It’s a private server potentially with a cash shop.
If MMO Fallout has imparted one thing on our viewers, it is that you should never assume that something has been vetted just because it got Valve’s approval. Valve doesn’t have the time, the manpower, or the inclination to vet the developers that appear on the Steam store. Hell just look at how many times Ata Berdyev has gotten back on the store front.
Today’s topic I want to discuss is Dragon’s Prophet, the dragon-themed MMO developed by Runewaker and shut down earlier this year. Dragon’s Prophet recently showed up on Steam under the developer/publisher name “BOBYGAME”. You may have seen me complaining on Twitter about how difficult it is to get a response from people like Runewaker. This is because I was trying to contact them to confirm the listing’s legitimacy.
I know we weren’t the first outlet to get suspicious because our cooler counterparts over at Massively OP were already doing an investigation of their own into the legitimacy of said server. I can’t thank Bree enough for being what feels like the only other person to not shrug off this story as something worth looking into, her digging was how we managed to get to the bottom of this well.
As part of the investigation, I got my hands on some documents used to claim BOBYGAME’s legitimacy. I can’t read Chinese, and these documents were all in Chinese. What I could translate through Google-fu was that the documents looked old. I’m talking 2015 and earlier. And none of them had any relation to an entity called BOBYGAME. They were related to trademark registrations and trademark transfers.
My next step was to get in contact with someone at Runewaker who are, unsurprisingly, extremely difficult to get hold of. There are no reliable contact emails really anywhere on their website.
Thankfully one of the documents from five years ago had details for someone from Runewaker. And not just someone from Runewaker, we’re talking International Sales. That employee would know what they’re talking about. I just had to hope that this person was still working there five years later.
I sent the email explaining why I was reaching out, linking to the Steam page, and detailing what I was looking to confirm and got a very simple one sentence response. “BOBYGAME is not our partner.” Question answered, they aren’t legitimate. Just to double check, I sent over the documents I had on hand to confirm if they themselves were doctored. The response I received was that they are old and related to another partnership with a Chinese publisher, and that said partnership had ended way back in the olden years of 2018 and has nothing to do with BOBYGAME. This BOBYGAME literally just printed out some irrelevant documents and allegedly presented them to Valve as proof that this new listing was legit.
So there you have it from Runewaker’s mouth themselves. BOBYGAME is not a legitimate partner, the Dragon’s Prophet listing on Steam is not legally licensed or authorized to operate according to Runewaker themselves, and you should probably be wary even of downloading the installer let alone putting it on your computer or giving these people money should they try to monetize it.
Dragon’s Prophet is listed on Steam for an August 11 launch. Given the people I’ve spoken to at Runewaker I would be shocked if it actually remains on Steam long enough to meet that date. There is a beta client available on their website. Don’t download it. You don’t know where it’s been.
MMO Fallout 