'Extinction: Just another game on steam' - Sir-Crow (RHSOTD #1)

This story is a problem that some of the steam players/users encounter. An unknown game which sometimes occur and it can be a prank or just a 'curse'. Who knows?

Here it goes:

A few days ago I downloaded a game from Steam called 'extinction'. It was free, and there were no other players or reviews, even though it had somehow been greenlit despite this. Even stranger, there was a lack of any game description, screenshots, or even an icon for the game listing. I decided to play it. I figured I might be able to help out the developer by making YouTube videos about it or even help them further improve the game.

After downloading it, the first thing I had noticed is that there was no description whatsoever of the game in my steam library, which had treated it as a non-steam application. Secondly, the icon was a 50x50 mess of red scribbles. Oddly though, even with this lazy icon, the developer had still thought to make its background transparent.

Clicking play, I waited for it to load as my screen instantly phased to black. I waited for a good five minutes of empty, black screen before ending the task. You would think it would have ended there, and I would not have discovered the game's... anomalous properties, shall we say.

After telling a friend about the game, and asking him whether or not he could get it to work, he decided to give it a go. He said he was playing it, so I requested to watch, but this only resulted in a multicolored mess of pixels. (If I find time I will upload screenshots.)

The funny thing is, he quit the game only a few minutes after playing it. Here is the dialog that follows: (Misspellings are intentional, this is exactly what the chat read.)

Me: that was short

Friend: game

Me: eh?

Friend: th e game

Me: what about the game

Friend: not right

Me: whats not right

Friend: the game

Me: what are you even talking about

Friend: extinction

Me: yeah thats what its called, what are you trying to say

Friend: it doesnt feel right

Me: what?

Friend: its not a game

Me: then what is it

Friend: i don't know

Me: can you describe what happened?

Friend: nothing happened

Me: then whats the big deal

Friend: i cant describe it. maybe i'm just mental but after playing it i felt

Me: what

Me: you felt what

Me: ?

Me: you there?

Friend: felt

Friend: violated

Me: um...?

Friend: dont know why

Me: in what way were you violated lol

Friend: i feel sick

Me: ok

(Friend goes offline)

At this point, I was genuinely baffled. What had happened? Was it related to the game, or was he just trying to scare or mess with me? Determined to get this damn game working, I tried running it as an administrator, running it in a compatibility mode for my operating system, and even tried windowing it. Still, no luck with any of these.

After this, I decided to uninstall it, which only took thirty seconds or so, as the game had a very small file size, about 500mb or something. Then, opening a game I play often (which I will not name for legal reasons) the screen turned black. But instead of loading, it was still black, just like the extinction game.

Closing it the same way I closed extinction, (via task manager) I started another game, only to experience the same result. I then opened my browser, which ran fine. Perhaps I had some kind of virus that only affected steam games? Maybe it was that extinction program.

In any case, I needed to find out. Searching for 'extinction steam', I found lots of results, but none matching what I was looking for, even after looking thoroughly over at least fifteen pages of results. Another strange thing is that I never found the listing for extinction on Steam with my browser.

Getting what can only be described as a very unnerving feeling, I opened my Steam window, and searched 'extinction'... only to find that it was gone. The store listing had vanished. How? I have no idea. It was simply gone. Having had enough of this nonsense, I restarted Steam. Once restarted, I clicked my games library.

Extinction was there. I have no idea how it got back there, as I never reinstalled it, and the store listing was gone. At this point I was very unnerved, and practically writhing in my chair trying to figure out whether or not I should open it. I did.

I usually have my recording software open almost all the time because I have been thinking of starting a gaming channel on YouTube, thus explaining why images even exist at all.

The next part is hard to recall, but I'll try my best. The screen went to black, but then I saw in dark gray text 'game start' followed by 'good luck'. Next, 'LOAD' in large, bright red letters flashed briefly on the screen. What comes next hurts me to describe.

The screen went totally black, and then it flashed through panels of what appeared to be harshly scribbled words, although the panels went very quickly, and were barely visible, so I could not make them out. Lastly, two bright red dots with streaks running down towards the bottom of the screen appeared, and soon followed the words, 'are you having fun yet?'

My speakers emitted a horrific screeching sound, and I winced as the pixelated, ms-paint drawn "eyes" stared at me. The entire time, I was unable to access the task manager, shut down my monitor, or turn off my computer. I slammed the screen downwards, and after a few minutes of sitting in my dark room and trying desperately to calm myself down, I slowly lifted the monitor and peeked under, which prompted a huge sigh of relief as I saw my steam library.

As much as it hurt me to do so, I closed Steam and made a copy of the game as well as all of it's files, then moved them to a small USB stick, which I have in my desk drawer. God forbid I ever need them. I proceeded to uninstall it from my computer's hard disk, and after restarting multiple times it has yet to appear again.

My recording software captured the incident, but I cut it down to a few random frames. You can look at the images if you'd like. I haven't bothered to edit them to see what the game was trying to tell me, and I never will. http://imgur.com/a/Hz8XX

I don't know what it was about that game, but as soon as the whole ordeal was over, I knew exactly what my friend meant. Something wasn't right about that. It wasn't some random, unfinished slideshow, let alone a game. It was something more. Something I just can't describe. Something that shouldn't exist.

A few months after this incident, I've felt paranoid and sick. I had to quit my job because I have felt like whatever was in that game was always following me, never letting me out of it's sight. It's not getting any better.