Nothing To See Here: Another Indie Meltdown

Darkbase 01 is a shooter developed by Nothing To See Here. Well, not really, it’s developed by Solar Storm Studio, a single person studio located in Trinidad & Tobago if his various profiles are to be believed. The game currently has 73 reviews and a 21% approval rating, slightly skewed since many of the positive reviews are blatant sarcasm. In the short time I’ve been writing this piece and checking up on sources, its store page has been removed.

Solar Storm Studio joins the growing list of indie devs who we have become all too familiar on Steam: Releasing low quality games that receive poor reviews, and then melt down and throw vitriol at the customer. Before the game was unlisted, all media had been removed (along with reference to the developer) except for the above image, accusing the Steam community of turning “to shit on ALL sides.”

If you visit the developer’s website, a message has been posted on the front page detailing the game’s removal:

I’ve made the decision to start shutting down my game, DarkBase 01. Throughout the 2 years of this ordeal. I’ve learned one important thing – the gaming community has allot of growing up to do if they are ever to be taken seriously by the rest of the world. I’ve never witnessed such a vile and childish community of people – and if that’s the way that they want to be – then so be it.

I’m in my 40’s and I simply have no time for childish behaviour – so I’m putting the gaming community behind me – and frankly, it’s getting boring. All I see now is drama and more drama – like a bloddy soap opera. I’m back in the graphic design community – where more mature people reside – and this is where I’ll stay from here onward.

You can read my column on Steam’s refund policy here, but I’ll sum it up once again. Valve has effectively killed the shovelware market on Steam, both in terms of visibility and in the ability to make a buck off of impulse buyers with no recourse. This kind of response is exactly what you can expect from an entity backed into a corner with no way out.