Windows Central Insider
Steam's Workshop feature, a community-driven platform for sharing custom-made game content across thousands of games and apps, was reportedly hijacked by attackers and may still be used to spread malware to PC gamers.
According to cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, Wallpaper Engine had been specifically targeted, as live background wallpaper packages infected with harmful code can lead to "a stolen Steam account or leave the victim’s system infected with backdoors or crypto miners."
Thankfully, Kaspersky states that Steam's tech team has "already scrubbed the identified malicious wallpapers and links from the platform", but warns that the platform may still inadvertently share similar examples in the future, recommending that you keep an active antivirus service (via Tech Radar).
Kaspersky has been investigating this malware and has discovered that this activity has been occurring since at least December 2025. What's more, most of the targets appear to be based in China and Russia, and malware-infected wallpapers have been downloaded tens of thousands of times.
We discovered dozens of these malicious application wallpapers floating around Steam Workshop, and each one had already been downloaded thousands – or even tens of thousands – of times.
Kaspersky
Wallpaper Engine remains one of the most popular and long-standing apps on Steam, with an active Workshop community, and it maintains "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews and tens of thousands of active users. It allows users to create and share custom, animated wallpapers for their PCs. As long as you only install items from users you trust and maintain healthy antivirus practices, you should be fine.
Do you use Wallpaper Engine? Have you, or has anyone you know, been a victim of these malware attacks? Let me know through the poll below, the comments section, or our Reddit community.
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