Watch Paint Dry. With a title like that you know it's going to be a tense and exciting experience. It's creator, Ruby Nealon, described the game as "a sports-puzzle game that evolves around one mysterious cutscene. Bringing in innovative gameplay and requiring high attention to detail, Watch Paint Dry is a must play for anyone who enjoys mystery ARG type games."
Of course, Watch Paint Dry isn't a real game, it is in fact a parody of sorts, a construct designed to illustrate a security loophole on Steam after Nealon tried telling Valve about the gap in its systems, but went ignored.
"The Steamworks website is majorly AJAX. All the code for the Javascript functions that powers the source is not obfuscated and readable by anyone (authenticated into Steamworks at least)," Nealon explained. "There's some interesting code, but as this game was a proof-of-concept, I stuck to what was relevant and found an interesting javascript function called 'ReleaseGame(appid, data)'. This seemed to make a typical AJAX request (though there wasn't any authentication in it) to Steam and seems to, as it says, release the app."
While it wasn't an entirely straightforward process, it was still relatively simple to get Watch Paint Dry onto Steam, all things considered. Nealon wasn't able to use the ID number assigned to the game, instead having to use a "sessionid" used when getting trading cards approved for the joke title.
"I will admit that it appearing straight away in the new releases section was an oversight on my part. I initially wanted it to have 'Coming April 1st' and not show up until Friday (though I wouldn't have expected it to last that long). I will also admit I was very tempted to try and see how far along releasing it I could get, but I think it's for the best that the app is not listed for sale."
Nealon has since been in touch with Valve, Watch Paint Dry has been removed from Steam (although you can see it here in all its glory), and the loophole that it revealed has been closed. Still, we're keeping our fingers crossed that it might potentially return one day, because who doesn't like patiently watching and waiting for paint to dry...