This was a really stupid idea.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a game that a lot of people want. Do you know what not a lot of people want? A sequel to Master of Disguise. Also Night City; a walking simulator with absolutely no content that costs $10. By the game’s own description you can walk around and inspect some stuff. Take in the atmosphere and wish you were playing a game that had some effort put into it like one of Digital Homicide’s titles.
“Night City” is a walking simulator. You can only walk around the apartment and along the city street, inspect some objects and enjoying the atmosphere of cyberpunk.
But Connor I hear you say, Night City is sitting at a 79% “mostly positive” rating on Steam, you are probably wrong about everything. You might be wondering, how does a game with no content get people so happy? Well the developer Valentine Studios decided to do something really stupid, unethical, and underhanded.
They promised 100 copies of Cyberpunk 2077 to those who bought Night City and here’s the kicker; you had to leave a positive review and you couldn’t refund the game otherwise you were eliminated. Do all of those things and the top 100 reviews will get a copy of Cyberpunk. When? By my estimates, never.
That’s a hell of a deal, be it one that is at the very least going to get your game banned and is most likely illegal in multiple jurisdictions as undisclosed promises of benefits in return for promoting a product. Let’s be honest, few are going to genuinely praise Night City as being worth that tenner.
But you’ve got to get in fast, because the first ten entries will have a 90% chance to win!
Write a review right now! You can edit it at any moment, but we will notice You and Your chances of winning will increase. So ANYONE can Win!
First 10 positive reviews will have 90% chance to win!
I’m not sure how such a drawing system would work, but then again we have no evidence that the developer ever intended to go through with it and now we never will. For all we know Valentine Studios could up and disappear by the time it came to pay out.
My favorite bit of the promotion is at the end where the developers try to preempt any claims of how devious and scummy this is by stating that it’s just to avoid people gaming the system. It’s not a dirty way to drum up revenue by parasitically latching on to a very popular upcoming title and exploiting consumers, but it’s really just for your own good. These people are the modern day gamer Jesus.
*This game costs $9.99 only to avoid the appearance of many fake accounts. We want real people to win, not fakes.
But the contest is no more. No, Valentine Studios figured out that the only winning ticket in this scheme is a one way trip to getting blacklisted, and suspended the contest.
As of this publishing there are 23 positive reviews for Night City and most of them are…pathetic. I really recommend checking them out to see how badly people will throw away their self-esteem while spending $10 and singing praise to an obvious shyster, for the chance that this all isn’t a massive scam and the developers won’t run away with their money.
You see Valentine Studios might have cut this all short before the banhammer came slamming down by Valve, but here at MMO Fallout we’re not so forgiving when it comes to filthy boys doing filthy things. If you want to check out the Steam page as it existed, here is an archive link and a cache link. The archive link does not have the whole front page because archive doesn’t do Steam pages so well.
And here’s another knee slapper. The developers actually changed the name of the game on April 17 from “Cyberpunk Game: Night City” to “Night City.” That’s not a bombshell revelation, I just wanted to point it out because the shamelessness really knows no bounds.
Credit to Reddit user Amper_Sam for posting this tip.
MMO Fallout 