Jimquisition: Air Control - A Steam Abuse Story

[hazydawn]

I think it's trolling :0
Also anyone dumb enough to buy that deserved to have wasted their money... maybe even learnt a lesson.
I'm not saying it should stay on Steam though. It's a disgrace for them.

 

[gamegod25]

Even if nobody bought it, even if they did knowing it looked like shit, even if it was supposed to be some kind of ironic parody (which I seriously doubt), that doesn't excuse something like this existing and taking up space and being sold for real money on a major digital distribution site. Of course it's not humanly possible to thoroughly screen every single game but this...this should not happen....ever. Steam has to get off their asses and take action to cut this cancer out before it kills them, not to mention the collateral damage that it would also cause quality games by devs who actually give a shit.

I think that Quality Control could prevent this, but to be clear: Quality Control should only prevent games that are broken to be released. If we start preventing them from being sold based on quality, then we'd start having arguments about what a "good" game is, and how good a game has to be in order to be sold.

That would be better than just allowing every shit game to be sold no questions asked. There is a difference between arguing the merits/faults of a game and just plain weeding out the blatantly shit games from the crop. This was not an early access game, this was not a work in progress demo; this was a lazy shitty piece of crap being sold for actual money on a major site. It doesn't take a genius to look at something like this and recognize it for what it really is, ie a lazy buggy cash-in. At least with kickstarter and greenlight you go in knowing that what your getting is a work in progress. But if something is being sold in the actual store then you have a certain level of expectation that you will be getting something that could be legit called a game. Stuff like this and Earth random-year-who-gives-a-shit can barely be qualified as games (which I don't) let alone good ones and never will be.

 

[josemlopes]

Mashed is a crappy game from 2004 that I used to love playing on the Xbox, just now it got released on Steam, metascore doesnt even have any review for it but now I can have it on Steam, a lot of people probably dont care but they can just not buy that game if they arent interested. Do we really need someone there to tell us if a certain game is good enough to be on Steam?.

OH MY GOD Mashedisonsteam. You have no. bloomin'. idea. how happy you just made me. One of my favourite ps2 games, never found a replacement when my disk scratched and the my ps2 finally died.

And people still have the balls to cry that older games are being released on Steam, fuck that, isnt that one huge advantage of the PC? The fact that there are no generations and you can still play games from 1998 in the same machine you can play games from 2014? Steam wasnt the huge store that it is now back then so there are a lot of games that still arent available from 10 years ago (still waiting for Freedom Fighters)

 

[Callate]

It's always a pleasure to hear you go to town on a target that entirely deserves it, Jim, but as there have now been multiple videos on the subject, I almost wonder if maybe this shouldn't have its own byline outside of the Jimquisition. Maybe it should be an every-other-week feature or something; maybe it should could even revolve around different writers. I mean, there's no particular reason you should uniquely have to suffer through broken Steam offerings, though it does sound like a public service we could use.

 

[McKitten]

Stuff like this doesn't happen because Steam lacks quality control, but because Steam lacks a return policy. If Valve weren't so fucking determined to never let go of a single cent they got their grubby hands on, people would just return games like this 10 minutes after purchase and the scammers would stop making them because they'd get no money out of it.

 

[Alterego-X]

What do you mean by "censored"? Some kind of minimum quality requirements would not censor a good game, by definition.

Absolute freedom is not a good thing, as we can see here. All stores do not carry all products, and you wouldn't want them to.

There is no such thing as a self-evident set of quality requirements that would automatically filter out every bad game and leave in every good, and case-by-case human judgement is too slow for the onslaught of indie games that are released nowadays.

I would rather have an absolutely free platform that has Air Control and Earth 2066, but ALSO has games like Minecraft, Goat Simulator, or Rust, than a platform that has neither, just a series of solid traditionally good games.

The ability to censor reviews should be taken away, and user-made storefronts should be set up inside the system, to make it a bit easier to make an informed judgements, but kicking games off from the system is not the solution.

 

[Thanatos2k]

What do you mean by "censored"? Some kind of minimum quality requirements would not censor a good game, by definition.

Absolute freedom is not a good thing, as we can see here. All stores do not carry all products, and you wouldn't want them to.

There is no such thing as a self-evident set of quality requirements that would automatically filter out every bad game and leave in every good, and case-by-case human judgement is too slow for the onslaught of indie games that are released nowadays.

I would rather have an absolutely free platform that has Air Control and Earth 2066, but ALSO has games like Minecraft, Goat Simulator, or Rust, than a platform that has neither, just a series of solid traditionally good games.

The ability to censor reviews should be taken away, and user-made storefronts should be set up inside the system, to make it a bit easier to make an informed judgements, but kicking games off from the system is not the solution.

So because you can't make a system that's 100% effective, don't bother?

That's not how things work in real life.

 

[BrotherRool]

If Steam wants to be well Windows-but-with-paying-Valve-money-too then they cannot give developers control over their own review sections. Removing those controls sucks and lots of decent developers are going to have a lot of mental anguish because of it, but it's absolutely ridiculous to not curate your content and actively give developers tools to deceive people.

 

[Alterego-X]

So because you can't make a system that's 100% effective, don't bother?

That's not how things work in real life.

In the cases where trying to bother leads to more harm than not trying to bother does, a neutral system is the closest to that 100%.

And yes, this is exactly how things work in real life. If we can't automatically separate true ideas from false ones, there should be freedom of speech rather than trying to get close to government-sanctioned truth. If we can't objectively find the perfect religion, then there should be freedom of religion for all rather than one person's idea of which is the best state religion.

Freedom is not the lack of any system, it's a system in itself, one that regularly proves itself more safe and stable than individuals' "perfect solutions".

 

[Thanatos2k]

So because you can't make a system that's 100% effective, don't bother?

That's not how things work in real life.

In the cases where trying to bother leads to more harm than not trying to bother does, a neutral system is the closest to that 100%.

And yes, this is exactly how things work in real life. If we can't automatically separate true ideas from false ones, there should be freedom of speech rather than trying to get close to government-sanctioned truth. If we can't objectively find the perfect religion, then there should be freedom of religion for all rather than one person's idea of which is the best state religion.

Freedom is not the lack of any system, it's a system in itself, one that regularly proves itself more safe and stable than individuals' "perfect solutions".

But your claim that it would harm anything is PURE SPECULATION and not likely true at all. You're worried that a "good game" might "get censored."

As opposed to getting garbage out of Steam that we KNOW exists.

And please learn what freedom of speech is, and how it doesn't apply in the slightest bit to the products a company chooses to allow to be sold in its store.

 

[Vigormortis]

So... who is being abused? The handful of reviewers who have bought Air Control specifically to rant about how bad it is, and profit from the video views?

Or the mythical "ordinary Steam user" who supposedly buys games at random browsing the "latest released" list, yet clearly the critically approved games sell well while these get hundreds of sales, and most of these AFTER they went viral for being bad?

The average users just want to buy Watch Dogs, and they could do that on either site, it might as well be Steam whether or not it also sells Air Control. The only people who would certainly be affected by tighter Steam quality control would be the handful of shithounds who intentionally look up games like this, but with the potential risk of genuinely popular games like Goat Simulator or Rust also getting kicked out of Steam before they could go viral.

Exactly.

It absolutely confounds me how so many on this site; of whom generally demand acceptance of such things as fair use, non-censorship, user/customer choice, and creative freedom; can sit there and demand Valve add some form of "quality control" to Steam.

What metrics do we use for such a system? What qualifiers do we use to define what constitutes a "good game" and a "bad game"?

Is it defined by whether or not the game functions well on PC? If that be the case, many popular triple-A games wouldn't make it onto Steam. More recently, Dark Souls 2 and Watch Dogs would be considered utter shit by this metric and would therefore not be sold on the Steam store.

Well obviously these people wouldn't want that, so that can't be our metric. So what metric do we use instead?

Is it based on a game being a blatant scam, exploiting customers, or false advertisement?

Such blatant scams and entirely non-functional games have already been pulled from the Store and refunds sent to those who asked for them; while others have seen their devs forced to alter their game or risk being pulled. So this can't really be the metric we're looking for since it already exists.

So what's left? Do we judge a games "quality" by what enjoyment a user derives from it? If so, that's the very definition of a subjective metric - which leaves us with a conundrum. Namely: Who gets to decide which games are fun and which aren't?

If I was in that position, there's no way Dark Souls 2 would make it onto Steam. That game, to me, is abysmally dull, tedious, and just awful to play; whereas something like Rust, even in its unfinished state, yields hours and hours of entertainment. Likewise, there are plenty of gamers that derive more enjoyment out of those dime-a-dozen simulator games than they do out of, say, big-budget games like Watch Dogs.

Everyone here seems so angry that Steam doesn't have a "quality control" system in place; desperate to see one implemented. However, it also seems like many of them haven't really considered what such a system actually entails and what kind of effect it may have on an industry predicated almost entirely on creative freedom.

I would rather have an absolutely free platform that has Air Control and Earth 2066, but ALSO has games like Minecraft, Goat Simulator, or Rust, than a platform that has neither, just a series of solid traditionally good games.

The ability to censor reviews should be taken away, and user-made storefronts should be set up inside the system, to make it a bit easier to make an informed judgements, but kicking games off from the system is not the solution.

I swear you and I are on the exact same wavelength about this. I 100% agree with this sentiment.

 

[SlashmanSG]

Seriously Jim I get that there are some shit games on steam and something needs to happen, but these videos get old/

Hopefully Jim sees this and stops doing them. I mean, sure, there's a problem. Sure, it needs to be addressed. Sure, something needs to be done (a point on which you agree). But we wouldn't want to be bored, now.

Yeah, cause not talking about issues is a sure way to get them fixed.

 

[Alterego-X]

But your claim that it would harm anything is PURE SPECULATION and not likely true at all. You're worried that a "good game" might "get censored."

As opposed to getting garbage out of Steam that we KNOW exists.

You can always compare the games released on PC, too the ones released on consoles. r even just the ones released on Steam to the ones released on Green Man Gaming. The recent indie revolution with hundreds of great games, couldn't have happened on a more closed system, as it is evident from the fact that it really DIDN't happen.

And please learn what freedom of speech is, and how it doesn't apply in the slightest bit to the products a company chooses to allow to be sold in its store.

Yeah, neither does freedom of religion. Please don't bring up "real life" if you can't even realize the difference between a gaming discussion and it's analogies in real life counterparts being compared.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Air Control - A Steam Abuse Story

Video froze a quarter of the way through. Now I have to restart the Jimquisition.

 

[Busard]

I've had a game i'm working on recently greenlit. We're very proud and hard working on it. But even us thought that is somehow of an easy process.

To be precise: we've been greenlit in less than a month. We're still very early in development and have something playable right now although still alpha, and we put up some few screenies and early vids. We didn't think we'd be accepted for months, thinking "Well, until that gets there, we'll have time to flesh out". But in less than a month we were greenlit.

While obviously i'm very happy about that, it makes me wonder what the hell steam is becoming. And how shit like this actually happens. It takes away a bit of the joy of being greenlit because when you see the other shit that's coming along the ride, you start to question, as a dev, if your product is actually good enough or you're just going along for the ride. I would've actually been more relieved actually if our game took a little longer to get accepted, giving us time to prove ourselves, rather than getting on so quickly.

And this last piece doesn't make me less shaky about it

Why did you put it on Greenlight if it was so early in development and whats going to happen if something happens and the game can't be finished?

This highlights an easily fixable issue with Greenlight, games are put on Greenlight that are ether far from finished or otter crap an still get through. The simple solution is: to even be eligible for Greenlight a game should ether be available elsewhere or have a working demo available. It's a simple solution that would prevent a lot of bad games from getting though Greenlight.

We asked beforehand and were suggested to by different people to put it on greenlight as soon as possible.

Ourselves, as a team, thought it would take month for us to be greenlit at all, but we just wanted to be at the ready when we'd be closer to release, like maybe even have a demo or something. Basically we were all thinking "Well in a few months we'll have more gameplay to show, some stuff to send out, etc etc". We wanted to be a bit on the safe side.

Turns out for us the process was just way way quicker than we initially thought. We were happy, although baffled.

Now being greenlit doesn't actually mean anything, except we'll be able to to get our game published on steam when the time comes or have early access if we ever decide to do stuff like that, although unlikely unless we have something VERY stable and fun to show.

But the ease to be greenlit is mostly what I wanted to point out. It only took us a few screenshots (although apparently our art style turned out pretty damn well, which made people vote for us a lot. We ended up in the top 25), a pre alpha vid and a nice text presentation.

Again, we're happy that we're greenlit but other stuff that i'd consider to be way more dubious gets as easy as a time to get up there too

 

[Aardvaarkman]

So because you can't make a system that's 100% effective, don't bother?

That's not how things work in real life.

But your claim that it would harm anything is PURE SPECULATION and not likely true at all. You're worried that a "good game" might "get censored."

As opposed to getting garbage out of Steam that we KNOW exists.

Wow. Just last week you were saying how releasing DLC harms the games games industry. You were also saying how companies shouldn't be allowed to edit their games, and should have to sell 100% of the content developed up to the point of release.

Contradict yourself much?

 

[Alterego-X]

Yeah, cause not talking about issues is a sure way to get them fixed.

Actually in this case, it is. The only issue in this case is that reviewers keep digging up obscure buried games just to rant about them and make them go viral based on their badness.

The PC was an open platform for decades, we had plenty of games like Big Rigs, before a single company tried to become the umbrella publisher for all of them, and giving surface for nontroversies about how someone should Do Something.

 

[Thanatos2k]

But your claim that it would harm anything is PURE SPECULATION and not likely true at all. You're worried that a "good game" might "get censored."

As opposed to getting garbage out of Steam that we KNOW exists.

You can always compare the games released on PC, too the ones released on consoles. r even just the ones released on Steam to the ones released on Green Man Gaming. The recent indie revolution with hundreds of great games, couldn't have happened on a more closed system, as it is evident from the fact that it really DIDN't happen.

Uh......what? First of all, there are not hundreds of "great" indie games out there, unless you've somehow redefined the word great. A mere handful of great games come out every year. Good games? Decent games? Maybe.

Please list one of these "great" games that could not have come out on Steam if it had minimum quality requirements.

And please learn what freedom of speech is, and how it doesn't apply in the slightest bit to the products a company chooses to allow to be sold in its store.

Yeah, neither does freedom of religion. Please don't bring up "real life" if you can't even realize the difference between a gaming discussion and it's analogies in real life counterparts being compared.

What in god's name are you going on about? You're the one who started rambling about freedom of speech, like it had ANYTHING to do with what we're talking about here.

 

[Rad Party God]

Yup, figured you'd put a Jimquisition about this piece of manure passed off as "software", much less as a "videogame".

It's a bit worrying that Steam is becoming yet another Google Play or AppStore, where for every good or decent game, you need to dig through hundreds upon hundreds of bad ones.

Granted, it's still not bad as those two, but GOG already has quality assurance themselves, if a game doesn't work, they outright give your money back, heck, even fucking Origin has refunds!, Steam however, tough shit if you bought an unplayable mess.

 

[weirdee]

Wow, this is like, Desura levels of bad. Go home Steam yer drunk...