Tag: Steam

Temtem Launches Into Early Access Today


If you ever dreamed of an MMO that looked and played a whole lot like Pokemon, do I have good news for you. Not only does that game exist, it will be playable today (January 21). So finish watching that copy of Jay and Silent Bob you ordered on Amazon and start catching those Temtem.

“Temtem is a massively multiplayer creature-collection adventure. Seek adventure in the lovely Airborne Archipelago alongside your Temtem squad. Catch every Temtem, battle other tamers, customize your house, join a friend’s adventure or explore the dynamic online world.”

Temtem goes live into early access at 1p.m. EST, so it will probably be up by the time you read this post. For more information check out the Steam page and take a gander at the trailers below. Temtem is developed by Crema and published by Humble Bundle.

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.

Not Massive: Tower of Shades Is A Tower of Charm


Tower of Shades is one of those games that I talk about knowing someone’s going to link to it to say “oh that Connor he’s not a real gamer, look at this hipster trash he calls a game.” I don’t care, Tower of Shades is charming as hell and I enjoyed every minute of it.

In Tower of Shades the entire game is comprised of beating the final boss of an RPG. That’s it, you fight the final boss. You won’t beat the boss on your first try, your second try, your third, and so on, but the whole goal here is to reinforce the idea that you should keep trying. If you don’t keep trying you’ll never win, and if you give up then why did you start at all?

All in all, Tower of Shades might take roughly 30 minutes to complete, give or take a bit. It also costs a whole $2 on the Steam store, which is more than reasonable for what is more of an experience than a “gamer’s game.” The fight does require you to think strategically, and each time you get a bit closer to beating the boss the game encourages you to keep on keeping on. Keep trying, even if you fail now you still have another chance.

One warning I will offer is that Tower of Shades has a few points where there is extreme flashing lights. The game has a warning at the beginning, but it is definitely not safe to play for those with epilepsy.

Otherwise Tower of Shades is a very uplifting game and I recommend it to anyone who needs a quick confidence boost. Check it out, nerds.

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

Demonstrably: Citywars Savage Is A Cute Little Demo


This week I played the demo for an upcoming MMO called Citywars Savage.

Citywars Savage is a quaint little upcoming MMORPG with a pretty cool premise. On the surface the game promises hack and slash combat coupled with crafting and resource management. Dig a little deeper and on the list of planned features you’ll find the ability to build and claim your own territory to battle against other players and their cities.

The demo itself took me roughly 45 minutes to play through, it takes you through a mostly linear pathway where you’ll learn how to make money, how to buy and equip better gear, and battle it out against the monsters dotting the small landscape. If Citywars showcases any idea well, it’s how good you can make a game look with some filters, lighting, and fog effects. It runs great, and ends with you killing the Death Knight.

Of course the big feature that’s being advertised with Citywars is the ability to hire and program your own NPCs. Looking at the store page, Citywars will have a graphical interface to streamline the process of coding your own NPCs to do stuff like gather resources and handle crafting while you’re out doing better things. I’ll be fully satisfied if I can program my NPCs to chatter while they are going about their business. It’ll be like having my own RuneScape bot farm.

I’m pretty sure I also encountered a dev while playing, as the game has voice chat and immediately zipped over to me and started chatting about how to access various interfaces. Now that’s customer service.

I can’t wait for more of Citywars to come out and I recommend checking out the short alpha that is available on Steam.

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.

NM: Grand Theft Auto IV Has Disappeared From PC


Update: A Rockstar Games spokesperson responded to our request for a comment, providing the following statement;

Grand Theft Auto IV was originally created for the Games For Windows Live platform. With Microsoft no longer supporting Games For Windows Live, it is no longer possible to generate the additional keys needed to continue selling the current version of the game. We are looking at other options for distributing GTAIV for PC and will share more information as soon as we can.

Rockstar Games has pulled Grand Theft Auto IV from sale on Steam and the Rockstar Launcher for…reasons that are not entirely clear as nobody involved has made a statement. It is Friday afternoon after all. The game was delisted for sale mid-afternoon on Friday January 10 (today for those reading this as it comes out) although the two expansion collection is still available for sale as is Grand Theft Auto IV via the Playstation store and Xbox.

On Steam the page for Grand Theft Auto IV still exists but the ability to add it to your cart has been disabled. It is not accompanied by any notice from Valve that the publisher requested removal. The Rockstar website still lists Grand Theft Auto IV but any links to buy the game digitally on PC are broken and simply redirect to the front page.

MMO Fallout has reached out to Rockstar’s PR folks and will update if they haven’t gone home for the weekend.

Review: Avabel On Steam Is Lowest Of Low Effort


What can I say about Avabel Online?

Its interface is hideous.

The translation is as low effort as it gets.

The game doesn’t work half the time.

And it literally suggests starting out with auto-quest on before you’ve even taken your first step. Yes, Avabel makes no pretence on being fun to play, just throw that auto-play on and maybe toss developer Asobimo a few hundred bucks for the privilege of having a dull, uninspired ripoff of a mobile game play itself.

Now that Bluestacks is bridging the gap between low effort mobile games and low effort PC games, any fly by night developer can pay $100 to have their mobile title developed on the budget of a White Castle slider foisted onto the Steam Store where it will get buried under a sea of other low effort cash grabs with the only hopes of coverage in the form of ridicule from some loser living in his own basement.

Final Score: 0/10 – I’m sure at least one desperate fanboy will tell me that this game is better than anything that came out on PC.

Not Massive: Build Your Own MMO In MMORPG Tycoon 2


Ever looked your favorite MMORPG Roma Victor and thought “I could do better than this”? Well now you have the chance to put your money where your mouth is without going through the difficult steps of acquiring millions of dollars to feed a budget.

MMORPG Tycoon 2 is the incidental sequel to the title MMORPG Tycoon. Currently in Early Access on Steam, MMORPG Tycoon puts the player in the role of building their own Azeroth or Gielinor or Club Penguin, whatever your heart desires. Create zones, build towns, give your players what they want and watch that cash flow. You’ll even have to deal with cheaters, obnoxious players, and just those who can’t figure the game out for themselves, as you push toward that revenue goal. You can even get in on the trend and make your game free to play, introducing exorbitant cash shops with pay to win elements if you so desire.

One thing that MMORPG Tycoon 2 is not is an MMO. It is single player and your customers are all bots. Still, it looks like a fun way to prove to the world what a design guru you truly are.

Check it out.

Source: Steam

Mirage Online Classic Launches On Steam


Mirage Online Classic is out!

This week sees the Steam release of Mirage Online Classic, a spiritual sequel to Mirage Online and an MMO built using HTML. The title was put together by Christopher Kremer and Rich Conner, and is available as a free to play title at this very moment.

Check it out.