Hotcakes: How To Burn Your Game And Alienate Players

Guilt by association is a fantastic way to build your brand.

Last Oasis is nearing a month after launch and the folks at Donkey Crew want the players to know that they are dealing with cheaters. In fact, hundreds of you might find yourself logging into the game this week to discover that you are no longer welcome due to unsavory activity.

We haven’t publicly addressed the issue until confirming that our efforts are starting to be successful, but we’ve been hard at work to eradicate the players who are so bad at the game they need cheats. So far, we’ve banned a triple-digit number of cheaters and continue to improve the tools against them. We want you to know that we take this issue extremely seriously and will not stop until the game is free from cheats.

But Donkey Crew isn’t just aiming at cheaters, they’re looking toward the people who shelter(?) them. As part of the ban announcement, DC announced that any clan who has cheaters in their group, even if it’s just one person, will get wiped together and have their belongings taken. The policy extends to “sibling clans” as well.

In addition to fighting players that use cheats, we’d like to announce that if we find a clan that has cheaters in their group, the clan will be wiped together with all of their belongings. This also extends to sibling clans – no, putting all your cheaters in a different clan won’t help you. If your clan profits from having a cheater, even if it’s just one player, the unfair advantage over the clans that play by the rules will be quickly equalized.

What a fantastic way to foster inclusivity and community interaction; by making players and clans terrified to help new players on the off chance that person might cheat or, even worse, be a plant by a competing clan or just a random griefer. Good luck finding a clan if you buy this game without personally knowing anyone already playing it.

This also assumes that Donkey Crew’s anti-cheat tech is up to snuff, since we’ve seen this implemented in other titles leading to 1.) false positives despite promises that each ban is manually checked, 2.) certain clans that seem to just get away with cheating despite repeatedly being reported, and 3.) hostility and paranoia seeping throughout the community further dividing it.

I am seeing a lot of comments on the forums from sycophant fanboys giving the usual responses; if you don’t like it go play something else, the rest of the clan should be banned as well, anyone complaining about the policy must be a cheater, etc. These are the same people who will be wondering in a few months why the servers are empty and nobody seems to play anymore. Must be those dang carebears.

But hey what do I know. We’ll be checking in with Last Oasis in a couple of months to see how the game’s traffic is holding up under these policies.