Tag: Cyber Watch

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.

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

Early Access Fraudsters: Cyber Watch Is Cyber Shovelware


Cyber Watch is a shovelware title hastily cobbled together in the Unreal Engine and tossed onto Steam for a couple of bucks in the hopes that enough people will buy it and not refund it to make a little bit of profit. Tossed onto Steam by a ragtag group of seven named individuals, Cyber Watch hopes to abuse the fact that it is “under development” to avoid criticism while not making use of Steam’s Early Access label.

The first thing you see on Cyber Watch’s store page is:

*****NOTE*****
THE GAME IS STILL UNDER DEVELOPMENT AND IT DOES NOT REPRESENT THE FINAL VERSION OF THE GAME.THERE IS STILL A LOT TO IMPROVE AND ADD
SO IF YOU WANT THE FULL EXPERIENCE OF THIS GAME PLEASE WAIT FOR THE FINAL VERSION TO RELEASE.UNNECESSARY REVIEWS WOULD NOT BE APPRECIATED.

What you get is a barely functioning pre-alpha build of a game whose working components I have to assume were built into the Unreal engine or available as an asset pack on the Unreal store. From untextured, very basic maps to weapons that may function halfway or break your character (see aim-down-sights in the screenshot below), to “vehicles” being nothing more than untextured RC cars that sloppily plant your character mode behind it.

Cyber Watch also blasts Neffex songs through your speakers at about ten times the volume of the rest of the game.

To further cement the idea that Cyber Watch is a hastily cobbled together mess of a prototype, as of one week ago this game wasn’t actually called Cyber Watch. SteamDB’s history shows that Cyber Watch was previously titled The Battle Of Bellum up to January 1, 2020. It was previously listed for a January 18 release date before the team just dumped it on the store on January 12. The Battle Of Bellum it seems would have been a third person action adventure game judging from a prior description:

“This game is a third person shooter game.This game is full of acton and adventures.”

Prior Steam listings also have The Battle Of Bellum listed as a single player game with achievements, so it seems like the team threw out what they had at the last minute and opted instead to push a rushed featureless prototype of a shooter on the store in the hopes that slapping a “this is unfinished” sticker would stifle criticism and people would buy the game regardless. It might have worked if they had listed the game as early access. They didn’t.

It isn’t going to work. I personally bought the game to drop a review and received this response from the developer:

“THERE IS A BIG NOTE IN THE DESCRIPTION……MAYBE….. MAYBE YOU DIDNT SEE IT…..ITS OKAY ……EVERYTHING YOU ARE SAYING IS ALREADY MENTIONED IN THE DESCRIPTION……SO DONT WASTE YOUR TIME ON COMMENTING LIKE THIS”

Posting in all caps always makes you correct, and trust me there is no way anything associated with this game is not a huge waste of time.

Thankfully with the way Steam goes, Cyber Watch will be buried in the history books with the rest of the low-effort shovelware to come out on Steam.