Spam – MMO Fallout

The new visual update for Steam is here! Well the beta is, anyhow. You can download the beta by going to your settings and opting into the beta branch of the Steam client. It’s very simple and doesn’t require any external downloads unlike the previous trick to get ahold of the early version.

The new Steam is all about ease of use. Click on any game and you’ll see all sorts of information provided by the developer. See your achievements, your trading cards, DLC releases, timed events. Anything your heart desires and more that you might have had to navigate through multiple windows to find before is now in one easy place. What isn’t there? The clickbait spam.

One big complaint that users have had of the Steam News section for each game is that Valve thought people really wanted to see clickbait spam from bloggers like Rock, Paper, Shotgun, PC Gamer, etc. It’s basically a glorified RSS feed that pulls stories based on certain websites that Valve trusts (for some reason) tagging their articles with the games in question. The result? An embarrassing deluge of articles that have little if anything to do with the game they are tagged in.

Well those of you unhappy with Valve’s handling of the Steam News will be glad to know that the clickbait spam newsfeed is officially gone as of the new library. It will be interesting to see how the traffic to the websites is affected once they are no longer getting free advertising on a massive platform for their clickbait.

Steam Cleaning: Valve Now Moderating Workshop Submissions

You may have visited Steam’s workshop in the past and thought to yourself “this Counter Strike section could do with a lot less scam submissions in the workshop.” For those unaware, distributors of unsavory material have been targeting the Steam workshop for years by submitting fake maps with alluring titles offering free skins or free knives, and then linking users to websites that would steal their information.

Dangerous yes, and for those smart enough to not fall for said scam, an absolute annoyance as they were a constant nuisance and ever present. Unfortunately for those rascally scam artists, that era has come to an end.

Valve this week has updated the process with which workshop items are approved, and now new submissions must be approved manually by Valve staff before they are publicly visible. The same goes for any updates to existing workshop items. For its part, Valve is promising speedy approval with most submissions being approved within a day.

“Newly submitted and updated items will be placed into a moderation queue. You’ll be able view and edit the content during this process, but other players will not be able to view changes until they’re approved. For updates to existing items, subscribers will have access to the previously approved version if there is one. The approval process should be completed in less than a day. If you have any questions on the process, please contact Steam Support“

The news specifically mentions that this change is targeting scams and account theft through the workshop, so it is unlikely that Valve is policing any content other than weeding out the fake giveaways.

Source: Steam

[NM] Assassin’s Creed Forums Struck By Trolling Over Skin Color

If you’re looking to rustle some jimmies or meme it up on the Assassin’s Creed Origin forums, you might want to think twice or risk the wrath of some overworked, twitchy moderators. The forums are undergoing an apparent fumigation after they were targeted by a collective of trolls and angry gamers responding to so-called “blackwashing,” alleging that Ubisoft is depicting characters in the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Origin as darker in complexion than some believe they should be.

Assassin’s Creed: Origins launches October 27, 2017 on PC, Xbox, and Playstation. The game serves as a prequel to the series, set in Ptolemaic era Ancient Egypt with the player taking the role of Bayek and the origins (get it?) of the order of Assassins and their rival Templar group.

The series has been criticized over its historical accuracy. Recent studies have shown that ancient Egyptians shared more ancestry with Near Easterners (West Asia, Middle East) and that Sub-Saharan genes did not mix until more recent times, however the study notes that the genetic samples were taken from a single site and may not account for all of Egypt.

It is possible that populations in the south of Egypt were more closely related to those of Nubia and had a higher sub-Saharan genetic component, in which case the argument for an influx of sub-Saharan ancestries after the Roman Period might only be partially valid and have to be nuanced.

Much of the spam on the forums appears to be users repeating various memes, with some trolling using harsh, offensive slurs. As a result, the moderators appear to be taking a heavy handed approach to keep up with the influx of posts, and the nature of the posts has led some to believe that the complaints are rooted in racist ideologies.

Retro Computers LTD Melts Down, Spams its Indiegogo Page

The saga of Retro Computers LTD and the ZX Spectrum Vega Plus continues. If you haven’t read our previous coverage, you can do so here. While RCL has consistently responded to angry backers in an unprofessional manner, mostly by sending out social media admins to agitate the masses, the company finally began responding on Indiegogo today.

To announce that an announcement would be coming.

We will be making an announcement very soon. We are also very sorry that a hardcore group of people who have been refunded Ratcliffe and Co are still posting abusive comments.

Rather than utilize some free time to update backers, RCL then chose to spam its own wall, posting the following message no less than 40 times in the span of an hour or two.

Chatter on side channels suggests that RCL breaking their multi month silence may be due to the impending release of their bank records by shareholder Paul Andrews.

Regardless this appears to be just another case of RCL being tone deaf in their dealing with angry backers. Despite claiming that no refunds are denied, a quick inspection of the Indiegogo Page still shows numerous fresh claims of ignored refund requests.

DigiHom Update: Tons of Games Disappear From Greenlight

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[Update: Several errors have been fixed or clarified in bold below. MMO Fallout apologizes for the inconvenience]

Digital Homicide’s James Romine may be throwing a temper tantrum right now, and for good reason: Close to two dozen of his games have been removed from Steam.

We’ve been covering Digital Homicide filling its Greenlight queue up with spam filler ever since the developer uploaded dozens of titles back in June, a majority of them simple Space Invaders games and clones of one another. Last month I noted that Valve’s Greenlight team seems to be unsure as to whether or not DigiHom’s games qualify for Steam, with the titles being tagged incompatible on and off on a nearly daily basis. James Romine has commented that this is actually due to modifications made to Steam’s API resulting in numerous games being falsely tagged and untagged.

It appears we have our answer. Digital Homicide’s list of Greenlight items now stands at 27 from its high at 50. Of the 27 that remain, four have been greenlit and already released. All of Digital Homicide’s games (19 at the time of this publishing) carry a negative, “mostly negative,” or “very negative,” approval rating.

For continuing updates on the lawsuit against James Stanton (Jim Sterling), stay tuned.

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