The indie idle game Task Bar Hero, which launched on May 27, exploded onto Steam charts and hit a concurrent-user peak of 526,596 last Sunday — topping Apex Legends and Marvel Rivals in raw numbers. Much of that surge came from a marketplace mechanic that lets players sell loot for real money (this feature was disabled for a week after launch).
Trouble followed quickly. Steam reviews slid into “mixed” as players reported a mix of bugs and lost progress, heavy-handed data collection, and an anti-cheat system that has been banning legitimate Steam accounts. Frustration has been loud and widespread; some of the complaints accuse the devs (abbr.) of overreaching with telemetry and of relying on an anti-cheat that misidentifies clean profiles.
Today’s patch pushes a server migration aimed at relieving extreme overload. The studio warned that running the old client may now cause irreversible item loss, and the provider switch could cut off or degrade connections for players in certain regions, e.g., Russia. As part of anti-cheat measures, the game now auto-deletes anomalous items by checking them against the Steam DB. The update also moved portions of player data to the developers’ servers, so users must re-accept the data-collection agreement.
Practical changes rolled out with the patch: the Steam Marketplace was temporarily disabled; hourly login queues were introduced during peak times; every player chest was moved into mail; and several accessory-drop bugs on Nightmare and Hell difficulties were patched. The net effect is a mix of fixes and new friction points — some necessary to keep servers running, others raising fresh concerns about data handling and account safety.