Guise of the Wolf Dev Takes Down Negative YouTube Review - Update 2

[Kururu999]

Just floating another idea out there. Does anyone think that Valve deserves some of the blame for this?

The fact that Steam doesn't have a decent level of quality control for its games means that terrible games like this will be produced fairly often.

No. Stop parroting Jim. A year ago everyone was whining and complaining (probably including Jim, but I can't be assed to go looking for a quote) that Valve basically had a monopoly on PC games and if you weren't on steam you were boned. That's how greenlight came to be in the first place. Now that the floodgates are open everyone is whining and complaining that Steam isn't a walled garden anymore. If you use Steam you have the internet, spend 20 minutes googling something before you buy it, don't cry to mommy Gaben that your game sucked.

 

[K12]

Just floating another idea out there. Does anyone think that Valve deserves some of the blame for this?

The fact that Steam doesn't have a decent level of quality control for its games means that terrible games like this will be produced fairly often.

No. Stop parroting Jim. A year ago everyone was whining and complaining (probably including Jim, but I can't be assed to go looking for a quote) that Valve basically had a monopoly on PC games and if you weren't on steam you were boned. That's how greenlight came to be in the first place. Now that the floodgates are open everyone is whining and complaining that Steam isn't a walled garden anymore. If you use Steam you have the internet, spend 20 minutes googling something before you buy it, don't cry to mommy Gaben that your game sucked.

Surprisingly, it's possible to agree with someone without parroting them.

The phrase "floating an idea out there" should quite clearly imply that I'm not 100% behind the idea that Steam should be responsible for the quality of the things it sells. You must realize that this kind of post is not going to sway me towards your way of thinking, which is a shame since a relevant point was embedded amongst the rude self-righteousness.

Surely, it would be a good thing to improve the information available to consumers on Steam? Yes, I can find the information somewhere else (although not if "Fun"Creators have their way) but it's good for both me and Steam if they provide me with good information. It saves me time and increases my consumer loyalty to them. The only people this helps is shit developers trying to make a quick buck before people realize how crap their product is.

And frankly does anyone honestly believe that this game is worth £9.99? Isn't Steam presenting it as such an implicit endorsement of it.

 

[LordLundar]

Just floating another idea out there. Does anyone think that Valve deserves some of the blame for this?

The fact that Steam doesn't have a decent level of quality control for its games means that terrible games like this will be produced fairly often.

:snip:

Obviously Valve's blame is well down the list after "Fun"Creator and Youtube but they still contribute in some way to the environment where this kind of shit happens.

As does any store, physical or digital. If it was on another service would you be demanding the same thing for them as well?

Wow they sound crazy as hell "We feel that someone pushed you to make that video, who is this guy/organisation?", do these devs sit with tin foil hats blaming their failure on a conspiracy?

They're not the first or even the most notorious. Several big ticket devs and publishers blame piracy when their POS game doesn't sell millions of copies. Very similar really. Only real difference is the target. It's so common that it seems that to be a dev or publisher you almost HAVE to be a member of the tin foil hat brigade at this point.

 

[Vivi22]

I have to ask, but these "Emails" look like someone is literally fucking with TB. I mean no self-respecting corporation would 1. send out an email like that, 2. use language like that, 3. have zero signature block, or 4. I don't believe the email username in question.

I'm sorry, but I feel like he is getting trolled, and HARD. This all seems far too fake. I mean, "Jasmine" is their person in charge of answering this type of complaint? That's it, JASMINE? No last name? No office number or way to contact other than email? This is crap people. I bet you he could call them right now and they don't have a Jasmine working on their books. This is a troll DMCAing TB and trying very hard to kill, while regrettably a terrible company, a corporation that makes games.

Considering they're apparently a small indie company made up of a bunch of nobodies who lacked the requisite amount of skill to even make a mediocre game I could believe that they are that unprofessional. They wouldn't be the first people at a small company to be that bad and they won't be the last.

But here's the thing: even if we assume that the emails were faked and TB was getting trolled, a reasonable company would say that they didn't know what was going on, but once they had the whole story they'd let him know they were getting in touch with Youtube to get the claim against his video removed and sort out the whole situation.

They haven't done that. That I could have respected. What they've done is the exact opposite of that. Instead they've accused TB of faking the emails, of being a liar, and basically handed him a defamation suit on a silver platter. Based on their responses to his tweets, even if they weren't the ones responsible, they'd still be just as guilty for doing nothing to fix the situation, and just as bad for being complete assholes about it.

So based on their responses to his tweets I have little doubt those emails are authentic. Their tweets are just further confirmation of them being a bunch of unprofessional dick bags who probably aren't above lying publicly in a lame attempt to save face which has completely backfired.

Never mind that people have come out confirming they sent the take down notice, or that reddit users have demonstrated that a private steam profile which has been standing up for them on their forums is most likely being used by the developers.

 

[Cecilo]

Just floating another idea out there. Does anyone think that Valve deserves some of the blame for this?

The fact that Steam doesn't have a decent level of quality control for its games means that terrible games like this will be produced fairly often.

No. Stop parroting Jim. A year ago everyone was whining and complaining (probably including Jim, but I can't be assed to go looking for a quote) that Valve basically had a monopoly on PC games and if you weren't on steam you were boned. That's how greenlight came to be in the first place. Now that the floodgates are open everyone is whining and complaining that Steam isn't a walled garden anymore. If you use Steam you have the internet, spend 20 minutes googling something before you buy it, don't cry to mommy Gaben that your game sucked.

Surprisingly, it's possible to agree with someone without parroting them.

The phrase "floating an idea out there" should quite clearly imply that I'm not 100% behind the idea that Steam should be responsible for the quality of the things it sells. You must realize that this kind of post is not going to sway me towards your way of thinking, which is a shame since a relevant point was embedded amongst the rude self-righteousness.

Surely, it would be a good thing to improve the information available to consumers on Steam? Yes, I can find the information somewhere else (although not if "Fun"Creators have their way) but it's good for both me and Steam if they provide me with good information. It saves me time and increases my consumer loyalty to them. The only people this helps is shit developers trying to make a quick buck before people realize how crap their product is.

And frankly does anyone honestly believe that this game is worth £9.99? Isn't Steam presenting it as such an implicit endorsement of it.

No. I don't think so, I really have my doubts steam sets the prices of games. More than likely the creator of the game sets the price, tells Valve what they want the price to be. And then the people who run the steam pages apply it to that.

As for the shared blame, no. I really don't think so. It is up to YOU, not steam to do research on something. They offer you the OPPORTUNITY to buy a game. And regardless of what Steam does, it seems they will get backlash. Before the Floodgates it was a pain in the ass to get through greenlight, before that there was no greenlight. Each time people complained that it wasn't open enough, now they allow everyone through and people complain that Steam refuses to check the product. Well guess what, they can't check every product, there are to many Indies. Couple that with the fact that someone VOTED for these games, well someone must enjoy them. So. No, Steam isn't to blame for my, your or anyone else doing a lack of research.

 

[bossfight1]

I'm actually finding this very entertaining; it may seem cruel, but I like seeing stupid people throwing hissy fits like this. It's like the devs think that taking TB down (which they WON'T) will magically make their game BETTER, or will make everyone actually buy it.

But seriously, though, Youtube needs to change their whole copyright system so this crap won't keep happening; no automated "Oh, you want that vid taken down? Sure! BOOM," crap. Actually human-driven methods where the dev has to make a legit claim, where someone from Youtube needs to actually look at the video and see for themselves whether it actually infringes on copyright laws... This crap is not, never was, and never WILL be okay.

 

[Callate]

I would hope (perhaps with excessive optimism) that Youtube would be concerned about this.

The relative popularity of many of Youtube's channels (and the accompanying ad revenue) comes in a large part from the sense that the creators of those channels are a sort of "grassroots" movement, one largely free of the biases and manipulation of more "mainstream" media sources, a rawer and less professional breed but one with a certain inherent honesty and passion that makes them closer to their viewership.

If it becomes the conventional wisdom that it's this easy to suppress negative publicity, those channels' reputation as a whole may suffer. And certainly, many video creators arent going to have the relative success of someone like Total Biscuit; at the first sign of possible legal action, right or wrong, they're likely to fold, frightened of long-term financial strife from what for them amounts to a hobby with perhaps a very small monetary benefit.

I'm beginning to think we need more solid and indisputable court precedents in the favor of digital content creators and fair use; twenty-first century law really doesn't seem to be keeping up.

 

[Valok]

Oh man, christmas has come earlier for the internet. I mean, bashing is great and whatnot but on these cases where someone trully deserves a real beating, it becomes almost therapeutic relaxing to drop the hammer on ppl like these.

Honestly, if this is all really true, what we have here is a clear combination of stupidity + lack of knowledge of how the (Mostly PC in this case) Gaming World works around the internet.

This is a Garrus "Incident" 2.0 - Enhanced Edition. They have no idea of what this means for then short and long term wise.

 

[Altorin]

Oh man, christmas has come earlier for the internet. I mean, bashing is great and whatnot but on these cases where someone trully deserves a real beating, it becomes almost therapeutic relaxing to drop the hammer on ppl like these.

Honestly, if this is all really true, what we have here is a clear combination of stupidity + lack of knowledge of how the (Mostly PC in this case) Gaming World works around the internet.

This is a Garrus "Incident" 2.0 - Enhanced Edition. They have no idea of what this means for then short and long term wise.

I would totally play a Garrus Incident game.

 

[2fish]

Jim Sterling must be pissed I mean they took down TB's video but not his.

It would be nice if youtube got it's shit together and at least make a penalty to people that abuse the system.

This will be interesting to watch.

 

[CelestDaer]

So, I had to go look at the sales page on Steam for this game, and I swear it sounds like a game one of my classmates at Sanford Brown kept trying to pitch at the rest of us. If it weren't for the medieval setting, it would be... I wouldn't put it past him, either, to try to DMCA anyone criticizing his work.

 

[seditary]

Another fun addition here, but this was apparently tweeted by Fun Creators as well.
http://i.imgur.com/dVh4j21.jpg

That is their "proof" that the image Totalbiscuit linked in his twitter ( http://i.imgur.com/w1iLIhi.png ) was obviously photoshopped. Note, of course, that the image Fun Creators submitted has text that is darker and even slightly fuzzier than the one Total tweeted out.


I'd personally like to thank them for proving that totalbiscuits is the more realistic and unphotoshopped image here. I don't know why they did it (oh wait, yes I do because they are idiots), but they did it.

Holy shit what.

So they photoshopped an image and posted it to try to prove that TB photoshopped his image?

Its gotta be drugs seriously.

 

[Allspice]

WTF, again?! Wow...I, I'm...just wow. What do they hope to gain by this, it's going to go down exactly the same way the thing with Day One: Garry's Incident did.

It's not like you even needed TB's video to see this game is utter trash. There is an LP of the game up (or at least there was, I don't know if it still is) and it highlights everything wrong with the game. That LPer was a frickin' trooper for getting through it.

 

[sleeky01]

Who the fuck writes emails like that? Honestly, what kind of professional company, in any field, would send emails like that?

'close your channel 'we are a big company with lawyers' ....WHAT? LOL

I'd actually consider this whole thing to be a giant troll of some kind, if not for the 'game' they released which is actually horrible on such a scale that I'm inclined to believe these devs might be for real, although they are probably teenagers.

Even with the release of said 'game' the idea of it being a huge troll is starting to whisper in the back of my mind.

As stated by someone in this thread (sorry I forget who that was) their webpage is indeed created by a Microsoft Office template. They say on their website that they are based temporally out of Amman, Jordon. They are using Godaddy out of Singapore for said website.

Fine an indie company would do whatever to try to save money, but this seems so......scattered to me.

Perhaps if they are indeed sitting in Jordan/Singapore lawyers from outside can't do a damm thing to them.

 

[dessertmonkeyjk]

Is there some people at FUN Creators just trying to sabotage the whole company by making them look bad because of some personal vendetta? I can't say that's not a possibility but considering what I seen so far...

Just trying to look at this from another perspective is all.

 

[weirdee]

pff, if they had money for lawyers, then they should really be paying for actual game development

either somebody's got their priorities wrong or they're bluffing

 

[Ratty]

pff, if they had money for lawyers, then they should really be paying for actual game development

either somebody's got their priorities wrong or they're bluffing

Helps to have a lawyer. They're like maps for the courtroom.

Also I'm 99.9% positive that I saw this game on Greenlight shortly after the service came about. And it didn't get Greenlit. I'd bet dollars to donuts Steam went back and pushed the game through because "The Wolf Among Us" is doing well.

 

[A-D.]

pff, if they had money for lawyers, then they should really be paying for actual game development

either somebody's got their priorities wrong or they're bluffing

Helps to have a lawyer. They're like maps for the courtroom.

Also I'm 99.9% positive that I saw this game on Greenlight shortly after the service came about. And it didn't get Greenlit. I'd bet dollars to donuts Steam went back and pushed the game through because "The Wolf Among Us" is doing well.

Which makes no sense when you think about it. What would Valve gain from this? Thats like arguing that GameStop would fund BF5 because CoD is doing well, they gain nothing from it because they are simply a distributor. Yes Valve still makes games occasionally, but steam is really just a distribution platform, its the digital equivalent of a brick and mortar store. The 10% cut Valve gets per sale would not justify this when they get the same, if not more from selling The Wolf among Us, which by the way is priced 10 bucks higher and is from a known developer who has several good games under their belt.

In short, there is no reason that Valve would push this through, if anything it means that alot of people could have voted on it being greenlit just because, maybe they wanted to give them a chance, maybe they were trolling, maybe the devs themselves made tons of new accounts to vote for themselves. If anything it proves how easy it is to game the system, or to abuse it if necessary. Which i saw coming when greenlight was announced, its basicly a popularity contest, games arent judged on merit, but rather who gets more people to vote for them. Its equally as pointless and vapid as the next Miss America/Miss World/Mister Universe Contest.

That being said, this is another case of a developer, or in the usual case it would be a publisher, trying to strong-arm critics into silence. The threat of legal action is often enough to shut smaller channels up, the problem only comes, for them anyway, when they hit a bigger channel that can actually fight this. Even smaller channels can, though usually less successful (3 strikes rule) in that no Dev or IP Holder would take them to court over this, in most cases they hope the target of their Takedown will just shut up and leave it as is, when you counter-file a DCMA or whatever, and it actually gets to a legal level, the "IP Holder" usually "settles out of court" so to speak, because they gain nothing.

If anything, Youtube needs to revise its 3-strikes policy to only take effect if and when a notice isnt contested within say a week, i.e. if you get 3 DCMA Takedowns that you dont contest, your channel gets deleted, once you contest that claim, it goes to the legal level and goes from there, but you dont get a strike instantly. Equally, DCMA Trolls should get banhammered equally, and this includes big dogs such as Capcom, Nintendo and EA, as well as basicly everyone else. If you file 3 DCMA Takedowns wrongfully you lose the right to file another takedown for a year, meaning if you abuse the system you cant use it for a full year.

 

[Ratty]

Which makes no sense when you think about it. What would Valve gain from this?

Money from all the people who got turned onto the idea of werewolf video games by "The Wolf Among Us". Or from people who were like "Hm I heard that "Wolf" game on steam was pretty good. Oh wait there's 2 of them? Well I'll just grab them both. It's still cheaper than buying 1 AAA game, #YOLO lol."

Thats like arguing that GameStop would fund BF5 because CoD is doing well, they gain nothing from it because they are simply a distributor.

No, it's like GameStop distributing BF5 because modern military shooters are doing very well. Which they are and GameStop will do. Except steam doesn't even have to buy up (potentially unsold) physical copies. It's made to order. They essentially lose nothing if the game doesn't sell.

The 10% cut Valve gets per sale would not justify this when they get the same, if not more from selling The Wolf among Us, which by the way is priced 10 bucks higher and is from a known developer who has several good games under their belt.

They want to sell games to people who've already bought "The Wolf Among Us" to. The logic isn't hard to see "Hey, looks like werewolf games might be getting popular, let's get some more of those."

In short, there is no reason that Valve would push this through, if anything it means that alot of people could have voted on it being greenlit just because, maybe they wanted to give them a chance, maybe they were trolling, maybe the devs themselves made tons of new accounts to vote for themselves. If anything it proves how easy it is to game the system, or to abuse it if necessary. Which i saw coming when greenlight was announced, its basicly a popularity contest, games arent judged on merit, but rather who gets more people to vote for them. Its equally as pointless and vapid as the next Miss America/Miss World/Mister Universe Contest.

Except that the game wasn't greenlit I know because (unless I'm badly confusing it with another game) I thought it looked interesting and voted to give it a chance.[footnote]I'm a sucker for both werewolves and cel shading. Which I thought the game was from the deceptive screenshots.[/footnote] But then it just disappeared from my voting history after a few months, and it doesn't say it was greenlit on the store page.

I agree with the rest of your post but yeah, Valve isn't blameless for letting this broken mess get on their store, especially since it didn't even go through greenlight. It's another example of them putting stuff on the store without any kind of quality assurance.