Gamers Alarmed by Appearance of ‘Shrek 5’ in Their Steam Libraries

Imagine, if you will, that you open your Steam library to browse for a game to pique your interest when you spot something new and unusual. It’s not a game you remember buying, and it doesn’t have a store page either. The name of the game is Shrek 5.

Over the past year, Steam users have been spotting an apparent Shrek 5 game in their libraries. To be clear, there is no Shrek 5 movie, nor is there a licensed video game for that nonexistent movie. In fact, if you search on Steam for “Shrek,” there are no results whatsoever.

If this mystery has afflicted you, worry not. As noted in this sadly underwatched YouTube video from July 2021, Shrek 5 used to be a game called Scram, an online, multiplayer first person shooter that has seemingly been abandoned.

As WulfFy explains in the video, developers on Steam have the ability to change the name of their games, and at one point, the developers of Scram changed all of the information about Scram to be Shrek related. Obviously, they also did not have the rights to use Shrek or Shrek’s likeness, and the developers were banned from Steam before they were able to change anything back. According to WulfFy,  If you do open the game, it displays a fullscreen picture of Shrek and starts playing “All Star” by Smash Mouth.

Checking out the Scram subreddit shows that the community fell apart sometime two years ago. As you scroll down the page, posts asking about the state of the game—or why you were banned from the Scram Discord—become increasingly common. It looks like the player base was just as confused as everyone else when this game suddenly became Shrek 5 about a year ago. Also, apparently, at some point the subreddit was covered in gay porn.

It’s unlikely that Shrek 5 will ever turn back into Scram after a year, and being a multiplayer game, even if you could play there would probably not be anyone to play with. At least, rest assured knowing that you never accidentally bought a Shrek game, and also that if you ever want to look at a picture of Shrek while listening to “All Star” you know where to go.