A developer swaps out their game for something completely different.
Every once in a while I come upon a practice on Steam that gets my blood boiling, not so much out of the practice itself but due to Valve’s refusal to acknowledge or do anything about it until it is shoved in their face. In the past we’ve talked about suspicious money laundering games, scam titles, games that launch without executables, etc. Today I want to talk about Aiball: Drunks.
Aiball: Drunks was launched on to Steam on June 22, 2016. It’s a silly party game with crazy physics and…whatever. You control silly guys and do goofy things like play football and throw stuff. You can’t find Aiball: Drunks on Steam nowadays. Well you can, but not in the way you’d expect.
This is Penguin Cretins. Penguin Cretins is an online game about penguins trying to get through an obstacle course. What does Penguin Cretins have to do with Aiball you handsome devil, you’re asking your computer screen right now. Great question, and thank you for the compliment. Penguin Cretins is Aiball: Drunks. You see SteamDB does not lie, and it keeps receipts. Back in March 2019 developer HFM Games just swapped Aiball with Penguin Cretins.
Just swapped? Yes, just swapped. The developer ripped out Aiball and replaced it with a completely different game. Changed the name, changed the release date, just replaced it as if the original didn’t exist. Here’s the kicker; Aiball had Mac and Linux depots where Penguin Cretins does not. So in addition to just completely replacing the game with something else, HFM Games made the purchase unplayable on some people’s computers.
Despite people reporting the game for fraud Valve has done nothing. The developer has not posted any news updates since July 2016 and has not actually acknowledged the fact that they just swapped games on their customers.
MMO Fallout 