Jimquisition: Salt Of The Earth - A Steam Fail Story

[KennardKId5]

Do people not realize that nobody is playing this game? The issue is completely moot. Everybody realizes that this game is a shitstain, and they have enough common sense to not throw money at it. When the game's store page has a grammatical error, people know to stay away. The steam charts report a maximum of three simultaneous players.

And it's easier than ever to figure out if a game is good or not. GOOGLE IT. If the game has any amount of players, somebody will have uploaded gameplay or a review to a site. There's no reason to rely wholly on the Steam forums for info- though I do agree that developers shouldn't have God-Mod powers.

And if nobody has ever made a single review or made a post on a forum about it, DON'T PLAY IT. If nobody in the entire world has played it, why should you be the guinea pig? There are surely better games out there that are cheaper and more fun.

I'm trying to get this point across to Mr. Sterling, Mr. Bain, and everybody else who agrees with them; it's not Steam's fault that you can't think for yourself. Word of mouth still works. By God, check at least one review before you spend your money. Even if Steam implements QC, bad and broken games will still exist. We all need to learn how to make intelligent purchasing decisions.

 

[alceste007]

Steam / Valve just simply need to start offering refunds like every other digital service (GoG, Origin, Amazon, etc.). If you dislike the game, you should be able to return said game.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

When the game's store page has a grammatical error, people know to stay away.

Seriously, you're trusting people on the internet to judge quality by grammar?

I'm convinced that most people on the internet don't even know what grammar is. Even worse, most communication online has such a poor level of grammar and spelling that people are starting to think that it's the proper (or at least cool) way to write. To the extent that "TL;DR" is considered by some a valid response, and "LOL" has become a word that people actually say to each other without irony. I think we're getting pretty close to the world of Idiocracy - where people who speak or write in full sentences are regarded as strange and foreign.

 

[Reyold]

I thought I heard Jim say the game was going for $99.99. That would've made this whole thing even more ridiculous.

With all the other examples of this kind of behavior (Guise of the Wolf, Garry's Incident, etc.), you'd think people would start realizing that it just isn't going to end well.

 

[TrevHead]

Even if the current open-ended Steam we have is a good thing for devs and gamers, The fact that Valve hasn't stepped in and wrapped Muxwell's knuckles is deplorable.

The old Valve would have removed blatant scams like this from the store front and offered refunds to those who bought the game.

 

[omnifarious]

Before Steam Greenlight was a thing one of the biggest complaints leveled against steam was how closed the platform was and how that made it very difficult for aspiring indie developers to break into the market. 2 years ago the discussion was all about how the Steam quality control was locking out perfectly good ideas from the market because some random guy decided the idea was bad. Steam Greenlight and Early Access were created expressly to address these concerns. Let the gaming community decide what will make it onto our storefront.

So no, Steam did not do just fine before Early Access and Greenlight.

You do know Valve didn't just make money from indie devs, yes? AAA releases, holiday sales, the very fact that Steam was available on the PS3...the Humble Indie Bundle? Sure, it wasn't nearly as effective as simply opening the floodgates as they did with Greenlight, but to say Steam did not do just fine is also forgetting that indie games were still a growing market. Steam was responsible for an estimated 70% of ALL games distributed on a digital platform several years before Greenlight. If you ask me, I'd say that's no small feat.

And as for why Earth 2066 is still on Steam despite the problems, it was released 4 days ago. 4 days. 2 of those days were weekend days. They probably did not hear about the controversy until today, and they opened for business only 5 hours before your post. Give them some time to actually sort out and assess the problem, to contact the developer to ask what the hell and to get a person to actually play the game themselves and make a determination. These things take time and should take time to avoid mistakes. I would be very disappointed in Steam if they were in the business of making knee jerk removal of games from their store at the first sign of customer complaint.

I'll give you that, it was Easter after all. Day One: Garry's Incident is still on Steam, and the developer went as far as to improperly use the DMCA to hush a bad review. Not to mention Muxwell is already a known scam artist.

Even with that aside, I wasn't really looking for Valve to forcefully tell 2066 to GTFO at the drop of a hat. Valve has fulfilled refunds in the past, so it's not as if they don't ever take any responsibility. There's been quite a few times Valve has acted within days of initial complaints.

 

[xaszatm]

Well, who exactly is buying PC games through digital distribution without doing a quick ~20 second Google search about the title they're about to buy for $20?! A developer who delete negative feedback on one platform will obviously find it multiplying on every other one.

The consumer empowerment this information highway entail renders digital supply side hijinks virtually moot. I for one would rather have an open platform with a sea of shit, if this enables a rare few islands of unusual niche gems to spring forth. It's not like it'll take me long to find out about any PC title which catches my eye[footnote]If I'm on a digital console store, I'll have to boot up my PC though. And if I'm at a physical store, I'll have to whip out my smartphone. Oh, the stress![/footnote].

Shitty shovelware has always been put out there, but never has it been easier to find info on it. While the developer put out an unfinished game - the this being a condition of Early Access - game, no false advertising appear to have been involved.

Bottom line is, if you can spend $20 without spending 20 seconds researching what exactly you're spending it on, then your complaints are hard to take seriously.

Do people not realize that nobody is playing this game? The issue is completely moot. Everybody realizes that this game is a shitstain, and they have enough common sense to not throw money at it. When the game's store page has a grammatical error, people know to stay away. The steam charts report a maximum of three simultaneous players.

And it's easier than ever to figure out if a game is good or not. GOOGLE IT. If the game has any amount of players, somebody will have uploaded gameplay or a review to a site. There's no reason to rely wholly on the Steam forums for info- though I do agree that developers shouldn't have God-Mod powers.

And if nobody has ever made a single review or made a post on a forum about it, DON'T PLAY IT. If nobody in the entire world has played it, why should you be the guinea pig? There are surely better games out there that are cheaper and more fun.

I'm trying to get this point across to Mr. Sterling, Mr. Bain, and everybody else who agrees with them; it's not Steam's fault that you can't think for yourself. Word of mouth still works. By God, check at least one review before you spend your money. Even if Steam implements QC, bad and broken games will still exist. We all need to learn how to make intelligent purchasing decisions.

I've been spending the last hour trying to focus my anger at these two posts into coherent thoughts. I've been failing because I can't seem to base my arguments around a thesis so this will be long and slightly incoherent. I realize that this puts my respect at a dubious position, but from reading your posts, I'm don't think it would have mattered any way.

Quite simply, you are wrong on everything. Why are you placing all the blame upon the consumer? It is their fault that such a poor game made it on Steam? Oh, so the next time contaminated meat poisons people, be sure to blame the people who bought the meat. After, why didn't they know about the quality of their steak? It is their fault they are incredibly sick. Or better yet: the next time someone causes a mass shooting, blame to victims! After all, they MUST have known how crazy the killer was. Why didn't they stop him/her?

Now, is the above an unnecessary equivalence? Maybe, but hopefully the point I'm trying to make is getting through your skulls: the consumer isn't wrong here. While it certainly may be true that only a few has bought this game, why would the blame be on the consumer if they did buy this? Because they didn't research beyond the Steam Store page, something that you say will take only 20 seconds? Well why should they? Why should people be required to jump through hoops in order to find out if a game is functionally a game? And yeah, it might take you and I a few seconds to see whether or not a game is a scam, but we aren't the average consumer.

The average person is simply going to trust the Steam Store page because that should be good enough. As it should be! The average consumer should not have to know there are sites you need to trust. They should not have to wade through multiple reviews, forums, and discussions just to know if a game is working like a game! Mainly because such crap games SHOULD NOT EVEN BE SOLD IN THE FIRST PLACE! And no, I'm not talking about games I don't like. I'm talking about games that aren't even functional. But no, NO! The "free market" (which, by the way, you should really look towards the history books if you want to see how a truly free market acts) must be kept for the betterment of everyone!

OT: It is stuff like this that shows that Steam does need quality control. If nothing else, make sure that broken games like these gets removed from Steam so it doesn't eat up front page space and wastes the consumer's time.

 

[Sack of Cheese]

This is why I tend to avoid unknown games. Never know what kind of crap you pay for.

 

[Freyar]

To me, the only games which should be sold on Early Access, are those which can be sold for the labelled price, and without modification be considered a proper purchase. Minecraft, Kerbal and a few others are good examples of that. Those who fail at it miserably are: 2066, Planetary Annihilators, Wasteland 2, and some others.

If you want 20$ or 30$ from me now, you need to give me something WORTH 20$ or 30$ now, not something worth nothing with the promise of something worth the money I pay in the future.

Now, to annex the Sudetenland.

That's not quite what Early Access is about, and why Early Access isn't intended for people who are looking to make a normal purchase. That said, with the abuse Early Access has put on Steam lately, I can see why this sentiment is growing but with your examples of the "bad ways" to do it, I find myself entirely conflicted.

Planetary Annihilation was done the way it was done due to the backing they had from Kickstarter. If the price was too high, and you didn't want to support the project like other early adopters did then that is just fine-- don't. Same with Wasteland 2.

Both of those examples had a higher alpha and beta cost but that was because it was meant for those who wanted to help with development and testing. (Yes, yes.. paying for alpha and beta testing for some is unreasonable, but in the case of games that have a certain pedigree this is fine.)

2066 does not have that pedigree and is indicative of the problem Early Access has. I've gone so far as to make a support ticket asking about this title as it certainly isn't "fit for purpose" (though it doesn't apply to me directly since I'm North American..).

 

[Requia]

Early access is stupid. It's an even bigger scam than pre-ordering nearly 105% of the time.

have you actually played *any* early access games while they were in early access? Minecraft was in better shape than 99% if finished products by the time it hit beta. Kerbal is a bit of a mess but at least it's a unique mess, only one other orbital Sim out there and it doesn't let you make your own ship.

 

[DoctorImpossible]

I bet Muxwell knows who Jim Sterling is now.

 

[Rabidkitten]

Don't buy his piece of shit.. Problem solved.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Holy shit. That's just sad. Steam really needs to get it's act together or it's not going survive. If stuff like this continues Steam is going to earn itself the reputation of the place where all the shit is and people are going to look elsewhere. ...at least I hope so.

The thing is, I think most every Steam user knows better than to buy crap like this.
I'm kind of seeing this differently I guess; the attachment of so much shovelware to me says that the PC market is becoming more popular. I've seen (finished) games that are even more broken than this piece of crap on the ps2. QC isn't just something that needs to be addressed in Steam, something needs to be done across the industry.

Well yeah I suppose that's true, but I don't know of anywhere else in the industry where it's as bad as this.

Almost all of Steam's QC problems can be traced back to greenlight. Earth 2066 was a greenlight game, War Z was a greenlight game, etc. And steam is in the process of getting rid of greenlight. But they need something to replace it with before they can do that.

Steam's greatest sin was their idealistic approach to game approval - let the gaming community decide what gets on our market. It turns out we are really, really bad at it.

Well it would've been helpful if Steam would've screened what was actually allowed on to Greenlight in the first place. So hack developers wouldn't be able to Greenlight hot air and promises. Maybe requiring devs to have at least a playable demo before being allowed on Greenlight would've improved things. ...maybe.

Maybe, but a playable demo is a lot harder than you think. Speaking as a professional programmer who makes games in his spare time, making a playable demo that isn't complete shit is really, really hard. It will take months of work, hundreds of man hours of programming and game design, and a huge amount of initial capital investment (around $1000) to do things like buy sound effects, hire artists for assets, buy necessary software and equipment, etc. And that is for a very small and simple game. Asking people to put that amount of investment into a game before they even know if they are going to be allowed to sell it is a big problem. Steam greenlight was made to give the little guy a chance. Requiring a demo instantly destroys that goal.

Well maybe submit the finished product then. They need to require more than a lick and promise that's for sure.

Require them the complete the entire game before they know if they are even going to have a chance to sell it? Yeah, that surely makes it work for the little guy.

Jehk said a good solid design doc should be required with each. I would agree with that one.

Well as I said, something more than a lick and a promise should be required.

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

Plot twist: Jim Sterling is Muxwell.

He has become an embodiment of abuse to validate his own arguments and corral the audience into supporting his totalitarian ideas. This would scare the public into giving up their free and open PC platform and come under the restrictions that plague console gaming.

That is the most interesting thought that I read in this thread. The idea that this problem is an extension of the greatest strength PC game has: freedom.

 

[Imre Csete]

I'll go grab Ride to Hell: Retribution and that Rambo game from my usual store for 30 bucks. Then I'll complain and hold them responsible for selling such bad games.

This Greenlight bashing is getting really tiresome. Unless you are held at gunpoint to buy these games, I don't see why it is the shop's fault.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Holy shit. That's just sad. Steam really needs to get it's act together or it's not going survive. If stuff like this continues Steam is going to earn itself the reputation of the place where all the shit is and people are going to look elsewhere. ...at least I hope so.

Steam has enough apologists that it will likely coast by. Between that and ZOMFG STEEEEM SALES! I'm pretty sure it will, in the medium run, remain pretty solid. Possibly even in the long run, because Steam has been run in a monopolistic fashion and this is what happens with monopolies. Hell, I've been pointing this out for like five years now. Maybe more.

Steam Sales won't mean much when the only things going on sale are crap like that Earth 2066.

All the Steam sales are pretty much shovelware crap at the moment anyway. I stopped even looking at them long ago.

 

[Nyaliva]

a) This isn't relevent.

Just pointing out hypocrisy

b) She recieved thousands of death threats and promises of rape and torture before she even started her series. I think she was pretty fucking justified in taking a 'fuck off with your comments' approach.

She also recieved them before the kickstarter. And saying that shes scamming is not a death or rape threat, it's an accusation, leveled at her many many times. And she could have easily avoided this by being open about how she spends the money (like every good kickstarter should do I might add) and citing sources, but she hasn't.

This is exactly what I mean, all decent of her no matter what is seen as death threats and rape threats when that's a lie.
Even if alot of it was that, there was legimate critisim there, and failing to acknowledge that is dishonest and quite despicable.

I don't really care if someone called you out on this in the subsequent pages of this topic, I'm going to say it.

Getting death threats and legitimate criticism for scamming are mutually exclusive events. To claim that it's okay she got death threats because she was hiding stuff all along misses both problems entirely. The way things went:
She was less than open about her use of the Kickstarter money
She was criticised for it
She received death threats both for these actions AND for wanting to talk about feminism in gaming
She called out those sending her death threats and suppressed commenting as a result

While the comment suppression did silence the legitimate criticism, it was more likely an additional benefit for her stopping the death threat comments. Not all dissent for her was death threats, they were simply happening in the same place as the legitimate comments. You can't say the threats didn't happen either, there is proof if you look for it. To say that it doesn't matter that she was threatened because some of it was legitimate is a horrifying disregard for basic empathy. Say what you like about her, make your legitimate criticism, but don't claim the death threats were her fault. The death threats were the fault of the mentally impaired man-children who made them in order to make themselves feel good. Even the 'legitimate' death threats were completely unnecessary, and justifying them because 'she's a bad person' is just wrong. If you've watched one of Jim's previous videos, you'd know we need to call people out on this shit.

This isn't a black and white situation, no-one is failing to acknowledge how underhanded she was. But to claim that her misappropriation of funds warrants assaulting her personally is, I believe, just as despicable. If you are going to call her out, by all means, but you should be calling out the idiots who decided she needed to die as well. You won't be supporting her if you do them both in the same breath (in fact if you don't, you simply look like one of them).

OT: Muxwell hasn't, as far as I know, received any death (or rape) threats as a result of his actions, and yet what he's doing is just as bad. Would you consider it legitimate to threaten his life because he's suppressing discussion of his failed game? Because you shouldn't. When people don't listen, you don't threaten them. You spread word of their deceit so no one buys from them ever again. I'd love to hear you justify the difference between Anita's and Muxwell's situations.

 

[Demonchaser27]

Whatever. If not for Steam, that guy could still do the exact same thing on his own website. PC gaming is an open platform.

It makes much more sense for Steam to grab for all of it, than to be a small walled garden somewhere inside of it. More like an universal marketplace for the whole platform, than a brand that's pre-filtered products you "trust".

If they would try to appeal to quality control and a reliable lineup, they would accidentally filter out at least SOME potential gems, and that would give an opportunity to other webstores to gain a foothold by gathering those. It makes more sense to let in ALL the developers, good ones and shitty ones, and let others build inner recommedation lists and branded lineups inside the platform they own.

That's exactly how the video game crash of '83 happened, you realize.

There was zero regulation on what was flooding the marketplace, leading to endless numbers of terrible clones and unfinished shovelware being pushed out and completely saturating the market, bursting the bubble and causing people to basically stop buying games because they couldn't put any faith that what they were buying was actually going to be good.

The exact same thing is now currently happening with Steam.

The problem with the complete lack of oversight put on Greenlight and Early Access is that consumers will support things based on an idea rather than any hard evidence. In an ideal world, that would be fine. But we don't live in an ideal world. When you combine that with the fact that Steam allows publishers to dump their entire back catalogs onto its service and how many publishers have recently taken to shoving mobile ports and Facebook or Flash-esque games onto the platform, it all coalesces into a horrifying congealed mess that makes Steam impossible to navigate and simply hides and takes publicity away from the games and developers who actually deserve it.

Or to put it more simply, it's just bad business for Steam to allow this. PC gaming is an open platform, but Steam is the biggest "storefront" you'll find on it. For the longest time, many games simply would not be successful on the PC if they weren't released on Steam. By allowing anything and everything to be released on Steam now, people will be burnt out on trying to sift through the sheer amount of complete crap found every day on the front page, and eventually they'll stop bothering. I know, it's already started happening to me. The weekly deals and daily releases on Steam are almost uniformly terrible and not worth even looking at, and at a point it becomes no longer worth trying to cycle through all of the crap to find the good stuff.

EDIT: And it has been confirmed by many indie developers in the past that being on the front page of Steam matters. It creates a huge spike in sales, and when their game moves off the front page they get a dramatic drop in overall sales until it gets discounted.

Thank you. I don't think I could have said it better myself. The fact is that this has been observed for over a hundred years in Capitalism. "Free Market" just doesn't work on it's own. There's mountains of scientific evidence in psychology about the effects of the average consumer and how they think. The fact is that most people aren't logical and even those who are won't be 100% of the time. Letting people get burned and saying "tough shit" doesn't fix this problem. It just makes devs say, "Well, if they can make shite games and get tons of dough then why the hell I'm I going to try and make better games?"

People need to realize that even if you aren't one of the idiots keeping this model afloat that its popularity WILL affect you eventually. There WILL be more games like this. And gaming WILL go downhill. Its a snowball effect and doing nothing about it won't magically fix it.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Holy shit. That's just sad. Steam really needs to get it's act together or it's not going survive. If stuff like this continues Steam is going to earn itself the reputation of the place where all the shit is and people are going to look elsewhere. ...at least I hope so.

Steam has enough apologists that it will likely coast by. Between that and ZOMFG STEEEEM SALES! I'm pretty sure it will, in the medium run, remain pretty solid. Possibly even in the long run, because Steam has been run in a monopolistic fashion and this is what happens with monopolies. Hell, I've been pointing this out for like five years now. Maybe more.

Steam Sales won't mean much when the only things going on sale are crap like that Earth 2066.

All the Steam sales are pretty much shovelware crap at the moment anyway. I stopped even looking at them long ago.

My point exactly. Steam Sales don't mean anything when what's on sale isn't worth buying.

 

[Sanunes]

There has to be something Steam can do to make it seem they are interested in their customers and not just their share of a game's sale. Even EA's Origin I feel better buying games from right now for I can return any EA game if I meet the criteria, I returned Battlefield 4 because the server issues and it did take seven days, but I got my money back. Even if its just automated systems to look at developer abuses for if a developer is hiding or deleting a lot of comments a Valve employee gets a message indicating that activity and just checks to make sure the developer isn't pulling this garbage it would be at least a step in the right direction to me, for if a person doesn't see negative comments about a game on Steam it could be considered misleading them into the purchase for the information has been skewed.