Category: Editorials

Magnificent 5 Launches On Steam Into the Arms of Nobody


Magnificent 5 is the most embarrassing thing to tie its name to the western film series since Adam Sandler put out Ridiculous Six.

Since 2019-2020 seems to be the era of Battle Royale titles immediately failing out the gate, it was only a matter of time before Free Reign Entertainment, led by the least competent swindler in the history of gaming Sergey Titov, got into the fray. Magnificent 5 was already failing long before it came on to Steam, but now that the game is on the platform it has a whole new audience to take a look at it and say “no thank you.”

Don’t let the timer in the screenshot fool you, I spent more than two hours in queue on Steam launch day and couldn’t find a single game. The timer resets every hour. The estimated timer is seven days, not seven minutes. There are fourteen people online.

The good news is that Free Reign is already planning its next swindle. The company has listed on its New Frontier launcher a zombie survival game based in the New Frontier world. Yes the company that repackaged the same low quality zombie game over and over and over and over and over and over again is going to dip into the well and pull those zombie models out of retirement to do it one more time. Sergey Titov; a man who has been recycling the same trash for over a decade because somehow these things still make a bit of cash.

This game makes Cyber Watch look innovative.

Column: Is It Safe To Admit Ashes of Creation Apocalypse Failed?


Ashes of Creation Apocalypse has ironically suffered a apocalypse of its own and is safely dead as a corpse.

Following in the line of 2019 battle royale games that nobody wanted and thus nobody played, Ashes of Creation Apocalypse is a standalone prequel to the upcoming MMORPG of a similar name; Ashes of Creation. In essence, Apocalypse is like the technical demo for a game that will ultimately be the final product.

“Fight for your survival or die trying! Ashes of Creation Apocalypse is the standalone prequel to the upcoming epic MMORPG Ashes of Creation. It is both a testing ground for new systems and content in Ashes of Creation, as well as a unique last-man-standing action game where magic, steel, and chaos reign supreme. Ashes of Creation Apocalypse is a high fantasy, free-to-play experience where no two battles are ever the same.”

Just as unique as every other battle royale game. But similar to Planetside Arena, the public did not take to Ashes of Creation Apocalypse kindly or with much interest at all. Steam charts show that the title peaked at 288 concurrent players in October 2019 and over the last three months has quickly dwindled to a peak of 21 with an average of seven. Recent reviews put the title at a 14% “very negative” rating and as I am writing this piece there is one person online probably wondering why the queue timer is reaching well over several hours.

Ashes of Creation meanwhile seems to be going just fine, thank you. Intrepid Studios is still hiring and regularly post updates on development. Hopefully Intrepid Studios will find an avenue through which to publicly test their systems for Ashes of Creation. We hear Valve has a lot of experience with focus-testing their games, and Gabe Newell will teach you the secrets of the universe if you present him with a collectible knife.

2010’s: Remembering Those Games That Went Out For Gas (And Never Came Back)


The 2010’s brought us closer than ever with developers and that means a lot more instances of people shall we say fudging the truth and maybe being a little more optimistic about their company’s future than was realistically possible. We’ve seen plenty of games in the past decade disappear after promising us that there was no way in hell that they would be gone forever. Just up and vanished in a puff of smoke. Like they got raptured.

Let’s talk about some of them.

Now I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I spent far more time than this piece deserves looking up each game on this list (plus a hundred other titles that didn’t qualify) and scouring their websites/social media just to make sure I had my i’s dotted and my t’s crossed on the developer going dark. I was specifically looking for games/developers who never announced cancellation but just went silent one day and never came back. I also disregarded Kickstarter MMOs because the workload was big enough already. That’s a piece for another day.

If I missed some comment from a dev, it’s because it was shoved in the corner somewhere nobody would ever see it. Also this list isn’t meant to cast shade on any developers, so please; All comments about how I’m disrespecting the development process by making this list can go in the box below this piece. As always, defamation threats to randy@gearboxentertainment.com, c/o Randy Pitchford.

#1: City of Steam: Arkadia (Mechanist Games)

City of Steam was a not-so-successful game that rebranded and relaunched as a much-less-successful game steeped to the brim in microtransactions. It’s hard to believe that Arkadia shut down in early 2016 with the promise that the game was “resting: not retiring.” Boy has City of Steam been in a long sleep because after four years there is no indication that the game is ever coming back. It’s like a permanent form of narcolepsy, also known as death.

Just check out this quote from the website.

“City of Steam certainly isn’t retired, but we’ll need time to reflect on these things. A sequel would have to do justice to the world in a way that honors the original, addresses as many critiques and quirks as possible, and improves or innovates at the same time. It would also have to be good enough to make up for the shortcomings of the original – stuff that no one was really happy with. Rushing into such a massive commitment would be foolish, and would risk destroying the goodwill that still exists for the game.”

Fans of the original City of Steam may be happier that the game is gone for good, since judging by reviews on Mechanist Games’ current lineup the company hasn’t just stayed the line with their predatory microtransactions, they’ve gotten much worse. Mechanist Games’ follow up titles to City of Steam have pretty much all shut down by this point: Spirit Guardian, Heroes of Skyrealm, War Clash, with Game of Sultans remaining. The players were not happy with them, and that is a horrible track record for four years.

Who knows, maybe Mechanist can surprise all of us with a decently built City of Steam follow up that respects its players time and money. I’m not holding out hope.

#2: The Missing Ink (Redbedlam)

The Missing Ink was a pretty basic MMO with a somewhat interesting concept: Player avatars were two dimensional cardboard cutouts existing in a three dimensional world. At one point the folks at Redbedlam took the servers down and announced that a new game design would be coming that same year.

“We’ve taken the TMI servers down for now, but we’ll be back later this year with a BRAND NEW game design – watch this space!”

That post was from January 2014. Whoops. You can actually play Redbedlam’s last title Bedlam, and I posted a whole article about this company last year. There is nothing left of Redbedlam let alone their 2014 dreams of relaunching The Missing Ink, except for one employee taking Steam residuals and probably making a phone call to get investment. He should hit up the guys that invested in the Juicero, they’ll fund anything with a pulse.

#3: Alganon/Line of Defense (3000AD)

I know I’m going to get a Tweet/comment from Derek Smart himself over this post, but I’m going to add it to this list anyway. Alganon shut down its servers for migration in 2017 and never brought them back online. For the record, I’m going to go on a limb and say that I’m probably looking forward to Alganon’s return at least more than any of my readers outside of Derek Smart himself. Probably more than a large portion of the gaming public. I expect my study points for those three years of downtime, Smart. Literally unplayable.

If Alganon comes back I will be greatly surprised and impressed and will be the first person to jump on board with coverage, as right now it feels like the box set of Matlock that I bought on sale at Amazon Prime Day. Yes I’m actively working on it, no I haven’t actually started watching the DVDs yet. The same goes for Line of Defense which is undergoing an engine change and hasn’t posted a new developer diary in over a year. I’m sure Line of Defense will come out at some point in the future, perhaps not my lifetime and published by the third Sonny android model loaded with Derek Smart’s consciousness. It’ll be at the same point where people stop funding Star Citizen’s alpha client in 2342.

We get it; 3000AD is a small company and things take time. I’m just not convinced that they are going to happen at all.

#4: Earthrise (Silent Future)

The Earthrise reboot is totally being developed by Silent Future, a German team who ironically have been completely silent about the game other than to deny the idea that the game is going nowhere when I brought it up a year ago. It has not been taken out back and shot, no matter what common sense and the complete lack of progress over the past eight years since Earthrise first shut down might tell you.

Will Silent Future have the funds to build Earthrise, now a nine year old game that was out of date even back when it launched in 2011, into a product viable for the current market? I’m going to guess no, just judging by their recent releases peaking in the realm of one concurrent player on Steam. I’m also not sure which company is gullible enough to fund development of a reboot of a game that was wholly rejected by the public eight years ago, but then again Justin Roiland’s company bought that Radical Heights trademark so you never know.

#5: All Of Jagex’s Not-RuneScape MMOs

I could probably fill a limosine with all of Jagex’s cancelled MMO projects, so for the sake of time let’s just roll them into one number. Jagex has hinted at more MMOs over the years than I can count (and I can count to four), but every few years the company likes to drop a hint via press release or in a RuneScape update that it has some new IP in the works. What new IP? Who can say. It’s a fantasy game, a sci-fi game, a shooter, an RPG with MMO-like elements. It’s built on Java, it’s built on RuneScript, it’s built on Unreal. It’s literally three days away from beta and cancelled.

What isn’t it? Getting published. We’ve been having this conversation for over a decade now about how Jagex needs to stop treating its new games like hobby projects. Can Jagex recreate that RuneScape magic? Or push another product to publication? As literally the only person still running a Funorb-oriented website into 2010, I hope so.

#6: Lineage Eternal/Project TL (NCSoft)

But Conrad, I hear you say, Lineage Eternal is definitely coming out! Nah. Lineage Eternal is going so well that the game is ahead of schedule according to NCSoft, which is naturally why it has been delayed and changed numerous times over the course of the last decade. I’d be more ready and willing to believe NCSoft’s promise that Lineage Eternal would be going into closed beta testing this year were it not for the fact that they have literally made this very statement in quarterly reports for at least seven years. That’s not an exaggeration.

It’s been nine years since Lineage Eternal was first announced with the first round of cancelled beta tests dating back to 2013. Now that Lineage is quickly becoming the Duke Nukem Forever of MMORPGs, maybe it’s best if Gearbox buys out the property and Randolph Pitchford helms its launch. Technically speaking he can’t do any worse.

#7: Black Prophecy Tactics: Nexus Conflict (Gamigo)

Black Prophecy Tactics was to be the prequel to the failed MMO Black Prophecy, a game that fared so poorly in its life that it shut down barely a year after launch. Black Prophecy Tactics meanwhile was deep into its second beta test in September 2012 when everything went dark. To the best of my knowledge and research, the cancellation of Black Prophecy Tactics was never formally announced; it’s certainly obvious considering all of the MMORPG catalog websites that still to this day show the game as “in development.” No press releases, no announcements, nothing. Just a poof and roughly three people wondering what ever happened to this game.

Gamigo: The pinnacle of communication.

#8: UFO Online (Gamigo)

Gamigo-published games have a habit of just up and ghosting us. I couldn’t tell you for sure if UFO Online ever fully launched, but I do know that it was announced in 2010 and then went into beta in 2013. Again, we’re dealing with 2010-2015 era Gamigo who tended to treat their game launches like they were the location of CIA spies; not for distribution to the public.

I’m willing to put my money on the notion that UFO Online never launched, but if it did it ghosted us like last night’s Tinder date.

#9: Dynastica (Dynastica Ltd.)

I want to know who the hell is paying for some of these websites. Dynastica went into its second closed beta phase on April 4, 2011 and subsequently went completely dark. For some reason unknown to man on Earth and God in the sky, the website is still online albeit mostly nonfunctioning. Signups are closed, the server is presumably long gone, but the domain and the website are still live.

I can only presume that it’s being paid for by some preloaded Paypal account and nobody’s actually paying attention to it.

#10: Bounty Hounds Online (Suba Games)

Ah Suba Games, the only publisher who can beat Gamigo for the early-mid 2010’s race to “who can advertise their games the least” awards. The prize is a bunch of shuttered games. Bounty Hounds Online has never been cancelled, at least not in an official capacity or in a way that is still accessible today. Suba Games seemed excited to get Bounty Hounds Online approved through Steam Greenlight and the title seemed to be enjoying some attention during the closed beta phases.

And then everything died. We’ll never know what became of Bounty Hounds Online (other than the obvious that it has been cancelled) but like every other game on this list we didn’t even get the courtesy of a goodbye kiss.

#11: Land of Britain (Potato Killer Studios)

I’ve heard worse studio names than Potato Killer Studios but gosh darnit I can’t think of any of them off the top of my head. Land of Britain is a new Dark Age of Camelot at least in the sense that it was going to deliver three factions, innovative gathering, crafting, PvP combat, PvE, and KvK, perhaps a little TlC, CBS, and AT&T as well. What it won’t deliver is a game, since the domain has been dead since June 2018 and is now for sale. You can get it for nearly $4 grand. Don’t buy it.

Outside of Land of Britain, Potato Killer was also supposed to launch a TCG tie-in called Fangold. That never happened either. Their last post is in December 2016 thanking Microsoft for the BizSpark Plus program. Money well spent.

#12: Eden Falling (Razor Edge Games)

Eden Fell and Eden Died, and as such will not be Eden Finished. Eden Falling is a turn based RPG that promises to bring a tabletop experience to the online gaming realm. What it doesn’t bring is a finished game or a present developer, since Eden Falling hasn’t had a press release or a dev diary since 2017. A trailer was released in late 2018 but otherwise the team has been pretty mum. Mums the word.

The website is still online and so are the forums if you want to discuss off-market Xanax and pirated copies of Madden with the hundreds of bot posts that are the only accounts still active.

#13: Lux (Ignis)

Lux is a hand drawn MMO from Chimera (Ignis) and sure the website has been updated with a 2020 copyright but there’s also a link to the company’s Google+ account and that hasn’t been a thing since April.  April, right? Who even remembers Google Plus? I forgot about it a week after Google stopped hardcoding it into Youtube. Lux had a failed Kickstarter campaign back in 2016 to put the title on PC, Xbox, PS4, and Mac. Accompanying the game’s campaign was one for a graphic novel tie-in that despite raising over the paltry goal with 23 backers was also canned. The Kickstarter tells backers to stay tuned for more information.

We all know where this is going. The website lists “pre-orders soon,” and if you believe that I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. The last sign of life I could find was in 2018 when after nearly two years of inactivity someone posted a link to the Lux website on their Facebook page. Two years to post a link for a website for a game that is absolutely not ripping off Don’t Starve.

The most entertaining part of Lux’s history is that if you look at their Twitter account the last thing that they posted about the game is an expression of excitement that the team is working with Ignis to continue development. In March 2017. Someone decided to use the account five months later in August to ask a couple questions about a rented Conan Exiles server and how to change harvesting rates.

After Nine Years, Jagex Abandons Annual End of Things Event


There are two things guaranteed in January; Everyone will renege on their New Year’s pledges roughly half an hour after the ball drops and after 2011 Jagex will release the End of Things event in RuneScape. Except now they won’t.

Every January since 2011 Jagex has released the End of Things event in the Freminik region. The event has changed over the last nine years, but the crux of the event has stayed the same. Players battle it out with three big wolves; Hati, Sköll, and Fenrir. To the victor goes the spoils, specifically some cosmetic items and a burst of bonus experience in several skills. The event didn’t launch this week, nor are there plans to launch it at all, possibly forever.

In a Q&A stream, Jagex confirmed that the event just isn’t as popular as it was and they wanted to pursue other ideas than simply lazily rolling out unpopular content because it’s been on the same release list year over year. After the shallow release schedule that has been January, maybe players would have enjoyed something familiar with whet their whistle outside of weeks upon weeks of patch notes. The end of The End of Things event comes alongside Jagex ending the Winter Weekend events for similar reasons. Jagex’s big update for January, the Archaeology skill, has been delayed to an unknown date.

Steam Cleaned: The Mysterious Library Of $200 “Games”


I’ve come across a rather strange phenomenon on Steam and it revolves around games that look like asset flips and sell for $200. Where do these games come from? Who are they selling to? Why are they priced at two hundred smackeroos? Are they all money laundering schemes? I don’t recommend going to the links in this article and buying any of these games, unless you think that burning $200 is worth flexing on the friends who will abandon you once they realize how criminally irresponsible you are with money.

For the record I deliberately left out a number of games that were clearly for educational/training purposes, games put up on Steam for pop-up events, and titles that are clearly trolling. This is also not the complete set of $200 Steam games by a large margin, just a carefully selected sample size of those that would show up with Valve’s wonderful search engine filtering by price.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

#1: MouseRun (pictured above)

  1. Mouse Run showed up on the Steam store on December 20, 2019 and is sold by an “atm games.”
  2. The game is Chinese-made and its original title is ???? which roughly translates to “Uncle Rat Run”
  3. It costs $199.99.

#2: Strike Mole

If you really want to play Strike Mole, I have good news. You can do so without spending more than $25. Plus tax. Strike Mole is a $200 asset flip of the Unity Store game Whack a Mole and you can buy the package for $25, zip it yourself, and play to your heart’s content. Another game by a fly by night developer who happens to also be Chinese.

#3: CrisisActionVR

Crisis Action VR is another game available in English and Simplified Chinese by a developer (Pixel Wonder) that only published one game. SteamDB shows that Crisis Action VR was once $20 but in April 2018 the price inexplicably rose to $200. Maybe the developer no longer wishes to sell it? Maybe they don’t understand decimal points. Your guess is as good as mine. Crisis Action VR is the only game on this list that looks like it came the closest to being a real game.

#4: LLK

LLK is definitely a pre-bought asset package for a mobile game, of what I would be lying if I implied I had any intention of searching around for the answer to. The game peaked at 6 players on Steam and has never changed its price from the $200, so it LLK is a money laundering scheme than it has cleaned at least $1200 USD with $360 going to Valve as their cut. Who knows, maybe this is medical grade memory testing software. I wrote my name down wrong this week, maybe LLK can help.

This one isn’t available in Chinese but the developer is Chenyun0577. I’ll let you make your conclusions.

#5: NUMBER

I’m starting to see a trend here. The previous game LLK was created by Chenyun0577, and NUMBER was created by rongyao0577. Two Chinese developers with names that sound like a bot generated them? Nope, nothing suspicious here. They also released on the same day. Coincidence, surely. NUMBER had five players max concurrently playing it.

Those money launderers sure do like memory games. Maybe it helps them remember where all their money is being funneled.

#6: Adventure Trip

Adventure Trip is available on the iOS store, and I assume it doesn’t cost $200 there. Adventure Trip is available from a developer with one game and, you guessed it, in Simplified Chinese. Unlike the last games on this list, if anyone actually bought into this scheme they haven’t actually played the game. Adventure Trip has five followers but no activity charted.

This game can be played free here. Thanks Reddit.

Temtem Launches Into Early Access Today


If you ever dreamed of an MMO that looked and played a whole lot like Pokemon, do I have good news for you. Not only does that game exist, it will be playable today (January 21). So finish watching that copy of Jay and Silent Bob you ordered on Amazon and start catching those Temtem.

“Temtem is a massively multiplayer creature-collection adventure. Seek adventure in the lovely Airborne Archipelago alongside your Temtem squad. Catch every Temtem, battle other tamers, customize your house, join a friend’s adventure or explore the dynamic online world.”

Temtem goes live into early access at 1p.m. EST, so it will probably be up by the time you read this post. For more information check out the Steam page and take a gander at the trailers below. Temtem is developed by Crema and published by Humble Bundle.

Steam Cleaned: Cyber Watch Abuses Screenshot Flags, Valve Does Nothing


Update 1/21/20: Valve has finally intervened and prevented Kartikay from banning the screenshots associated with my account.

I’m going to flood this article with screenshots to emphasize how Cyber Watch is a pre-alpha product and also so they show up on Google image searches.

It’s time for another update to our Steam Cleaned piece about the underhanded shysters working on Cyber Watch. Cyber Watch for those not keeping score is a low quality piece of shovelware pushed onto Steam in a pre-alpha state by publisher Kartikay Rathi. I published my review of Cyber Watch due to the fact that this game that had clearly been cobbled together in a short time-frame had been pushed onto Steam in a non-Early Access state, and the developer has since retaliated in ways to remind us just how shady and unprofessional they are. And just like the game itself, the cover up was lazy and low quality.

Unfortunately for Cyber Watch I keep my receipts. The four reviews posted under fake developer accounts were quickly hidden from public view after I posted my expose and it got extra exposure, but the evidence is still freely viewable to anyone who wants to see it. Head honcho Kartikay Rathi even went so far as to DM me on Twitter offering a backhanded apology while simultaneously lying about the reviews being done by college friends (again, I have the receipts) and summarizing with how he apologized and it should be good enough for me.

Sorry, it isn’t. Especially since at this point Kartikay decided that he would issue community guideline violation strikes to the four screenshots I had posed to Cyber Watch’s community page, resulting in a four day ban from uploading content. I appealed the decision to Steam support and received a response from a Sarah-Lynn who was more than useless. When any dev removes uploaded screenshots for community violations, it puts a universal upload ban on that account for one day per screenshot. To top it off the screenshots have been unflagged and reflagged, renewing the community upload bans each time.

The dev team, a group of college students who act more like a gaggle of preteens, have taken to trolling from private accounts that still have their names in the URL. Take Keshav Bhadana here for example:

And of course it wouldn’t be an update without another fake review, this time from yet another account located in Uttar Pradesh, India with only one game reviewed, and it’s Cyber Watch and a whole .2 hours on the game. This one I presume is an actual college friend of the devs, and I hope for their sakes that they weren’t forced to pay money for this garbage just to do a friend a favor.

Since its launch, Cyber Watch has peaked at one concurrent player. Nobody is buying it outside of the accounts used to push fake reviews, and after this dismal show of lunacy, nobody is going to buy it. The developer is now in full meltdown mode. This is the last post I’m going to make about Cyber Watch as the game and its developer’s reputation are already a smoldering pile of ash.

The Adventures Of Space Comabat Issue #2: The Mandible


Not Massive: Tower of Shades Is A Tower of Charm


Tower of Shades is one of those games that I talk about knowing someone’s going to link to it to say “oh that Connor he’s not a real gamer, look at this hipster trash he calls a game.” I don’t care, Tower of Shades is charming as hell and I enjoyed every minute of it.

In Tower of Shades the entire game is comprised of beating the final boss of an RPG. That’s it, you fight the final boss. You won’t beat the boss on your first try, your second try, your third, and so on, but the whole goal here is to reinforce the idea that you should keep trying. If you don’t keep trying you’ll never win, and if you give up then why did you start at all?

All in all, Tower of Shades might take roughly 30 minutes to complete, give or take a bit. It also costs a whole $2 on the Steam store, which is more than reasonable for what is more of an experience than a “gamer’s game.” The fight does require you to think strategically, and each time you get a bit closer to beating the boss the game encourages you to keep on keeping on. Keep trying, even if you fail now you still have another chance.

One warning I will offer is that Tower of Shades has a few points where there is extreme flashing lights. The game has a warning at the beginning, but it is definitely not safe to play for those with epilepsy.

Otherwise Tower of Shades is a very uplifting game and I recommend it to anyone who needs a quick confidence boost. Check it out, nerds.

Steam Cleaned: Cyber Watch Dev Manipulates Review Scores To Counter Mine


Update 1/17/20: Cyber Watch is still up to its shadiness. Another positive review from a user who created their account on January 15 expressly to play Cyber Watch and nothing else and leave a positive review within 24 hours of creating their account.

In addition, our friend kaushikarathi7 has changed their name and moved from India to Germany.

Original Story:

Cyber Watch’s developer is dumb, they are really dumb, for real. And they just made a fatal mistake.

Cyber Watch is a low quality Unreal shooter that I chatted about just a day or so ago, and I went back on the Steam page today because I wanted to see if anyone else got duped into buying the game and left a review. What I found was even better, three positive reviews two of which contain snarky references to my commentary on the game. Even better, they all come from relatively new accounts with one product. Let’s dive in.

The first review is by a user named bhadana9474, a new account that owns one game and hails from Uttar Pradesh, India which also happens to house Cyber Watch’s developer. Keshav Bhadana, where have I heard that name before? Oh right, he’s listed as a developer for Cyber Watch. I like how he references the developer’s inexperience as “from what I can tell,” as though he only has second hand experience and isn’t actively working on the title.

Now let’s look at review #2:

Another account that only owns one game from Uttar Pradesh, India. What are the odds! Ashish Chaudhary…where have I heard that name before? Okay you know where this is going, Ashish is also a credited developer on Cyber Watch.

Oh my lord, a third account that only owns one game and hails from Uttar Pradesh, India. WHAT ARE THE ODDS? 100% evidently. Kaushika Rathi, where have I heard that name before? Actually this is one is a trick since there is no Kaushika Rathi listed in the developer section. There is however a Kartikay Rathi. Related to the developer? Boy it would be a hell of a coincidence if someone named Rathi from the same area of India just happened to set up a Steam account, only buy Cyber Watch, and leave a positive review within the same time span as the actual developers and after playing ten minutes.

I was born on a day and that day wasn’t yesterday.

Review manipulation is of course grounds for immediate termination, and the attempt to manipulate Cyber Watch’s review score is just as poorly thought out as the game itself. All images referenced above have been archived in order to keep the data sealed fresh for your enjoyment.

Source: Archive, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7