Tag: Steam

[Steam Direct] Valve Isn’t Doing Basic Checks On Marketplace Items For Scams


Actions speak louder than words, and for Valve and Steam nothing furthers the allegations that the company doesn’t put much stock in the quality of its services than the repeated instances of outright fraud that have occurred on the Steam platform over the past few years. We’ve seen meme games, troll games, asset flips, abusive developers, Greenlight vote fraud, a developer taking critics to court, and of course the repeated return of Ata Berdiyev who Valve repeatedly ignore until whatever latest game he is involved with starts bringing embarrassing attention to the Steam store.

Our latest controversy comes to us in the form of scam artist indie developers and Steam items. Valve has opened up the floodgates allowing developers to give their games inventories with tradeable items on the Steam market and, as usual, they have put absolutely zero effort into quality control and as a result, some shady developers have come out of the woodwork to start exploiting the unchecked system. Reports are popping up from numerous communities of developers uploading items that are visually identical to items in Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2, in order to con unsuspecting players into making trades.

This type of scam is different than what we’ve seen in the past, although it has been spotted before, because it directly implicates that game developers themselves are knowingly taking part and likely even perpetuating the scams. In addition, it shows that Valve is doing next to nothing in regards to checking against its sellers shenanigans. Are they vetting logos? No. Are they vetting tradeable items? No.

In the case of Abstractism, that includes tradeable items like the Team Fortress 2 rocket launcher knockoff shown above, the game has shown that Valve isn’t even properly vetting their games for viruses or other malicious programming. Abstractism has numerous negative reviews noting that the game is being flagged by several anti-virus programs as containing a trojan horse virus, uses a shady looking steam services executable that may or may not be authentic, and thanks to the work of several sleuths on the net, has more or less been shown to be a cryptocurrency mining operation.

Both games we’ve shown in this article, Abstractism and Climber, have been removed from Steam and their developers presumably banned from selling further titles. It does show, however, that Valve’s commitment to dealing with troll or illegal games is hollow, if not mostly fabricated.

Fantasy Survival Game Rend To Launch In Early Access This Month


Frostkeep Studios has announced today that their title Rend will launch on Steam early access later this month. Dubbed a faction-based fantasy survival title, Rend was created by a studio formed from veteran Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and League of Legends developers. Rend introduces RPG mechanics, sandbox elements, win/loss conditions, and massive battles. Early Access will be available on July 31, with the game available for $29.99.

“Early access marks a pivotal moment for Frostkeep Studios,” said Jeremy Wood, co-founder and CEO, Frostkeep Studios. “We have been developing Rend side-by-side with our players since we first announced the game and are grateful for the invaluable feedback they provided to help shape Rend into what it has become today: the game they want to play.”

The Culling 2 Is Dead On Arrival, Can’t Fill Single Match On Launch Night


What’s worse than not being able to fill a single 100 player match of Battle Royale? Not being able to fill a 50 player match. We’ve talked briefly about Xavient, a developer whose previous title launched into early access and over the course of two years managed to run its population down into the low double digits thanks to a series of missteps, only to abandon said game shortly after launch and begin work on the sequel. We wondered how players would react to the sudden announcement of The Culling 2 and whether or not the community would come back around for a second try.

Well the verdict is in and the answer is a resounding no, the community did not come around for a second time. While The Culling peaked out at over 12 thousand players, The Culling 2 hit launch day with a maximum concurrency of just 249 with less than 25 playing as of this writing. Reviews currently stand at a 13% “Very Negative” rating with nearly a fifth of all of the positive reviews being outwardly sarcastic in their praise.

And we’re not the only ones to notice. PC Gamers’ Christopher Livingston penned a piece reliving his experience winning a match before he even hit the ground, owing to his competition being one singular player who disconnected at the start of the round. Nadia Oxford over at Us Gamer noted the negative reaction from fans of the original title to the unveiling of The Culling 2. Even the official Culling Twitter account is aware of today’s launch performance.

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The Culling 2 is available on PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One.

After Abandoning The Culling, Xavient To Launch The Culling II


Following two years of early access, developer Xavient launched and then almost immediately abandoned its Battle Royale game The Culling in October of 2017. By the time the game launched, and thanks to numerous unpopular changes with the community, the average player base had sunk from its peak of 12,000 to not enough to fill a whole server. Current reviews sit at a 32% mostly negative rating.

But in case you’re still looking to toss your simoleons at a new Battle Royale game, Xavient is back to do it all over again. The Culling II has been revealed and it will launch, presumably not in Early Access, on July 10 for the sum of $20. The trailer, now available on Youtube, has been met with overwhelmingly negative response; a 9:1 negative to positive rating with players criticizing Xavient for abandoning the melee focus of The Culling and creating what is perceived to be a cheap PUBG clone.

The Culling II will also launch for Xbox One and Playstation 4.

[Column] Bulkhead Interactive Asks Community To Manipulate Steam Reviews


Bulkhead Interactive is playing with fire, and I have a feeling they’re going to get burned.

World War 2 shooter Battalion 1944 currently stands at a 31% “Mostly Negative” rating on Steam, with 115 currently playing users and an all time peak of 16,341. Earlier today, Bulkhead’s community manager posted a thread on the game’s Reddit page asking the community to review, which can be very easily interpreted as “review positively,” especially given the explicitly stated goal of this campaign is to improve the game’s recent review score from mostly negative to mostly positive.

The statement very coyly tries to avoid any guaranteed accusations of review manipulation by telling players that their reviews can be positive or negative, it doesn’t matter as long as they’re giving their feedback. I have to wonder who Bulkhead thinks they’re fooling by trying to play dumb, especially when comments like the one below are being made to players who say that they enjoy the game, but don’t want to give a positive review because the player base is so small. Since Battalion is an online-only multiplayer game with no bots, the low player base can make the game nigh unplayable at off-peak hours.

“Player numbers are not the game that you’re reviewing, is the game good is the question.”

So give the game a positive or negative review, it doesn’t matter, just remember that you’re not to review the game based on criteria that we (Bulkhead) don’t approve of. Specifically criteria that would make the game look bad, like its low player count. Bulkhead even went so far as to dangle an incentive for getting the review score up, noting such feat as a prerequisite for the company to hold a sale.

“Any player who would like to leave a review, please do so as soon as possible. The reason being is that we would like to see the ‘Recent Reviews’ change as soon as possible, so that we can do our first sale. It’s a very achievable task but one that requires the community, new players, devs, and old players to work together.”

Early Access: Battle Royale Survivors Is Lazy Dreck


I had to give Battle Royale: Survivors a look, it just had to be done.

Battle Royale: Survivors is the latest in the long line of developers jumping on the PUBG bandwagon and if you’re thinking that this game looks like a twinstick shovelware title built off of the Unity engine, well you’re right on two of the three points. Survivors isn’t a twinstick game, although it would be a much higher quality product if it were. What it is is a shovelware title built on Unity that hopes to piggyback on an existing trend.

Survivors launched into early access on June 18, by which I of course mean that the game launched riddled with bugs and unfinished features, but a functioning cash shop where you can purchase money packs up to the best offer at $24.99. Cash can be swapped for TK, the in-game currency, at a base rate of 2,000TK per $1 USD, meaning the loot boxes run for between $2.50-$3.50 apiece, plus an extra dollar for keys for the higher two options. Additional characters will run you nearly 10k TK, or $5 give or take. Alternately you can grind TK through the games at such a snail’s pace that the game will become unbearable long before you even get close to unlocking your first crate.

Unfortunately the cash shop won’t be able to save a game that is currently sitting at barely enough players to fill up a quarter of a standard battle royale match, and I sit here waiting for my latest match to hit the bare minimum ten players needed to get started.

I’ve already noted that Survivors is not a twin stick shooter, but this is important because the isometric camera might have suggested otherwise. In this game you move with the WASD keys and your character attacks where your are pointed. This leads to shooting mechanics that are so poorly handled and controlled that I found myself constantly coming in the top 3 simply running around in the open with some sort of melee weapon and zerging out my enemies.

Shooting mechanics in Survivors are worthless, to the point where holding a weapon is a detriment in many situations. You can hold the right mouse button to aim, but you move so slow and the aiming itself is so wonky that anyone can run up behind you and start whacking away with a baseball bat, the janky controls and laggy nature of the game allowing them to just jolt left and right while you fumble and try to hit them. In addition, weapons are stupidly underpowered to the point of being useless in their own right.

Which isn’t to say that this title has zero good ideas. The idea to implement fog of war makes it possible to sneak up on people, and the wonky controls actually make it a viable strategy because you can’t really easily keep a 360 degree view on your surroundings. Unfortunately, that’s it. It’s the spicy dijon mustard in the dog food sandwich.

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But I call this game lazy because that is exactly what it is. Hastily cobbled together on Unity to throw into early access and hope that people pay far more than the game is worth for the simple act of changing your default character. Nowhere else is this idea of laziness more blatant than the massive buildings that will block your view and make huge swaths of the map impossible to interact with.

If Survivors became a twin-stick shooter, where your character faced the mouse and you had a reticle, the game would be 25% better. Otherwise, right now this game feels like yet another cheap, lazy, unity-based shovelware title. One where the game conveniently tells you to shove off after you complete a match and doesn’t let you continue playing. Really, it’s for your own good.

Bless Online To Offer Big Update On America Day (July 4)


Neowiz has announced the next big content patch for Bless Online hitting Steam digital shelves on July 4. The update introduces new royalty quests, daily missions available at level 45 that offer better rewards than standard quests and can be completed up to 15 per day in return for rare pets and mounts, among other things. In addition, Basel George is a new area that can be tackled at level 45 with a group.

Finally the update will make market changes and improvements to the market UI.

(Source: Producer’s letter)

PSA: Shadowrun Returns Free Until Saturday


The Steam Summer Sale might be bumping, but right now you can get your hands on the isometric game Shadowrun Returns for the virtually free price of $0. Available via the Humble Store and delivered as a Steam key, the Shadowrun Returns Deluxe Edition still retails for $25 and includes the base game as well as the Anthology DLC and soundtrack.

But like any great deal, this one is time limited and will end mid-day Saturday. Our time wizards peg this promotion as ending at 1p.m. EST on June 23.

The Crew 2 Hits Open Beta, Mostly Negative Reviews


The Crew 2 open beta has officially begun for this weekend, and it looks like gamers aren’t quite happy about what developer Ivory Tower is offering.

If you head over to the Steam page, where The Crew 2 currently stands at 37% positive, a large portion of the negative reviews seem to focus on poor handling of the game’s various vehicle types. The Crew 2 lets you race using cars, boats, and planes, all of which control rather rigidly according to early Steam players. While many of the reviews acknowledged that the graphics and performance are a positive, although frame rates are apparently locked to 60, some reviews pointed to the game’s “cringey millennial dialogue” as a point of contention.

Thankfully with the open beta running until June 24, you can try it out for yourself with the only cost being bandwidth and time.

The Netherlands Litigated On CS:Go Lootboxes, So Valve Killed Trading In the Netherlands


Gamers in the Netherlands woke up this week to find out that they are no longer able to trade or market items in Counter Strike: Global Offensive or Dota 2. Following a ruling by the Dutch government that Valve’s systems constituted a violation of its laws on gambling, threatening criminal prosecution unless the word of the law was met, which according to Valve wasn’t actually detailed in said threat.

So in response, until Valve can better understand how to work under Dutch law, they have gone ahead and disabled trading entirely for users in the Netherlands. This change affects Counter Strike: GO and Dota 2, however since the ruling affects any game where items can be won by chance and then traded outside of the game, more Steam titles may be caught up in the future. So far the Dutch government has only noted the two of Valve’s titles.

(Source: Gamer Revolution)