Author: Admin

[Community] The Rebel Developer: “I Just Want To Get Rid of This Sh**y Game”


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For this week’s Community Monday, I want to dive into the latest indie developer meltdown currently in progress. The subject for the latest incident is The Rebel, a Unity asset flip that currently has a 75% positive (of four reviews) rating on Steam. There is one person online at the time of this writing.

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The Rebel is developed and published by an independent developer Novukomp EEOD, an individual who refers to his game as “total s*** and [an] asset flip,” as shown here on the Unity forums.

An year ago I put my game on Greenlight steam. It was total S*** at the time and asset flip. You probably think the game did poorly and never got approved? Wrong! It was approved via greenlight and actually reached top 5th place in greenlight out of 1400+ games.

The thread, posted last Friday, complains about an inability to get the game on Steam despite Valve’s seeming approval. They were kind enough to leak the admin dashboard, as shown above. Justbrosingthanks, the creator’s username, is seemingly fed up with trying to submit a game he apparently didn’t care much for.

I just want to get rid off this sh**y game, don’t want to turn this into a never ending slavery to a project I don’t even enjoy working on. I want it to end.

The creator ends up butting heads with others pointing out over the game’s poor graphics, the low framerate trailer, etc.

Stop being salty about negative comments, your game looks bad and you decided to put it in Steam anyway so better get ready to get a lot of vitriol. The worst offense of your game is the framerate, if you can’t get at least 30fps in your damn trailer you should know that you have serious problems.

Naturally Jim Sterling gets brought up, although Justbrosing seems to think that James Romine is living in a Beverly Hills mansion rather than a house in Arizona.

^ Sterling is the reason The Slaughtering Grounds developers are now living in Beverly Hills mansion and have all the time in the world to develop better game. I am actually hoping to reach to the British far-right fatty who will call this “shait”.

 

As with every other shady independent developer on Steam, The Rebel has taken to intensely policing its forums and banning any criticism. The developer has actually gone as far as attempting to stifle criticism by having only two forums open: The first for requesting keys and the second for trading (only open to owners).

There is literally no venue for discussing the game at all, and the developer is actively banning anyone and everyone who posts otherwise.

Please only post here if your question is related to free keys and videos. Everything else will be considered off topic and the thread banned/locked.

I attempted to contact the developer to point out that Valve has penalized developers for similar conduct in the past. He responded by permanently banning me from the game’s forums. He was kind enough to offer me a free key, though.

Again and again: please abide by the rules off the forum. If you think the game sucks: well thank you for the opinion! Just please don’t spam. If you want opinion/key: info@novucomp.com

To end this, I’ll point out that the creator is friends with none other than Steam’s most notorious shovelware developer, James Romine from Digital Homicide. Make of that what you will.

Disaster Report: Umbrella Corp Is Essentially Buried


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If there is any sympathy for Capcom over Umbrella Corps, you’d have to look long and hard in order to find it. Umbrella Corps, the game that was met with severe skepticism and ultimately negative reviews, appears to be dead in the waters just a few weeks after launch.

According to Steam Charts, the game averages less concurrent players than your average Battlefield server. Just 20 as of this writing and an overall peak of 45 over the last day or so. Steam Spy’s figures paint an even more dismal picture. The tracking service estimates that the PC version has only sold around eight thousand copies, with only about 35% of those playing over the past two weeks.

Perhaps Umbrella Corps should take a page out of Evolve’s playbook and make a sharp turn toward free to play territory. There is no guarantee of success, but at this point there isn’t much left to risk.

Atlantica Online Transitioning To New Management


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Atlantians,

After nearly ten years of traveling the globe to battle the corruption of Oriharukon, we regret to inform you Nexon America, NDOORS and Daum have arrived at the difficult decision to discontinue our service of Atlantica Online. Publishing rights will be transferred to VALOFE Global Ltd, an online and mobile game developer and subsidiary of VALOFE.

We’ve enjoyed our time with the Atlantica Online community, and all of the memorable experiences we shared. We’ve done our best to provide you with a robust and enjoyable experience, but unfortunately we’ve been unable to maintain our player base and have seen the community dwindle.

For those of you who have stayed and wish to continue playing Atlantica Online, you will be able to transfer your account and characters to the VALOFE service once it begins, and we will announce a service transfer schedule and other details soon.

We’d like to thank all of our players for their support throughout the years; we could not have accomplished all we did without you, and we hope you will join us in a new adventure soon. Stay tuned for invites and opportunities to join the community of other Nexon America titles.

–The Atlantica Online Team

Our thoughts: It isn’t often that a game shuts down simultaneously in three regions without the developer shuttering being the cause. On the plus side, players will be able to transfer their characters and items, a sad rarity in cases where a game changes hands.

(Source: Atlantica Online)

Jagex Acquired By Chinese Investors


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Jagex, the Cambridge-headquartered creator of RuneScape and Chronicle: RuneScape Legends finally announced their acquisition by Chinese investors, with a new Board of Directors being constituted immediately upon their purchase. The acquisition was first hinted at months ago after news broke that the developer was considering offers from Chinese iron mining company Shandong Hongda.

CEO Rod Cousens praised the acquisition for its offer of “visibility in China, which is now the biggest gaming market in the world.”

“Jagex will continue to be operated by the existing management team, which has overseen an impressive trading performance in recent times and has driven its iconic franchise, RuneScape to continued to growth. It will be business as usual for the Company, its players, and its employees post-acquisition.”

The news of the acquisition comes on the heels of what Jagex refers to as “best ever performance.” In addition to RuneScape and its Old School spinoff, Jagex is currently working on card game Chronicle: RuneScape Legends and an idle game based on the same series.

(Source: Jagex press release)

Overwatch Introduces Ana, Healing Sniper


Following Blizzard’s recent reveal of a sniper rifle with healing capabilities, gamers are finally being introduced to the latest playable member of Overwatch: Ana. The mother of Phariah, Ana’s biotic rifle is capable of healing friendlies and inflicting damage over time to enemies.

Her sidearm, a sleep dart, is capable of putting enemies to sleep (naturally) and interrupting several ultimate abilities. A biotic grenade heals allies while damaging enemies, and her nano boost allows allies to move faster, deal more damage, and take less damage.

Check out Ana’s origin story below:

Trion Worlds Loses Two, Not A Layoff


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Trion Worlds has confirmed that the recent loss of two employees is not related to rumors of a layoff, which did not happen. Instead, Defiance/Devilian community manager Sarah “Kiwibird” Walters and a presently unknown member of Trion Worlds left of their own volition.

In response, other community managers are stepping up their involvement with players, including the following from Eric Cleaver.

“We remain strongly committed to Defiance and I’ll be stepping back out from my role in the background of Defiance a bit more. You may see some of our other Community Team members around the place too like Brasse. That is probably more appropriate in another thread, to avoid distracting from this one.”

Trion Worlds is presently hiring a human resources generalist in its Austin studio.

IPE Update: Digital Homicide Needs A Lawyer


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(Update: This detail was pointed out by a reader. The document has been stamped as “not in proper form” and “subject to rejection by the court.)

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Small IPE update this week. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but Digital Homicide is in severe need of a lawyer. Today’s update is just two pages consisting of two very short paragraphs, expanding upon the previous set of updates.

The document itself is a request for the court to accept the motion in response to Stanton’s motion to dismiss the case. Translated to English, the request says “please accept that last set of documents I submitted.” Romine has no idea if the document is required, but he filed it anyway and apologizes if it is a waste of the court’s time.

This is only submitted as the term “Opposition” was not specifically stated in those two documents. The Plaintiff was unaware if this was a required statement and felt it may need to be stated officially. Apologies if this is obvious and unnecessary.

The presence of a lawyer could have saved this lawsuit from several follies, such as the existence of this document or that “aforementioned” is one word and not two.

The Plaintiff files this Affidavit in Opposition with these two afore mentioned documents as Opposition and the undersigned requests the Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss be denied.

For those of you keeping score on the motion/response score count, we are now in Digital Homicide’s motion in response to the defendant’s motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s opposition in response to the defendant’s motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s case.

It makes sense in legal circles, not much elsewhere.

Blizzard Silencing Abusive World of Warcraft Players


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Blizzard has unveiled new policies surrounding players using abusive language in World of Warcraft chat, primarily in how the game will deal with people who receive numerous reports.

Under Blizzard’s new system, players who are reported multiple times will receive an account-wide penalty. Silenced players will be unable to speak in most chat channels, cannot send mail, send party invitations, create calendar events, or send war game invitations and duel invitations.

Silenced players will still have access to whisper chat with friends/raids, create parties/raids, share quests, and talk in global chat when a moderator is present. Chat is restricted for 24 hours on first offense, with each subsequent action doubling that time with no maximum. The tenth silence on an account, for example, will last 12,288 hours or 512 days.

Silenced players are restricted on an account-wide basis.

(Source: World of Warcraft)

Sharing Your RuneScape Account May Be Criminal


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Sharing your RuneScape account is risky, but could it be criminal? Technically, probably. Is Jagex going to sue you for sharing your pure defense rush account with your friend on the other side of town? Well, they did once try to sue players for cheating. Who knows?

The premise of the lawsuit is such: David Nosal was accused in 2004 of using login information to gain access to the computer of his ex-employer in order to use the information for his current company. The court ruled that the company that issued the password must give authorization in order for the information to be shared, and that the password holder (in this case, Nosal’s ex-colleague) did not have the legal authority to do so.

As is often the case with these legal proceedings, not even the parties involved agree on what this ruling could mean in the greater picture. Judge Reinhardt has stated that it does not draw a line, and could put millions of users at risk because their activity is not in line with a company’s policy. The majority opinion writer Judge McKeown rebuffed, claiming that the specifics of the case made it irrelevant to a spouse sharing login information to print airline tickets (for example).

The wider implications of this case won’t truly be known until a company brings it up as precedent in a court trial.

(Source: BBC)

Neverwinter Hits Head Start On PS4


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Neverwinter hits Playstation 4 on July 19th, with head start beginning in just about an hour (10am PST) for those who have purchased the head start pack. Available on the Playstation Store for $19.99, the Onyx Head Start pack includes a week of early access as well as the items below:

  • Fragile Onyx Weapon pack
  • 20 Enchanted Keys
  • Adventurer’s Helper Pack
  • Graycloak’s Legacy weapon
  • Onyx Horse mount (Green)
  • “The Onyx Adorned” title

When Neverwinter goes live on July 19th, it will be free to play with no Playstation Plus requirement. Coverage from MMO Fallout will be coming this week.