Tag: Steam

Wildstar Finds New Life On Steam


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Wildstar has been on Steam for nearly a month, and it looks like the population has remained pretty stable since the initial launch day. While the game doesn’t look like it’ll be topping any sales records, it looks like Steam has introduced new life to the previously waning MMO.

In its first month on Steam, Wildstar peaked at five thousand players. As the chart shows, it’s been pretty stable since then with an average of 1.5 thousand concurrent users and a daily peak of about three thousand. Concurrent users predictably rise and drop over the course of each day, with the low points in activity during overnight periods in the west.

The community seems mostly pleased, with 77% positive reviews on Steam.

Conan Exiles Delayed to January 2017


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Conan Exiles is begin delayed, and for good reason. In an announcement posted on the Steam Early Access page today, Joel Bylos has revealed that additional funding has allowed the studio more flexibility in getting the game up to snuff before putting it on the store.

We have come to realize that we would like to spend a little more time creating our vision of Hyboria before we release it into Early Access. Having very recently secured additional funding for our studio which has made our financial situation much more flexible than even just a few weeks back, we want to take advantage of that and move Early Access to January 2017. With the extra time in development, we believe we can make a better game for you, the fans.

(Source: Steam)

PSA: Steam Sale Starts This Week


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MMO Fallout would like to issue a public service announcement to remind our viewers that the Steam Summer Sale begins June 23rd and runs through July 4th. In preparation for the sale, we’ve listed some tips to help you spend wisely.

  • Because of Steam refunds, daily sales are no longer a thing. Once a game is on sale it will stay at that price for the duration of the sale.
  • Games purchased during Steam sales are still eligible for refunds. Same rules apply, two weeks and under two hours of gameplay.
  • If you bought a game in the past week, played past the refund period, and it goes on sale, try emailing Steam customer service and ask for the sale price. It isn’t 100% guaranteed to work, but it has for some in the past.
  • Buy Steam Wallet cards: Thanks to an incredible Steam sale back in 2013 where I inexplicably wound up spending about $200, I now buy Steam wallet cards and remove the credit card off of my account during Steam sales. We all like to think of ourselves as fully in control until those 75% markers start showing up.
  • Build a wishlist: Pick the games you really want and throw them on a wishlist. There will be tens of thousands of Steam games on sale and not nearly enough time to wade through them.
  • Steam Bundles: It used to be that Steam bundles were worthless if you owned one or more games in the collection. It is now possible for publishers to pro-rate their collections, so you’ll still get the sale price minus the cost of whatever games in the collection you already own.
  • Pricing Errors: Guaranteed to happen once or twice over the course of the sale due to some publisher placing the decimal point in the wrong spot. This happens right when the sales change and are fixed within minutes, so grab them fast. A few lucky users managed to pick up Tropico 4 for less than a dollar a couple of years back.
  • Trading cards can be obtained in your games and sold for cash money (Steam wallet cash money anyhow). In most games, you can simply idle and gather up their trading cards to sell on the open Steam market. Ten cents here, twenty cents there, it adds up over time and means your games can effectively fund other games.
  • Check the competition: Just because a game is on sale on Steam doesn’t mean you’re getting the best price. Before you hit that buy button, check out https://isthereanydeal.com/ for competing prices. You may just get a better deal.

If you have any tips of your own for Steam shopping, leave a comment in the box below and let us know.

Wild Terra Successfully Voted Through Greenlight


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Developer Juvty Worlds has announced that their open world sandbox MMO Wild Terra has successfully been voted on by the Steam Greenlight community. Juvty thanks the nearly six thousand users who voted to pass the title, bringing it to the top 5 voted games and winning the approval from Valve.

With all of the recent hubbub over developers fraudulently buying votes and reviews, it’s good to see a small developer that can be trusted. I’ve had a few chances here and there to play Wild Terra and have found the game to be very enjoyable.

More coverage of Wild Terra to come.

(Source: Juvty Worlds press release)

Valve Bans Rai Studio Games Over Fraudulent Reviews


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Say hello to the new Digital Homicide.

Electric Zombies got a very small nod here at MMO Fallout last week where we discussed the game Zombie Rush and how it was definitely buying reviews. I mentioned at the time that the legion of bots were busy farming time on a game Electric Zombies by Rai Studio Games. I made a note to keep an eye on Rai Studio Games over the weekend, knowing that sooner or later the chickens would come home to roost and we’d be seeing a tidal wave of positive reviews for their games.

Well the weekend has come and gone, and it’s time to check the hen house. Electric Zombies is now available for purchase, although you can’t buy it. In fact, you can’t buy any of Rai Studio Games’, uh, games. Over the course of the weekend, the purchase button has been completely removed. Unfortunately that means no more Base Squad 49, no more Lands of Devastation, or Rapid Squirrels either. Presumably, RSG’s current list of Greenlight titles will not be eligible for release.

Some more good news: The apparent leaders of the bot group are this guy, this guy, and this guy. The group that the bots congregated around is gone, however the bot accounts are still present with many having been given community bans.

There has been some speculation that these games are being used for money laundering purposes, the game Lemurzin has a $100 DLC that does basically nothing.

MMO Fallout will be keeping an eye out on the legion of review bots (that we know of) and will keep you abreast of any updates as they arise.

Conan Exiles Enters Early Access In September


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Conan Exiles is now available to add to your wishlist on Steam, however the game itself won’t be available for another few months. In a press release published today, Funcom has revealed that its multiplayer survival game Conan Exiles will be heading to Steam Early Access in September.

Accompanying the announcement is a brand new trailer showing off some early gameplay, with players laying siege to castles, building, destroying, and generally slaughtering each other in massive numbers.

“We’re very excited (and a bit nervous) about launching our first Early Access title,” said Funcom CEO Rui Casais. “The team wants to give the players the best possible experience, and while we are used to working on a game for several years before letting players in, this time around we will let players in just nine months after development started!”

As with any early access game, Age of Conan will not be feature complete upon its initial launch. Customers should keep that fact in mind before they make their purchase.

[NM] ZombieRush Is Definitely Buying Reviews


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I have no idea if ZombieRush is a good game, its Steam page would definitely seem to imply so despite the top two most helpful reviews being overwhelmingly negative.

The most recent review (as of this publishing) is by user tyXYDelcatQU, who I will call Ty for the foreseeable future. I looked into Ty’s account and he appears to be playing Electric Zombies. Ty has three reviews for the 44 products in his account, two of which are exactly the same: “Very simple, straightforward gameplay but highly entertaining. 9/10.” All three games have 3.9-4.1 hours invested in them.

But whoever said lacking creativity was a crime? Let’s go down to #2, user yXSSkittJH, who I will be referring to as Skitt. Now Skitt has three reviews out of 44 games in their library and has reviewed ZombieRush, BaseSquad 49, and The Culling of the Cows, the same three games as Ty above with identical reviews on two games. Skitt was also playing Electric Zombies at the time of this publishing.

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Alright, two could still be a coincidence. Let’s look at the following set of reviews to see if there is a correlation.

There appear to be around 200 fake reviews in a row, and I know because I counted all of them, all by accounts with the same three games, same review structure, same comments in many cases (reviewing two games exactly the same and then reviewing Culling of the Cows as ‘gg’). Like every instance of mass production, the reviews come in blocks. Thirty reviews in a row from accounts with 44 games and 3 reviews, followed by another fifty of accounts with 50 games and 4 reviews.

So it’s obvious that Zombie Rush is buying reviews in bulk, thinking that the average consumer is too stupid to notice hundreds of positive, one line reviews written by accounts with generated names and the same number of games/reviews, all playing the same games.

ZombieRush was developed by Arthur Kariev.

[Community] The Beast That Wouldn’t Stop It


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It’s time for another Community Monday here at DH Fallout, the website that used to cover those online games, and as usual I have another Digital Homicide update for you. The last post on Digital Homicide got such a huge response that it shut down the website for part of the day. The positive side is that it spurred me to upgrade us to Cloudflare, so this shouldn’t be a problem going forward.

Despite having nearly two dozen of their games slammed with an “incompatible with Greenlight” sticker from Valve, rejection both by the gaming community at large and now their would-be host doesn’t seem to be slowing the developer down. No, on Sunday the 5th, Digital Homicide added another seven games to their Greenlight portfolio. Let’s break them down:

  • Barnacle Explorer Sub: Fish Rescue – Another Space Invaders clone, the exact same looking game from the dozen other clones DH uploaded last week.
  • Barnacle Explorer Sub: Shark Rescue – A clone of the game above, but with sharks instead of fish.
  • Barnacle Explorer Sub: Octo Helper – A clone of the game above, but with octopus instead of sharks.
  • Mike the Astronaut: Battle on Arturian Twelve – A clone of the game above, but in space.
  • Star Scream on Orion – Looks like a clone of DH’s other game, Decimation of Olarath.
  • Sharktastic Yum Yums – Probably as close as you’ll get to an original Digital Homicide title.

What caught my eye is the last game on the list, Clickerton Gang. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why this game in particular was screaming for my attention, at least not until a couple of people on Twitter pointed it out: We’ve seen Clickerton Gang before.

Clickerton Gang was first put up on Greenlight by user Bobmiddleton80, an indie developer who appeared out of the blue with three games ready for the Steam community to vote on. We first heard of Bob Middleton under allegations that the account was actually a sock puppet of Digital Homicide. One of Middleton’s games, as it turns out, was Clickerton Gang. In what can only be pure coincidence, the logo for Clickerton Gang bears a strong resemblance to Digital Homicide’s game Wyatt Derp. You might even say it looks like two alternatives to the same stock photo.

You have to imagine that Valve is getting tired of Digital Homicide’s shenanigans. The seven new games weren’t even up for a day and Valve has already struck down five of them as incompatible with Greenlight. This leaves DH with 50 games currently on Greenlight. 26 of its titles are listed as “incompatible with Greenlight.”

With the developer shoveling more trash into the pile every week and Valve increasingly stomping down on it, you have to wonder how long it takes until the developer is blacklisted from uploading new titles period, and whether or not that will be enough to prevent an entity that has had no problem changing its name in the past.

[Not Massive] Valve Just Struck Down Digital Homicide


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In the world of Steam and shady developers, no name has drawn quite as much hatred from the gaming public like Digital Homicide. Not unlike similar personalities including Uwe Boll, Digital Homicide’s notoriety is only superseded by the fact that the perception of its following is much higher than the real numbers. What it does have, however, is the ability to flip Unity engine assets and turn those into cookie cutter games that are quickly becoming parodies of themselves.

downloadFast forward to Steam Greenlight, a service that Digital Homicide has flooded with dozens of titles. As of this publishing, the company has more than forty titles in its Greenlight section. You read that correctly, more than forty. In their rush to clutter the service with as many titles as possible, Digital Homicide has resorted to putting out entire series of games that appear to be quite literally the exact same game but with different stock images.

To the left is Daisy’s Sweet Time: Cupcake Mania 3. It is identical to the other two iterations of the game plastered on Greenlight, and functionally it is also identical to Merle Wizard Extraordinaire #1, 2, and 3, all posted on the exact same day. Those games, in turn, are identical down to the placement of enemies, to Sarah to the Rescue, and its four sequels. Eleven games, all posted to Steam on the same day, all completely identical except for the art. As of this posting, there are more than a dozen Space Inavders clones up on Greenlight through Digital Homicide.

download (1)And the list goes on. Games that are reskins of other Digital Homicide games, sequels upon sequels that are the exact same title coming out at the same time as the original, functionally identical except for slight changes in art.

Because I am a veritable soothsayer of the gaming industry, I started this piece yesterday to convey the message that Valve should do its job and strike these games down. As so happens in the magical box that is the WordPress draft folder, my wish was granted and Valve has struck down many of Digital Homicide’s current Greenlight games.

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If you head over to their workshop, you’ll notice that a good two dozen of Digital Homicide’s games have been blackmarked by Valve as “incompatible with Greenlight.” Whether or not this fully disqualifies titles for release is up for debate, however Valve has clearly shown their disapproval for Digital Homicide’s release tactics.

Overall, 22 of Digital Homicide’s games have been slapped with an incompatible tag. Despite being labeled as incompatible, Wyatt Derp 2 is still available for purchase. Granted, the game was made available before Valve tagged the title, so the future of Digital Homicide’s presence on Steam is certainly in question.

MMO Fallout will update with more information as it becomes available.

Kings and Heroes Goes On Early Access Today


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Kings and Heroes feels like a game out of Dungeons and Dragons, and those interested in plundering its depths can do so starting today. Billed as an ARPG, Kings and Heroes presents players with randomly generated dungeons, persistent content, and a seamless open world.

With hundreds of players in each world you’ll have plenty of company to explore by foot or on horseback. Discover towns, villages, ruins, ghost towns, high mountains, lakes, and valleys across varied environments. You’ll travel in realistic day and night cycles with true weather effects. Be warned, many dangerous creatures inhabit the world so an adventurer must always be prepared for a fight.

The game will go live in about three hours from this posting, after which it will be available for $29.95. Those who create a character within the first week will receive a small handful of exclusive items.

(Source: Steam)