Brutal Force isn’t available for purchase on Steam, it hasn’t been since its store page was removed many months ago. According to Steam Charts, the game is mostly forgotten: 0 plays this past month, one person the month before that, and an all time peak of 5. The developer (Enterchained) website no longer exists, and their only presence on Desura hasn’t been updated in five months.
The idea of an indie game showing up on Steam and subsequently making fading into obscurity isn’t surprising, after all the indie gaming industry is not unlike the restaurant business in that 60% fail in the first year and 80% fail within five years. That statistic is for restaurants, and I’d be willing to bet that it is higher for indie developers.
Brutal Force is a perfect reminder to other indie developers, and AAA for that matter, that gamers see everything. As Gabe Newell said in a 2013 Nerdist interview with Chris Hardwick:
One of the things we learned pretty early on is ‘Don’t ever, ever try to lie to the internet – because they will catch you. They will de-construct your spin. They will remember everything you ever say for eternity.’
Back in July, Brutal Force’s base price was lowered to $4.99 USD, and in August the game saw a price cut of 75% to $.99. A few hours after the sale went live, the price was hitched to $1.99 yet still carried a 75% off rate. Several hours after that, $3.24 with (you guessed it) a 75% off label. You can see at this link that the game is already 99 cents base price when it goes on sale but stays the same, only to jump to $7.99 and go on sale for $1.99, to jump to $12.99 the next day and dip to $3.24 on sale.
Raising the price of a product right before putting it on sale is illegal in the US and Europe, plus other countries. In the US, at least, a retailer must have sold the item at the price that they hiked it up to for a reasonable amount of time prior to the new sale. To use Brutal Force as an example, Enterchained would have had to sell it at $7.99 for a “reasonable amount of time” in order for the price hike during a sale to not be considered deceptive.
The game has long since been removed from Steam and exiled to the furthest corners of the internet also known as Desura. The developer no longer seems to be in business, as their social media accounts have been deleted and their website is gone. The only remnants of Enterchained that will remain behind are the masses of bad PR floating around Reddit and other websites discussing how the company tried to pull a fast one and ultimately lost.
MMO Fallout 