Tag: Steam

Early Access: Inferna Is A Quaint Little Grinder


Inferna is a quaint little murder box that is kinda fun to run around in for a bit and kill mobs. If it wasn’t free to play, I’d suggest staying away from it.

As part of MMO Fallout’s year end checkup on various early access games, I decided to check out Inferna which launched into early access on December 20 of this year. Inferna is what AAA developers would probably refer to as “minimum viable product,” in that the developers over at the properly named INFERNA LIMITED have created some base systems and tossed the player into a map with gratuitously sprinkled in mobs of varying size, shape, and level.

Otherwise there isn’t a whole lot going on in Inferna at the moment, which is to be expected from a game that literally just launched into early access a week ago. There are some basic equipment enhancement systems in effect, mobs occasionally drop gear that can be sold to other players or to NPC shops. There is the option to create a personal shop like you tend to see in Korean MMOs and plop it down in town to sell items while you are off and about obtaining more goods.

Honestly there’s not a whole lot to talk about with Inferna. On a positive note the developer has clearly been hard at work pushing out patches, and in my short experience the game seems to have a vibrant and active trading community. If you’re expecting a game that is feature complete, you’ve immediately made a mistake by downloading an early access title. If you want a free game to tinker around in for a bit, give it a download.

As for me, I’ll be making a note on my big paper calendar to check in on Inferna in a year.

Early Access Fraudsters: Hellion Is Cancelled, Yet Still For Sale


Hellion needs to be forcibly removed from Steam.

The tale of Hellion is one that should leave you with a fair amount of hesitance to purchase any future product from Zero Gravity (assuming the company doesn’t buckle and cease to exist within the next six months before putting out its next title). Hellion has lots of bugs, Zero Gravity has no intent on fixing those bugs. Rather than push the game through early access and release a finished product, Zero Gravity has decided to abandon the title and cease patching it, ripping off the early access tag and just pushing it out as-is.

Granted, Zero Gravity isn’t done making money off of the game, as they reduced the price to $14.99 and are still selling it. As if to add the fraudulent cherry on the ice cream sundae, Zero Gravity is still advertising Hellion as though the game is still in development. There are features listed on the store page as “work in progress” despite there no longer being any work or progress being put into the title. How’s that for fraud? The company’s own lead production artist and investor even publicly blamed the decision on individuals at Zero Gravity choosing to cut and run to use the funds for their own projects.

The plus side of all of this is that Hellion’s reviews are in the toilet, currently sitting at a 29% mostly negative rating with comments dedicated to warning potential buyers that the game is nowhere near finished and has been abandoned. Should Zero Gravity release a new game, it will no doubt be held to increased scrutiny and the tale of Hellion’s abandonment will surely be reinforced at every possible moment.

For all this and more, check out SidAlpha’s video on the topic.

Kritika Reboot: Stop Buying Gold Ya Mooks


The Kritika Reboot team has not exactly been quiet about their bot-banning sprees, but you might not be aware that the company is going after gold buyers as well. This week the team at ALLM Co. posted a reminder to users; three strikes and you’re out. The message has been reposted below for your enjoyment.

Kritika:REBOOT responds seriously to all of illegal trades including trade in cash. When such behavior is caught, disadvantages can be applied as follows.

– 1st time caught : Sends Warning mail.
– 2nd time caught : 3 days account suspension
– 3rd time caught : Permanent account suspension.

Illegal trades effects bad influence to the economy of the game, we are sorry for those of you who play in manner.

We ask for your cooperation to form better environment of the game.
Thank you.

Source: Kritika

Not Massive: Postal Goes Free On Steam, Gets Mass Botted For Trading Cards


(Update 12/21: That didn’t take long. It looks like Valve has killed trading card drops for Postal as of this morning)

Postal is free on Steam, and if you keep track of the top played Steam games you might be wondering how this little shooter from 1997 managed to amass more than four hundred thousand concurrent players on Steam. I mean, it’s good. It’s not that good.

Well the answer is fraud, but not on the part of developer Running With Scissors or Valve. Postal has trading cards; five normal and five foil, which makes the game an easy target for bots seeking to farm the cards and basically launder money on the black market. The cards were initially added back in 2014.

The good news for players is that if you’re looking to max out that Postal badge, doing so will assuredly be as cheap as it’s going to get. You’ll just have to swallow the possibility of your thirty cents going toward a criminal Russian mafia operation. The bad side is that Valve has a history of outright disabling card trading for free games that become the target of botting, so if you’re going to buy those badges do so now before the hammer of justice swings down. There are five badge levels until you max out, plus one foil badge level.

Check it out.

Source: Postal, Steam Charts

An MMO On Steam: Spelling Quest Online


Spelling Quest Online is certainly a game and is absolutely on Steam.

I’ll come right out and admit that I downloaded Spelling Quest Online because it is free to play and in early access, and also because it is tagged in the MMO category. Spelling Quest Online is multiplayer free-form scrabble, which is a fancy way of saying that nobody takes turns as much as you just throw down tiles and hope for the best. You can connect to random boards and just go to town for the ten minutes until the game gets boring and you want to stop and play something fun.

The boards have words that people can easily spell, like anal and bruv. There is a dictionary check when you want to make a word, but I’m not sure what dictionary the game cross-references that thinks bruv is a word because while the Cambridge dictionary recognizes it, the Oxford dictionary does not. There are daily quests that offer you gold which can be used to replace letters. I assume that most of the people playing this game are cheating. I cheated and used a Scrabble helper website because my gaming skills are only second in their inadequacy to my knowledge of words.

I will readily admit that I quit after ten minutes when completing words left me with a hand consisting almost entirely of Y’s, V’s, and X’s and literally no way to continue playing (I didn’t have any gold) on that map. I probably could have found a spot to put one or two of the Y’s but I didn’t feel like putting more effort than this game is worth. Which is nothing.

As for the developer Craig Schwartz, I will continue to love your character in the film Being John Malkovich, even if they didn’t give you anything to do in the sequel; Being John Malkovich 2: District Dafoe.

We All Missed It: Ankama Pulled DOFUS From Steam


If you’re one of those folks suddenly getting a wild hair up your bum to go play DOFUS again, you’re going to be in for a big surprise if you’re expecting to download it on Steam. It is no longer available on that platform. Ankama made the decision to pull Steam support back at the end of October, and none of us in the games media noticed it because it pretty much flew under the radar without anything in the way of an announcement.

For those coming back to DOFUS, you’re not going to be able to play through Steam. Instead, you’ll need to follow the instructions on the link below to tie your Steam account to an Ankama account, and then play through the official launcher. Good news, you haven’t lost your characters.

Source: DOFUS

Day of Dragons Dev Accused Of Hardcoding Ban Of Critics


There’s malfeasance (allegedly) afoot in Steam early access. Today’s piece comes to us about the game Day of Dragons, currently in early access on Steam. Day of Dragons bills itself as “an online creature survival game set in a large, beautiful, sandbox open world with multiple biomes and distinct creatures. Rule the world as one of several dragon species, or play as an elemental.”

We here at MMO Fallout have dealt with plenty of dirty Steam devs, but the accusations being levied this week really take the cake. The developer of Day of Dragons, Jao, has been accused of hardcoding bans of two Youtuber critics into the game’s files that apparently cause the game to crash on startup if either try to play. The two Youtube creators are IGP_TV and IcyCaress, both of whom have been very vocal in criticizing Day of Dragons for being a cheaply made prototype using store bought assets. So another day in the indie neighborhood.

The video posted by IGP_TV creates a dump of the game’s memory and then checks the files in a hex editor. Among the code they find six Steam ID’s that have been hardcoded to prevent the game from running.

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Youtuber SidAlpha confirmed through his own investigation that the dump contains the six hard coded Steam ID’s.

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Several parties including MMO Fallout have reached out to Valve for comment. Current Steam Terms of Service for developers state that game bans cannot prevent a user from launching the game. It will have to be seen how Valve respond to these allegations, if they do.

The Game Awards: Epic Store Sale & Free Games


The Game Awards is here, or at least will be here in roughly eight hours from this article’s publishing.

Ahead of Geoff Keighley’s award show, the Epic Game Store has launched a Game Awards sale. The sale runs from today (Dec. 12) through December 16 and includes discounts on titles up for awards including Control, Borderlands 3, and The Outer Worlds. Check it out at the link above. Nintendo has similarly launched a sale for its favorite titles, including current and previously nominated games. Over at the Square Enix store, you can get a good deal on Final Fantasy XIV.

Meanwhile The Escapists is available for free on the Epic Game Store. You can grab a copy between now and December 19.

Over at Steam, Crytek is hosting a free play period for Hunt: Showdown. Hunt launched back in August and is a competitive PVP bounty hunting game with heavy PvE elements. The free weekend runs until Sunday. Team-based tactical FPS Insurgency: Sandstorm is also holding a free play period on Steam along with a 50% sale if you decide you want to pick the game up after giving it a trial run.

Tune in to the Game Awards tonight.

The Game Awards Will Have Playable Demos On Steam


Say what?

If you’re one of those people who doesn’t particularly care about the Game Awards, well now you have a reason to be at your computer this week (outside of the usual reasons). Geoff Keighley’s annual public display of affection toward Hideo Kojima is also renown for having a fair number of game reveals, something that only gets larger every year. This year however you won’t just sit at the television computer screen being told what’s coming out, you’ll be able to play them.

This year The Game Awards is working with Steam to bring playable demos of about a dozen games that will be available for 48 hours before they are removed.

“Six years ago I bet everything I had to create The Game Awards as a way to celebrate our passion for gaming,” said Geoff Keighley, creator, The Game Awards. “Now feels like the right time to take the next step with The Game Festival, a completely digital approach to the consumer event space. Let’s face it: Not everyone can attend a physical trade show or consumer event. The Game Festival is designed from the ground-up as an event without barriers, extending the benefits of a physical event to the global gaming community that watches The Game Awards.”

  • System Shock (Nightdive Studios)
  • Eastward (Pixpil/Chucklefish)
  • Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus)
  • Moving Out (SMG Studio/Devm Games/Team17)
  • Röki (Polygon Treehouse/United Label)
  • Chicory (Greg Lobanov)
  • Wooden Nickel (Brain&Brain)
  • Haven (The Game Bakers)
  • Heavenly Bodies (2pt Interactive)
  • Acid Knife (Powerhoof)
  • The Drifter (Powerhoof)
  • CARRION (Phobia/Devolver)
  • SkateBIRD (Glass Bottom Games)

More information has been posted in an article on Medium. Steam users will also have the chance to win free games through game drops. Exact times have not been established, however the Game Awards airs Thursday Dec. 12 at 8:30p.m. eastern standard time.

Steam: Strike Mole, The $199 Single Player MMO Hamster Game?


Strike Mole labeled itself a Massive Multiplayer game, so I can technically talk about it without attracting those “why does this belong on MMO Fallout” comments.

Strike Mole caught my eye because it is listed in the MMO section of Steam releases, contains a $200 price tag, and doesn’t appear to actually be called Strike Mole. If you click on the store page, it offers you the opportunity to buy “Physical Ball” for $199 USD. The screenshots look like a whack-a-mole game, which makes sense if the game is titled Strike Mole.

“This is a 3D casual hamster game with 12 levels. The first four levels are training levels, which are relatively simple, and the subsequent levels will require you to complete more in a shorter period of time as the level increases. Mole strikes, you need to destroy them in a short time to unlock more levels.”

Strike Mole is developed and published by Lize. It is literally an asset flip of Whack a Mole from the Unity Asset store, so you can save $175 and buy the pack, compile it, and just play it if you REALLY want to play this game. There is currently one review in Chinese which simply asks “why is this game 500?”

MMO Fallout will update when Mole Strike is inevitably banned off of the Steam platform.