MMO Fallout

[Column] Shovelware Makers On Steam Should Be Afraid

Today marked the day that Valve took a leap forward for the cause of customer service and announced that players would be allowed to return their games, no questions asked, within two weeks or two hours of game time, whichever comes first. There are certain caveats to the deal on what can be returned and what can’t, but as far as the crucial details go, two weeks or two hours is all you really need to know.

Before I start to get critical, I’d like to point out that I have been calling for a refund system on Steam for years, as their “all sales final” policy has been more and more problematic when coupled with their laissez faire policy on curation allowing broken games to make their way into the store space. Valve already does what it can to deny these games front page coverage, but this policy will be the silver bullet to possibly knock specific developers off of Steam forever. You know the ones I mean.

I also don’t see this as a big problem for independent developers putting out cheap games at low prices. As has been echoed by other voices on the web, I feel that anyone who would buy a short indie game to play it for an hour or so and then refund it wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of buying it in the first place, and would likely pirate it. The only measurable notice that the dev will see are the sales going up, and then slightly coming down.

One are where I do see this having a harmful effect on a legitimate developer is in the realm of review bombing, an issue that is already prevalent on free to play and low cost items, but will now be easier if groups of people can buy easily buy a game, bring the overall rating down, and then all request a refund and walk out without a loss of their own. Review bombing is a problem as it is.

For PC gamers, this system is great. The small demo or benchmark download is, with some exception, just about extinct, and with the variety of PC builds available, there is no way of knowing for sure if a game will run on your system without forking over the sixty bucks and praying. Additionally, it also knocks out a good source of income for developers releasing poor quality games and cashing in before word of mouth spreads.

Which brings me full circle to the point of this article, Valve has put a bullet in the head of fly by night developers peddling their wares on Steam. Not only do they struggle to find an audience, thanks to a lack of presence on the main page, but now their source of income (ill informed customers) has been cut off at the neck.

I’ll end this by recommending that you don’t assume that every developer that has concerns about the system is hiding bad intentions, just as well that any customer who applauds the system is just looking for some easy free games. Valve’s lack of specificity and reminder that each refund is handled case by case means that we’ll need to wait until the system is actually used to see where it is ripe for abuse, and where Valve draws the line.

Overall, this system is a major leap forward for Valve as a company and Steam as a platform.

Steam Introduces 14-Day Refunds

Valve has surprised us again with the reveal of a new refund policy, allowing customers to get a full refund on their purchase, for any reason, withing two weeks of the purchase. Bought a game and can’t play it? System not powerful? Game broken beyond playable? Didn’t like it? Not a problem. Valve will be honoring refunds for any game, so long as the game hasn’t been played for more than two hours and the request is made within fourteen days.

Refunds will not be given for 3rd party purchases (steam keys, wallet cards, etc), movies (for obvious reasons), games that have been VAC banned, and gifts that have been redeemed by the recipient. The good news is that you should also be able to get a refund should a game you just purchased go on sale.

Refunds are designed to remove the risk from purchasing titles on Steam—not as a way to get free games. If it appears to us that you are abusing refunds, we may stop offering them to you. We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price.

(Source: Steam)

Turbine Shutting Down Infinite Crisis

Turbine Entertainment has announced the impending sunset of Inifinite Crisis this August. Infinite Crisis exited beta on March 26 of this year, giving the game a shelf life of about 141 days from launch to shut down.

After much deliberation, we regret to announce the official shutdown of Infinite Crisis. We will end development efforts today and will close the service on August 14, 2015.

As the MOBA market continues to expand and saturate itself, it has become much more difficult to find an audience. Infinite Crisis is the second high profile MOBA to shut down this year, after Jagex’s Transformers in January and EA’s Dawngate in February.

(Source: Infinite Crisis)

ArcheAge Releases Ongoing Server FAQ

With ArcheAge’s server merger coming later this year and Trion Worlds vague on details, players naturally have a lot of questions to ask. In order to keep players updated as the plans move along, Trion Worlds has set up an evolving FAQ on the ArcheAge forums answering questions as they pop up.

As we saw in Trion’s latest stream, it looks like ArcheAge’s ‘non-traditional’ merger will emerge in the form of opening up a new server and then shuffling players from their server to these new “evolved” servers. This is how mergers were handled in the Russian version of ArcheAge.

We are still looking at a number of options before solidifying the process. The basic plan is as follows: new servers will be created, and players from current low population servers will be moved to these shiny new servers. Yes, that means… LAND RUSH! All other details are under evaluation.

I mentioned in my column yesterday that any merge should naturally see the legacy servers eventually being closed down, and while that hasn’t been confirmed, the FAQ does say that inactive characters will most likely be moved automatically to the new servers:

Most likely, players who are on a low population server and inactive at the time of the Evolution will be relocated automatically.

It’s important to remember that nothing in the FAQ should be considered finalized at this point, that more questions will be answered in the coming weeks/months, as more details are set in stone. You can follow the link below to read the current FAQ.

(Source: ArcheAge)

[Community] Let’s Call A Merger A Merger

Originally I intended this week’s Community column to be speculation about how Trion Worlds would handle ArcheAge’s upcoming server merge, given that the plans are still in the conceptual stage and any real action that will be taken is still months down the line. To fuel speculation, I looked at how server mergers were handled in Korea and Russia under XLGames and Mail.ru respectively, and hoped to get a comment from each party.

While Mail.ru and XLGames didn’t respond to my request, I was told by Trion Worlds that an FAQ was in the works. It isn’t out as of this publishing (approximately 2pm EST on Monday, June 1st), so I’m going ahead with my original plan.

It’s safe to say that the term “server merger” has such a negative connotation attached to it because, in the eyes of the ever-rational internet mob, developers might as well post an announcement that they’ve failed at business. Couple that with a media in love with negative headlines, and you’ve got a recipe for PR disaster. Because of this, Trion Worlds isn’t the first to treat the phrase like they’ve been accused of having lice, and have joined the growing list of developers shuffling players away from low population servers (before closing them usually) without actually using the term “merger.” Even Blizzard opted to develop its engine to support cross-realm play rather than merge its list of low population servers.

There tends to be an even more negative response to this tactic, since if there’s one thing people hate more than being lied to, it’s when companies talk to them like they are lawyers in a courtroom dodging a guilty plea by questioning the definition of the term “murder.” To go back to the previous analogy, they are the kid in school trying to explain that while their head has been buzzed and their hair smells of medical shampoo, there is no way you can prove that they were responsible for the lice sighting that the school warned about over the morning announcements.

This isn’t the first time Trion Worlds merged without ever using the term. In Rift, Trion would convert low population servers to “trial servers” in order to force players off of them without actually calling it a merger. Designating a server as “trial” would result in character creation being disabled (for subscribers) and would limit players to the two main cities, forcing players to transfer off once they had finished the content available in the free trial.

We won’t know what Trion plans on doing with ArcheAge until they release more information, but we did grab this soundbite from their latest Twitch stream:

“It’s basically taking lower population servers and then creating an entirely new server and allowing players to migrate from that server to the new evolved servers.”

If their approach to merging servers in ArcheAge is anything close to what they did in Rift, it is likely that players will be not so gently coerced into transferring over to these “evolved servers,” through various limitations on these legacy servers. This way, once the population has sufficiently dwindled, the servers can be logically shut down due to lack of activity, with any characters remaining forced to transfer off.

So the notion that the servers were never merged is technically correct, and as I have said before technically correct is my favorite kind of correct.

Lego Universe Was Hindered By Dong Detection Software

Lego Universe was an MMO that allowed players a free space to build anything their heart desired, and since the internet is well known as a mature and well behaved medium, it may surprise you to learn that some players were using the creator to build brick representations of male genitals. Former Lego Universe developer Megan Fox took to Twitter to discuss how Lego wanted a free build game with absolutely no dongs.

The moderation costs of Lego Universe were a big issue in general. They wanted a creative building MMO with a promise of zero penises seen. They actually had a huge moderation team that got a bunch of screenshots of every model, every property. Entirely whitelist-based building.

Obviously Lego Universe’s problems extend far beyond simple dong filtering, but a moderation team can get expensive very quickly, and most assuredly was a large factor.

(Source: Eurogamer)

APB Reloaded Server Merge And New Engine

APB Reloaded is on track and ready for the North American server merge this Tuesday, June 2nd. The recent merger of APB’s European server into Citadel saw increased activity from new and returning players, and Reloaded Productions is hoping that the same will hold true for the North American server.

In other news, work continues on the upgraded Unreal engine for APB, as seen in the screenshot above. When the new engine launches, APB will require a 64-bit operating system in order to continue playing, leaving a small portion of the community in the dust.

Making the game 64-bit only solves several long-standing memory management and performance issues that we are happy to finally put behind us. But it does mean that a small percentage of machines currently used to play APB will need a new OS in order to continue playing.

You can find out more at the official website.

(Source: APB Reloaded)

Weekend Wrapper: Chicks With Abs Edition

It’s Sunday and you know what that means: You’re all playing Deadly Profits. It may surprise you to hear that there’s been a lot of arguing going on between Derek Smart and the people reviewing Alganon on Steam. The game currently has a review score of 31% positive with 114 reviews and an all time peak of 78 players on Steam, according to Steam Charts.

While users have been getting banned from the Alganon Steam forums, Quest Online can’t do much about them posting negative reviews.

MMO News:

Greed Monger is gone, and so is the hundred grand they raised in crowd funding.
Wildstar is going free to play, to the surprise of everyone.
Shadowrun Chronicles isn’t going anywhere, despite developer bankruptcy.
Trion Worlds trademarks Reactor (via Massively)

Around The Web:

Gearbox Software not involved in Aliens: Colonial Marines class action lawsuit. (Via Polygon)
Microsoft isn’t buying Silent Hill from Konami. (Via Gamespot)
Sony investigated by BBC over their no refund policy on fraudulent purchases made on compromised accounts. (via Eurogamer)
Twitch bans broadcast of AO games. (Via Eurogamer)
Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes free on PS+ in June. (Via Playstation Blog)

Notable Release:

Kung Fury: Street Rage – PC $1.99
Splatoon – WiiU $59.99
Magicka 2 – PC $14.99

[Less Massive] Playstation Mobile Shutting Down September 10th

Sony Computer Entertainment has announced that support for Playstation Mobile will be ending later this year. In an email sent out earlier today, customers have been notified that Sony will cease distributing content on the Playstation Mobile app on July 15, with full support for the platform ceasing on September 10th. Content purchased off of the platform will need to be downloaded and installed prior to the September cutoff date, as they will be unavailable after that date.

Refunds will not be provided for lost Playstation Mobile content. Playstation Mobile was an attempt by Sony to provide content to a number of platforms, including Android, Vita, and Playstation TV. The service never took off, even after Sony took steps to reach out to independent developers, including the removal of a license fee in 2013.

(Source: Sony email)

[Updated] Indie Dev Uses Multiple Names To Dodge Bad Rating Association

[Update 5/31: Digital Homicide has updated their games to have a consistent naming, making it possible to easily view all of their games.]

Temper Tantrum currently costs 99 cents on Steam. It has a 44% positive rating at the time of this publishing with many of the negative reviews pointing toward bugs, and the fact that the game is entirely comprised of stock UNITY assets purchased from the store. If you look up the developer, you’ll see that the game is made by a studio called DigitalHomicideStudios LLC (two words) and that they only have one game on Steam if you search by developer.

We’ve covered Digital Homicide here at MMO Fallout before, back in November when the developer had a meltdown over a critical let’s play video of their game The Slaughtering Grounds, which currently carries a 25% positive rating on Steam. This game, similarly, was heavily panned for its poor quality and reliance on stock assets purchased from the UNITY store. The Slaughtering Grounds is credited as being developed by Imminent Uprising and published by Digital Homicide Studios LLC (four words). The companies are the same, but if you follow the link on the Steam page you would never know the link between the two games, because of the alternate spelling.

And finally we come to Deadly Profits, a game released May 29th under the developer name Digital Homicide Studios, changing the studio name once again to prevent users from stumbling upon the game’s other, less well received titles. Deadly Profits is currently the highest rated title in the library, 61% at the time that this is published, however the top fifteen most helpful reviews are all negative.

Should developers be able to hide their past on Steam, or should Valve be enforcing a policy to tie developers to a consistent name? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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