks—and the math behind it is likely pretty simple. All it takes is for a few people to buy it on a whim or to show off, and then forget to request a refund—or for something to go wrong during the refund process—and the creators have already made a profit.
The fact that the whole thing is presented as a pseudo-philosophical art experiment, with a store description that sounds like it was cobbled together by a chatbot in five minutes, doesn’t make the scam any more appealing.
And it’s unclear whether anyone even dared to buy it: According to SteamDB, player numbers are approaching zero, with an all-time high of one player. Of course, that could just as easily have been the developer himself.
This scam isn’t exactly new anyway: Back in 2008, a developer sold an app called “I Am Rich” for $1,000 on the Apple App Store—an app that did nothing more than display a red gem. Apple pulled it from the store after just a few purchases. It remains to be seen whether Valve will take the same approach this time or simply let this expensive stunt slide.
What do you think: a clever commentary on our society or just a cheeky attempt to fleece a few suckers out of their money? And should Valve put a stop to such “games”? Feel free to let us know in the comments.
