Steam's most prolific hater has reviewed nearly 20,000 games

No one knows who Obey The Fist is. The account has no publicly viewable information, or other known accounts or websites tied to the username. Anything with a potential paper trail, like old Reddit accounts, has been wiped from the internet. Multiple developers claim that, whenever they try to learn anything about the account, Obey the Fist accuses them of being a stalker. There are only theories about Obey The Fist.

“I suspect that this person is a failed indie developer. They seem very bitter against indie games and indie developers,” says Danielle Pond, a developer who works at a studio focused on puzzle adventure games. When Pond became aware of OTF, the account only had 10,000 reviews to its name. Out of all of those, OTF dramatically proclaimed Pond's game was the worst one they had ever played.

Despite their apprehension about having a digital footprint, as you read this, OTF may well be putting together another review for public consumption. According to a lengthy manifesto pinned on OTF’s Steam profile, the negative reviews are an attempt to fight back against low-effort video games “slapped together” with stock assets. OTF champions themselves as a warrior for PC gamers who have spent thousands on a gaming rig only to be met with games that are an affront to their tech specs. "Most people will agree 90% of anything is crud. The same most certainly is going to be true for books in libraries, YouTube videos, reality TV shows... or video games on Steam," says OTF's profile essay.

It sounds like a noble mandate, until you read what OTF actually writes. The account thrashes games made in Godot, an engine niche enough to give credence to Pond’s speculation about OTF’s potential past as a developer. Mostly, though, readers might note a predilection for visual polish. After years of reviews, the account has gained a reputation for disliking 2D games. Obey the Fist does write about popular games made by name-brand studios – out of thousands of negative reviews, it’s a positive Hollow Knight one that OTF highlights on their profile. But by and large, it’s indie developers who end up the subject of OTF’s missives.

With a focus on smaller games made with fewer resources, Obey the Fist’s body of work almost seems justified. Many games that OTF has reviewed do arguably look bad, or are obvious asset flips made by AI-wielding vibe coders. But given the sheer number of lengthy reviews, some can’t help but doubt OTF’s sincerity.

“He couldn't make it more obvious that he didn't even play my game,” one miffed game developer wrote on a thread discussing Obey the Fist. Like many observers, the developer’s assumption is that whoever is behind the OTF account is a man. But no one can say for certain.

“When I offered to help him play the game/correct the misinformation on his review, he simply quoted that I was ‘breaking Steam's ToS for responding to a review as a developer,’” the developer continued.

Obey the Fist’s obsession with indies makes a collision course inevitable. Fifteen days into 2026, 493 games have already been published on Valve's storefront, according to stat tracker SteamDB. That’s about 32 games each day, in a month that’s notoriously slow for significant game releases. Half of all Steam games never get a single review. If you’re the creator of an obscure game that’s barely gotten any traction, you’re definitely going to check out any review. But OTF’s fondness for lengthy and strangely angry evaluations has left many niche developers bewildered. Should they be thankful that their game reached someone at all? Or resentful that a notorious Steam troll is seemingly punching down for clout?

It’s easy to tell someone who has put creative work in the court of public opinion to grow a thicker skin. But if game developers have a difficult time knowing what to make of Obey The Fist, it’s because the person (or people) behind the account seems to care little about the context surrounding a game. One of their most recent reviews, for example, is a lengthy essay slamming a free-to-play student project. Bizarrely, the epistle begins by condemning the education itself.

“One of the first things students should be taught in game development is that 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid 1990's with dedicated 3D cards like the Voodoo3 and the ATI Rage,” Obey the Fist writes. “But the students were deliberately mistaught that's it's okay to release obsolete 2D games in the 3D era of gaming.”

Then there’s the very real possibility that Obey the Fist isn’t really writing the reviews, at least not entirely. Theoretically, sitting down to play multiple games a day and post about it would take time. Even people who get paid to play video games for a living, like influencers, can’t plow through up to a dozen games a day. No wonder, then, that some game developers are convinced that Obey the Fist is either a bot, or presume that the person or people behind the account uses AI to generate the reviews.

A close read of OTF’s reviews reveals a litany of repeated phrases and writing structures that offer clues to how OTF is reaching such impressive numbers. The account's last few reviews, for example, all contain a paragraph that points out how many concurrent players a game achieved relative to Steam’s 130M+ userbase. In every instance, the paragraph suggests that the game is an utter failure.

Is Obey the Fist using a tool like ChatGPT, then? They certainly seem to copy and paste some sections of their Steam reviews. I put some of OTF’s reviews through AI checkers, and it was a toss-up. Some reviews came back with a 70% chance of being AI-written. On other reviews, the prognosis of online AI tools was that the words it analyzed were absolutely, entirely written by a human.

If an LLM is in the picture somewhere, it hasn’t sanded out the inexplicable fixations that are evident throughout Obey the Fist’s reviews. There’s an irrationality at the core of Obey the Fist’s vendetta that cannot be explained by anything other than human folly. And the more flawed Obey the Fist appears, the harder it is to look away.

In 2023, a developer known as Wilboforce published a free title called Very Scary Backrooms Game on Steam. It was meant to be a parody of horror games that were in vogue at the time, in which empty liminal spaces were made to seem endless and terrifying. The game was a joke, which most reviewers seemed to understand from the jump. Plenty of reviews appreciated Very Scary Backrooms Game for exactly what it was: a quick distraction with humble aspirations. The only person who didn’t seem to get it, or didn’t care, was Obey the Fist. They ripped into the game all the same.

“I was amazed that someone could take my little parody game that seriously,” Wilboforce says. “I think my reaction eventually shifted to, ‘wow, this person has put more effort into this review than I did into the game!’”

Wilboforce tried to take the slam in stride. They’d seen Obey the Fist before, in the stratum of other games’ Steam pages, and were beguiled by the account’s schtick. Despite noticing that Obey the Fist’s account somehow spent an hour in a game that only took 15 minutes to play, the dev responded to the critic cheerfully. Wilboforce informed OTF that they loved what OTF did. Obey the Fist then accused Wilboforce of having main character syndrome.

Much of what we know about Obey the Fist is inscrutable like this. Unlike Very Scary Backrooms Game, many of the titles Obey the Fist examines aren’t free. Presumably, the account holder simply refunds some of the games it tries out, which Steam allows within 14 days if you’ve played a title for less htan two hours. But even so, maintaining the volume OTF does would ostensibly require putting down thousands of dollars. Who would spend so much money just to be mean to games no one has heard of? Surely, someone who is gainfully employed wouldn’t have the time for something like this. Yet the other possibility — that Obey the Fist lives comfortably enough to not have to worry about money — seems just as unlikely.

“There’s still a part of me that believes it’s an elaborate troll, but this would have to be one of the most dedicated trolls of all time,” Wilboforce says. “So I now choose to believe that Obey The Fist is just really, really passionate about preventing people from wasting their time on bad games.”

Wilboforce’s most recent game, the surrealist first-person Moaisland, also drew a harsh review from OTF. Wilboforce doesn’t seem to mind. At one point during the game, players have the chance to pet a feline based on Wilboforce’s actual pet. The cat died a month after Moaisland came out. The developer is just happy to know the memory of their beloved friend remains alive through other people who play the game. Rather than dwelling on OTF’s screed, Wilboforce likes to focus on the reviews that say Moaisland made them smile.

“It’s impossible to focus on any negative reviews if you get even one like that, it’s so heartwarming,” Wilboforce says.

Even as developers grapple with what to do when the eye of Sauron notices their game, others readily wear an Obey The Fist review as a badge of pride.

“If your game has got enough attention that he’s reviewed it, you’ve made it,” says Pond.

Pond doesn't think Obey the Fist actually plays the games they review, and she can’t help but feel that OTF has a strange bias against indie games. But as she’s working on a game titled Beneath a Night Sky, she’s still considering whether she should send Obey the Fist a review code.

“I'll win you over one day, Obey the Fist!” Pond exclaims.