Jimquisition: Air Control - A Steam Abuse Story

[Gerardo Vazquez]

snip

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to raise the specter of Anita Sarkesian, stopping all legitimate conversation in it's tracks to in order to needlessly whine about something that isn't relevant to the conversation, no matter how much they ~Insist~ it is.

It mostly isn't, but I do want to point out hypocrisy when I see it. Also I didn't mention any name to keep the conversation from derailing completely. So far it has worked out nicely I think.

~Sigh~ "Hypocrisy" isn't exactly the right word to describe this situation. The whole "Anita Sarkeesian is a scammer." story going around is based on some pretty circumstantial evidence, and general intuition without much solid evidence as opposed to the "Earth 2066" debacle, which is obvious lies and scamming no matter how you look at it. So yeah I'm not going to get my nickers in a twist, and cry "hypocrisy" if Jim doesn't feel like addressing the Anita Scam controversy with the same fervor as the Earth 2066 controversy. If a woman were to release a broken game on Steam for money, and moderate her forums so that only positive word of mouth was going around, and Jim acted like nothing was wrong I'd be on your side, but Muxwell does not equal Anita in this situation.

 

[sneakypenguin]

Steam really needs to break up its marketplace into 2 storefronts 1 for established AAA and indie devs,and then a storefront with the random junk. trying to filter all the junk is getting absurd. Just allow games to break out of the 2nd one once they hit say 1000 sales.

PC gaming is sometimes annoying enough as is the #1 store doesn't need to make it more obnoxious.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

So, for all the people who want Steam to filter content, can you give one consistently enforceable policy, with little to no inherent subjectivity, the would prevent Air Control from being on the store, but still allow Surgeon Simulator 2013?

Why does it have to lack subjectivity?

I support filtering Steam's content, but I believe it should be done subjectively. I'm not sure why you think objectivity is required. Humans aren't objective beings, we aren't algorithms. Games are a creative field, and should be judged subjectively, not objectively.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

I'll withhold copyright infringement allegations until said copyright holders actually file suit to such effect. I suggest you do the same. Seriously. How do you know they did not optain express permission to use the assets they did. I've heard no legal filings, I've seen no cease and desist orders.. So really if the people who legally own the copyright aren't throwing lawyers at them ... well then it may be safe to say the guy has found some nifty fair-use loophole.

No, that's not "safe to say" at all. In fact, it's a rather silly thing to say.

Firstly, lawyers are expensive, and this developer probably has no money. There is likely nothing to be gained, and a lot to be lost, by filing suit against this developer. Secondly, this title is obscure - the owners of the copyright are likely not even aware of the infringement.

The lack of a lawsuit is not evidence of lack of infringement. Thousands of copyright enragements happen every day without a lawsuit ever being filed. Hell, I'm a photographer, and I've had my images used without permission. But the costs of prosecuting those infringements is prohibitive, and the infringers live in other countries. It would cost a large amount of money to start litigation, and most likely have zero reward.

Using your same logic - if a person is found murdered, yet nobody has been charged with the murder, does that mean the murder never happened because there is no lawsuit over it?

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Sure you can point to things like Earth 2020 or Airplane but I'm much more worried about GOOD games that have gone through thanks to steams laissez faire policy that wouldn't have made it otherwise, and had steam users had their way, wouldn't have let them in either since it doesn't appeal to their specific tastes.

To give an example, I'm quite fond of some VN games made by winterwolf, who struggled since over a year ago to get their games into steam. Once they were finally in, you had a fair few steam users raging at VN type games and dismissing them as shovelware and moaning about steam letting crappy devs in. Had a rigid steam quality control existed, I'm not confident winterwolves would have made it onto steam.

So what?

There are plenty of other ways to sell or release games. Steam is not the only vendor on the market. People who want to release games can always sell them direct from their own website. Not being sold on Steam is not the same as censorship.

 

[Darknacht]

So, for all the people who want Steam to filter content, can you give one consistently enforceable policy, with little to no inherent subjectivity, the would prevent Air Control from being on the store, but still allow Surgeon Simulator 2013?

Why does it have to lack subjectivity?

I support filtering Steam's content, but I believe it should be done subjectively. I'm not sure why you think objectivity is required. Humans aren't objective beings, we aren't algorithms. Games are a creative field, and should be judged subjectively, not objectively.

So whos version of good do you want them to use judge games to not allow on steam?

 

[Aardvaarkman]

So whos version of good do you want them to use judge games to not allow on steam?

Whoever they hire to do Quality Control.

 

[Darknacht]

So whos version of good do you want them to use judge games to not allow on steam?

Whoever they hire to do Quality Control.

I'm sure that will be about as reliable as rolling a die.

 

[webkilla]

The people pointing out the issues of QC with Steam (pointing out that the games like CoD: Ghosts wouldn't be there due to lying about their requirements, or Watch Dogs being unoptimized as hell)

If anything I think Steam would work well with some basic categorization on the store page.

I know that simply making an 'indie' category would be silly. This has been talked about already why that is.

But we clearly need some kind of category for these very low-budget games - or something like that.

Perhaps also a section for mobile game ports - since they seem to be flooding steam just the same these days.

 

[VonBrewskie]

Whoo. You're in top form this week Jim. Nice one. Thanks for the heads up

 

[RvLeshrac]

Watch_Dogs doesn't launch for many people. Some were banned from UPlay for "too many attempts" to activate because keys would not work. To this day, multiplayer will not work for many PC and XBOne users. It was intentionally broken, by the developer, on AMD PC hardware.

"4.5/5" -Jim Sterling

Did you miss the PS4 (Reviewed) part of that review? I'm sure the score would be much lower if he had played the PC version. Maybe even if he reviewed the Xbox One version (I'm not sure whether the whole multiplayer being broken thing is true).

And the issue is that it *doesn't fucking matter* which version was reviewed at the end of the day, it doesn't excuse releasing broken garbage and charging $60 for it, but the only site that has actually covered their broken shit is RockPaperShotgun which, conveniently, is the only site that didn't give it a glowing, faultless review.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/6.851575.21053204

E.S. made some great points to be sure. However, even he made note that reviews can't really keep up with all the Steam releases, not just because there are so many, but because to stay in business they (Himself included) have to cover the larger and more anticipated titles.
While it would be ideal for reviewers to do as E.S. wished at the end of the video and cover the games, letting us all know what ones are worth it. It just can't be taken care of by them alone.
Jim can only complain about so many games. ;p

Also, there is some room in-between having no quality control and having so much that only some game ever make it in.
Heck, they already do have quality control, so as a compromise they could just improve what they have so it reacts faster to troublemakers, and let the users have more freedom to comment without having anything negative deleted.

There's a spot in-between the absolutes where we can still have lots of games, but not let the devs behave in such ways.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/6.851575.21053204
"Indeed you know what im talking about so why don't you just leave it there huh? There's a reason I didn't fully say that name."

Actually, at first I thought you were talking about the dev of Depression Quest, Zoe Quinn. Which would have been even crazier.
Then I thought, why wouldn't he just name Zoe, or give the name of the game, Depression Que-
At that point I got why.

Because of course you where to scared to mention Anita Sarkeesian's name, Anita Sarkeensian.

Spoiler: Because Anita Sarkeesian is the big bad boogiewoman of video games.

[http://s105.photobucket.com/user/ihatephotob1/media/AnitaS_zps751e78ae.jpg.html]
" You think I'm attractive? ;p"

I'm wondering to myself if this call for 'Quality COntrol' has less to to with the problem of having genuine free choice in a market place and more to do with the fact that the critics see the sudden upswing in games as well a threat to their relevance. They may see the influx of games meaning that their ability to review and pick the games that will generate the greatest buzz/hits/views is eroding simply because there are more games for people to think about and it's less likely the critic will manage to pick the game that the viewers are thinking about.

I've never been one to rely on critics for actual recommendations. I mostly just watch them for the funny and maybe a little insight but in the end I always bas my decisions on what other players say, what I've seen of the promotional material and *how* the promo material is presented. What do the devs show?... what do they hide? Does this game look like something you'd have fun with after 40 hrs of doing what the material shows?

Seeing as how the games and devs are now famous for being crappy broken garbage, and vile liars. I doubt they doing better in terms of business.
I mean, Earth 2066 was taken off Steam and made to give refunds.

As for reviewers. Are they not also players?

I know they often have to meat deadlines so they can't always play the game as someone else would, but for the most part their experience is about as valid as any other person playing. As long as you can find ones who share your tastes in games.

As for the extra games to review, many reviewers complain about the yearly "game droughts", so this could actually help them. It's not as though they'd go out of business if they don't cover every game. Heck some of the reason they can't cover all the steam game is because they have to focus on the bigger, more anticipated games, or just the most popular ones.
Actually, it could make a new part of the business rather than hurt it. With people specializing in reviewing just all the new "indie" games coming out.

 

[Dragonbums]

oh wait I saw this on the steam best seller list.. oh wait no I didn't... Seriously Jim I get that there are some shit games on steam and something needs to happen, but these videos get old/

The thing is is that you get a lot more context if you watch his "Squirty Plays" on Youtube and (correct me if I'm wrong) is that how he goes about choosing these games is if he sees them on the front page he grabs them and plays. Which is what happened with Air Control.

The game is fucking trash nontheless. At one point his entire computer crash and he had to reboot his entire system.

 

[Alterego-X]

So what?

There are plenty of other ways to sell or release games. Steam is not the only vendor on the market. People who want to release games can always sell them direct from their own website.

There being one reliably running main platform for indies to sell their games on, is good for gaming. And besides, it's good for Steam's own sake. I would rather enjoy Steam being successful than letting it shrink into just another minor store while the blunt of the indie revolution is happening on various private websites.

Not being sold on Steam is not the same as censorship.

Actually it is. You are mixing it up with "freedom of speech", that is the one that only applies to government-suppressed communication.

But "censorship" applies to anything from corporate censorship to self-censorship. Whether it's Ubisoft censoring hiding away nipples inside a game that their devs made, or The Escapist deleting comments, it is all one type of censorship or another.

 

[Clunks]

I have a minor phobia about videogame glitches and the like, and an odd side effect of that is I occasionally have nightmares about playing videogames. The games I dream about are weird, nonsensical, broken and terrifying for reasons I couldn't really describe. The kicker is that in these dreams I am unable to turn the game off, and have no option but to stare at them until they suck my soul out through my eyeballs. Jim, I watched your squirty plays of this game and it was, and I'm not just being cute here, exactly like someone had brought my nightmares to grisly life.

It's perhaps for that reason that I absolutely respect the shit out of this game. It seems rather blatantly more a prank than a genuine attempt at a good game (and if it transpires it was the latter, then...holy fucking shit), but assuming I'm right then I still agree that it's a shitty thing to charge people for the privilege while promising something else. I don't respect the artist, but I wholeheartedly respect the art.

 

[Madame_Lawliet]

ALso, QC can be hard to actually nail down.
IF I was doing Quality Control then :
Call of Duty ghosts WILL NOT BE ON STEAM. They lied on requirements and made the game work bad on purpose, that is foul play for me.

I fail to see how this would be in any way a bad thing...

Anyway, yeah Steam desperately needs some damn quality control, it's gotten to the point where every week I look forward to hearing about the next worst game ever. I mean just in the last few months we've had Day One Garry's Incident, Guise of the Wolf, Recoil (although I understand that one was actually patched), Earth 2066, and now this shit.
Y'know I remember when being on Steam was considered a badge of honor in and of itself.
Today? Not so much.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

So whos version of good do you want them to use judge games to not allow on steam?

Whoever they hire to do Quality Control.

I'm sure that will be about as reliable as rolling a die.

Why? That's the result you'd get by using supposedly "objective" measures.

It's Valve's store, they can hire whoever they want, but if they were smart about it, they'd hire a small team that understands gaming and can curate the store to vastly improve signal-to-noise ratio. The end result, if done properly, would be better for users, and result in higher income for Steam.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

And the issue is that it *doesn't fucking matter* which version was reviewed at the end of the day, it doesn't excuse releasing broken garbage and charging $60 for it.

Actually, it does matter which platform it is reviewed on, because if it is broken for some platforms, but fine on others, then they aren't "releasing broken garbage" on all platforms.

 

[Frankster]

Sure you can point to things like Earth 2020 or Airplane but I'm much more worried about GOOD games that have gone through thanks to steams laissez faire policy that wouldn't have made it otherwise, and had steam users had their way, wouldn't have let them in either since it doesn't appeal to their specific tastes.

To give an example, I'm quite fond of some VN games made by winterwolf, who struggled since over a year ago to get their games into steam. Once they were finally in, you had a fair few steam users raging at VN type games and dismissing them as shovelware and moaning about steam letting crappy devs in. Had a rigid steam quality control existed, I'm not confident winterwolves would have made it onto steam.

So what?

There are plenty of other ways to sell or release games. Steam is not the only vendor on the market. People who want to release games can always sell them direct from their own website. Not being sold on Steam is not the same as censorship.

"So what?" is kinda lame in that it can be used as a retort to anything, I can just easily answer you back like that in an equally dismissive manner

But to address the actual meat of your statement: steam is not the only digital game vendor on the online market but it's the main one by far. I love GOG but it isn't in the same ballpark as steam, and then you have...what? Desura? Origin? Again not in Steams ballpark.
For a minor dev to get on steam is like hitting it "big time" due to exposure their products get, which is a big fucking deal when it comes to getting your game sold.

Yes plenty of devs sell on their own site, including winterwolves, and that has 0 exposure, you wouldn't know to look there if you weren't already aware of it. This is why minor devs want to be on steam so bad and quite a few of them (i've already named winterwolves so to give another example..the devs of dominions 4 or Distant Worlds: Universe) rightfully deserve their place there as they made good games. Getting your game in the steam library, having it appear on the new releases tab or just being on the front page, taking advantage of steam sales to hook in gamers who normally wouldn't have purchased the product... Can you really not see the advantages to being on steam for a small dev? Advantages that don't exist or are in much reduced form in any other digital distribution service due to steam having a monopoly in this particular market.

I don't believe I equated not being sold on steam as being the same as censorship, so gonna assume that's not directed at me.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

So what?

There are plenty of other ways to sell or release games. Steam is not the only vendor on the market. People who want to release games can always sell them direct from their own website.

There being one reliably running main platform for indies to sell their games on, is good for gaming.

Is it? How is a monopoly and lack of competition good for the market?

If you believe this, then I suppose you also must believe that the Apple App Store is good for gaming, as it's the dominant vendor of mobile games?

And besides, it's good for Steam's own sake. I would rather enjoy Steam being successful than letting it shrink into just another minor store while the blunt of the indie revolution is happening on various private websites.

How is Steam being full of crap like Air Control good for Steam? Them tightening up the store would be much better for their success, and that of indies. What they are doing now is just giving indies a bad name. Meanwhile, indies are doing quite well on closed platforms like Sony's PSN and Apple's store.

Not being sold on Steam is not the same as censorship.

Actually it is. You are mixing it up with "freedom of speech", that is the one that only applies to government-suppressed communication.

No, I'm not. Their games not being sold on Steam is not censorship by any meaning of the word, as they are still free to speak, and sell their games via other means.