Jimquisition: Salt Of The Earth - A Steam Fail Story

[Infernal Lawyer]

*sigh* well, another day, another reason not to so much as peek at the Steam Store. I have a big enough backlog of stuff that I really, REALLY can't be arsed treading through the minefield of crap anymore. I'm already sick of having to do research just to figure out if a game is even physically possible to run (and no, I'm not talking about just my computer either) without being reminded that it could be a bunch of lies fixed by the developers anyway. I'm tired of being told it's my own fault for expecting a game, that I bought from what I thought was a reputable source, for actual money, to not set my computer on fire.

This kind of crap is bad for the industry. It turns people of Early Access, it turns people off Steam... Hell, I'd say it turns people off even fucking PAYING for games.

Yeah, you know what, I will out and say this shit legitimizes piracy. It almost makes more sense to just torrent a game you're considering rather than wasting your time looking up reviews you hope aren't orchestrated, just to find out if the game is in a playable state or even fucking WORKS.

The AAA market is guilty of a lot of things but they don't get away with selling five hours of throw together crap on the Unity Engine and empty promises.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

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.

Is the passive-aggressive tone necessary? You think i never tried EA and then decided it's bad.
Yes, on a few occasions. Minecraft being one of them, but back then Minecraft was "meh" since there wasn't a whole lot to do. IIRC they haven't had any or just a few opponents.
And that was probably my best expirience with early access, so go figure. Still, i'm not a big minecraft player and the lack of agenda besides "go and dick around" makes it more of a toolbox than a game to me. I bet nowadays with all the player made content and servers it's completly diffrent, but that's another topic.

But see, my point was and still is: If i get full fledged games which deliver dozens of hours of gameplay for 10 bucks then i don't see point in spending +20 for an unfinished product as a golrified alpha-/betatester.
Same goes for the AAA industry. Why should i pay 70 bucks per game nowadays? Specially with how the AAA-industry behaves. Bugridden, rushed, over-monetized games with no respect towards and commuication with the fanbase.
That's probably also the reason why i usually buy 1~2 AAA-games per year, the rest is F2P or indy games.

 

[Sir Shockwave]

This is getting towards falling foul of at least UK product description laws. The law is woefully behind the times (otherwise the worst 'free to play' games would probably have fallen foul of this) but there is supposed to be some basic expectation of accurate description and functionality when a product is purchased.

Unfortunately - much like eBay - Steam does not recognise international law when it comes to this sort of thing.

As a quick example, I once spoke to Steam about getting a refund on God Mode (a game which while more playable than Earth: Year 2066 was still bad) and got no dice with it. Even after citing the UK's "Distance Selling Regulations 2000", Steam refused to issue a refund, citing that the law did not cover Digital products.

And yet, this is despite...well...

 

[vagabondwillsmile]

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.

The key problem I see is that digital content creators, specifically of games, are realising that their products are less and less subject to the expectations of intended use than previously thought. When we shop for cars, we expect it to have wheels. When we shop for a juicer, we expect it to have blades. When we shop for phones, we expect to be able to call people. You get the idea. With material products like this, we can objectively determine their use, and recognize missing elements as rendering the product useless. Over time however, digital content creators have systematically whithered away at the application of this notion to their products, devaluing the objective elements. Years of pre-ordering, alpha and beta testing, patches, fixes, increasingly buggy, incomplete, and shoddy AAA or mainstream releases, anti-consumer practices - it's all culminating to this now very savvy strategy of putting in as little effort as possible yet reaping maximum reward.

Consumers are either being beaten into submission or - far worse - recognizing and defending such practices as the marketplace at work. Buyer beware (like the people to whom you are replying). These practices persist and increase because the usefullness of digital content - especially for amusement - is subjective rather than objective. Unlike a car without wheels, a buggy-ass game will have varying degrees of usefullnes depending on the desires and tolerances of players.

Subjective usefulness is what's being exploited. But there is a key distinction to make. Usefullness is not the same thing as enjoyability, amusement, etc. There are crappy games everywhere, in both physical and digital storefronts. But for the most part, they provide the function laid out in the product description. Barbie games are crap but they function (the Plymouth Neon was crap, but drivable). With things like Green Light and Early Access though, finished product price is asked in exchange for incomplete product functionality. 2066 isn't even worth $10 complete, yet it's asking twice that at alpha/beta. Where previously, a market would never consider such a travesty, the Steam store front is now complicit in the exploitation. How there are even people that can't see the problem is beyond me.

There was a time when "Buyer Beware" was a barbaic notion and was heavily targeted in consumer advocacy, legislation and case law. But the law has a really difficult time keeping pace with technology. And some conumers evidently can't wait to get clubbed and dragged around by the hair. There are plenty of devolopers out there that would love to welcome you to the dark ages.

 

[Hutzpah Chicken]

I'll take note that when I can release my first game to first let Jim tell me how shit it is BEFORE I put it on Steam. Second, to skip that whole Early Access crap. Third, not to put it on the market until it is fully functional. Finally, sell it at $5 because I know most people (myself included) wait until a game is $5 or less on Steam.

You know, with that last point actually, it's the reason why some developers bloat the price in first place? They know, that with how frequent the Steam Sales are, they will sell it for 5$ eventually, but it doesn't hurt them to try and sell few units for 15$. If they started at 5$ then during sale, which also gives a game additional exposure they'd have to sell it for just 1.99$ . It's all just part of the plan.

Side projects and hobbies to me don't need to make lots of money. Besides, most people can scoop up a $1 game for free after they sell some of their strange TF2 weapons or Purple level skins in CS:GO.

 

[Sir Shockwave]

UK and EU law is not not explicit about digital products because it essentially pre-dates them but Steam and other services are getting DANGEROUSLY close to someone putting a test case through the EU or UK courts that would create a legal precedent that would essentially update the law. I don't think any higher EU or UK court would rule against the 7 day refund of digital goods, especially when they have been made identical to physical good (see; boxed games requiring steam-works with a steam download option)

Valve's refund policies (and to an extent the microtansaction model too) are operating on borrowed time. Once legislation catches up things could get a whole lot more difficult for an non curated store. The reason physical stores curate is to PREVENT refunds and create some kind of baseline quality. They have to do it.

I agree, I just wanted to point out that Steam most likely just does not give a shit about international laws.

But they do need some sort of Refund policy. It says a lot when freakin' ORIGIN of all things has something like this in place.

Actually Ebay has been much better lately. On my ebay account I'm technically a business seller now and as such i HAVE to accept refunds. Ebay in general has been pressured to having to respect UK consumer law much more than something like Steam has. I suppose for Ebay though it is a case of survival, if their reputation tanks again they could easily lose a lot of ground.

Unfortunately, my story didn't have a happy ending. I sent an item for return - the problem was, the seller lived at a PO Box address. Ebay's policy requires returned items to be sent via something with a Tracking Number. Unfortunately, Royal Mail could not comply with this because the seller lived at a PO Box address - it was either untracked shipping or nothing would happen. After some schizophrenic back and forthing from eBay (and the fact that I never received the refund), who toggled between "yes we can help you, it's clear this guy took your money and ran" and "no we can't do anything because you didn't send it as Tracked", the best I could do was file with Royal Mail and claim the item was lost.

Royal Mail could only part refund it.

 

[DrOswald]

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.

And I am just pointing out that it is a difficult and complex issue with no easy solution. If you make the requirements too stringent you shut out potentially great games, if you make the requirements lax you open up the system for abuse. And there may not be a happy middle ground here. The middle ground might just make it easy enough to abuse but too hard to actually use for the weekend indie developer. I mean, if Earth: Year 2066 got accepted though greenlight then I don't think any amount of requirements are going to fix the problem. This is a game that claims it is going to have great writing only 4 sentences after telling us "You need to find food and armors to make your health well." If that isn't a red flag I don't know what is.

 

[sageoftruth]

Just curious. How can one tell when an early access game will never amount to anything good in the long run?

 

[Thanatos2k]

So, let me get this straight. One asshole releases a shitty product. The fault is his, but the real villain here, the mastermind of madness, the dictator of darkness...Is VALVE! They(or , Steam as they've apparently renamed themselves) are the true blight upon PC gaming! They, as the owners of a gaming store should enforce draconian rules so as not to sully the genepool of the master race!

Why, of course this is so, just the other day I tossed excrement at a Game Shop employee for daring to carry a bad game. It is my duty as a Member of the PC Master Gaming Race after all. We cannot allow free choice...

Shame about you Jim, thought you had some good stuff for a while, but your "STEAM NEEDS TO ANSWER!" stuff is a bit tiresome. Steam is a damn store, the only thing Valve need to answer is refunds and keeping obvious scams gone. But people here seem to want for steam to crash so they can roll around in their own smug filth and go "Told you so! Filthy pleb!"

If crime is high in a city, in order to lower crime do you blame the criminals or the police?

Valve is the police here, if you didn't get the analogy.

I did. It's probably the most inept one I've ever heard, but I did.
Because, ding ding ding ding! They're not the cops(too little random beatings for that) and it's not a city. It's a game shop. Filled with games. Some of which are shit.
I've bought shitty games in my days, and I refunded them or just tossed them in a box somewhere. Hell, I keep some shitty DnD Fighting game for the PSX around so I can remember that sometimes, it pays off not to buy everything you think could be awesome.
So, again: The only thing I think Steam should do is what a poster below me said; pick out the obvious lies and deal with them. But if Joe Idiot fucks up in a buy, it's not the store that's at fault. It's the idiot.
Or wold Game Stop/Game be forced to, for example, grovel because they sold ME3, a game that some consider the Spawn of Cthulhu?

It's as much the store's fault for carrying poor products than it is the people who buy them from the store. Actually it's probably more the fault of the store because the products will try to deceive the customers into thinking they're good, through fraudulent trailers and promotional materials, fake reviews and ratings, and deletion of all criticism.

Games are a black box - you never really know if they suck or not until you play them. Well maybe not a completely black box, if you put your eye up to it maybe you can see inside sometimes without opening it, or ask someone nearby whether the contents of the box are crap or not, but once you open the box there's no refunds, so the people selling the box are to blame for knowingly selling it to you knowing it contained crap.

 

[Thanatos2k]

But seriously. If shovelware scam crap is such an epidemic on Steam, then I really must question what the fuck is wrong with people.
Or has the average Steam user regressed to the level of earthworms when I wasn't looking?

It's not "the average" user. The average user is buying whatever is popular at the time.

Whether we look at Kickstarter, preorders, or early access, this always affects a smaller circle of core gamers, who know very well that they are risking money, in fact they are quite proud of how they are doing something different from the filthy masses who are "playing it safe" with AAA sequels.

The problem is with the punditry that treats this as a huge problem that affects ordinary consumers.

It's still a problem for everyone. If your average AAA mainstream gamer decides to step outside their comfort zone for just a moment and buys one of the many other games on Steam, they're likely to get one of these turds because they don't do research.

Now having been burned by paying money for garbage, they go back into the AAA popular games only bubble and never emerge.

We are doing a disservice to gaming allowing these things to exist.

Who buys random games? Let us take another entertainment medium, movies. I can buy the movie "Fantasy Mission Force" on amazon. I know it, it is a very bad movie, some including me have watched it because watching bad movies with friends can be fun but I do not think that anybody considers it a good movie.
How is your statement different from saying that the movie being on Amazon is a problem because people who usually only watch blockbusters might step out of their bubble and buy it and then never watch a non blockbuster again? Or do you think Amazon selling such a movie is a problem too?
It seems to me that some people here are creating a caricature of an uninformed buyer who buys game without really looking at them but non the less finds an extremely obscure game to bolster their arguments.

You've never bought a random movie from a $1 bargain bin or a cheap DVD sale?

Also there's a big difference between bad movies and bad games, because bad movies can get into the "so bad it's hilarious" territory. This doesn't really exist with games. Bad games are just bad. We can laugh it up at Jim running around a nearly empty field shooting at robots but that's certainly not enough to redeem his $20. Not nearly enough. Bad movies only last 2 hours max. A bad game must be suffered through far, far longer.

 

[red255]

Normally post....last on your youtube video, dunno if my comments ever get read.

looking at this game, makes me miss duke nukem forever, you know the 20 years or so we were waiting for it to come out and not the actual game.

unfortunately this guy was apparently a low skill scammer assuming most of what you say is true without too much drama and nobody is waiting for a release of this that will never come.

I want a great game that will never come so we can use it like we used duke nukem forever. which was a game developers sent money to for years for no product.

which is sort of the same thing with more checks and balances.

so what you are really complaining about is the amount of fleecing the guy has to do to fleece people. if only high skilled people can fleece you are supporting EA man.

the people with money get fleeced it happens, look at Ebay where people sell bootleg DVDs of stuff, pretty clearly marked as bootleg if you know the signs (manufactured in malysia, region free...despite having region NTSC on the package)

I mean its all fine and good to go 'buyer beware is bad' and 'we should have more consumer safeguards' but

1.) the safeguards don't really work (aside from making people feel safer when they are not)
2.) you didn't suggest any safeguards.


the ONLY thing you can do is laugh at people who get fleeced informing them of why they should have known better in a way that teaches them something.

Which sounds a bit harsh but lets face it, theres always a new scam. and if people feel like it will be seen as its their own fault ideally they should be more wary.

BUT of course when you got a guy like this, doing what looks like a scam, it should be taken down from steam by this point assuming 24 hours or something.

I reading the comments on steam 'for 20 dollars it better be the best damn crosshair i've ever seen'

I got enjoyment out of that, for free. so maxwell's game provided ME with enjoyment.

and I'm not saying he's a good game producer or saying you should give him money. but the guy is providing value.

Final note, the game is not a generic FPS, its EARTH 2066, its ART, game is set when you are in your mid 80s and about to die of cancer or something. its depressing as all hell sure but its totally art you oblivious Philistine who is bad at math.

 

[lukesparow]

It's about damn time we got some quality assurance from Steam indeed.

 

[NortherWolf]

So, let me get this straight. One asshole releases a shitty product. The fault is his, but the real villain here, the mastermind of madness, the dictator of darkness...Is VALVE! They(or , Steam as they've apparently renamed themselves) are the true blight upon PC gaming! They, as the owners of a gaming store should enforce draconian rules so as not to sully the genepool of the master race!

Why, of course this is so, just the other day I tossed excrement at a Game Shop employee for daring to carry a bad game. It is my duty as a Member of the PC Master Gaming Race after all. We cannot allow free choice...

Shame about you Jim, thought you had some good stuff for a while, but your "STEAM NEEDS TO ANSWER!" stuff is a bit tiresome. Steam is a damn store, the only thing Valve need to answer is refunds and keeping obvious scams gone. But people here seem to want for steam to crash so they can roll around in their own smug filth and go "Told you so! Filthy pleb!"

If crime is high in a city, in order to lower crime do you blame the criminals or the police?

Valve is the police here, if you didn't get the analogy.

I did. It's probably the most inept one I've ever heard, but I did.
Because, ding ding ding ding! They're not the cops(too little random beatings for that) and it's not a city. It's a game shop. Filled with games. Some of which are shit.
I've bought shitty games in my days, and I refunded them or just tossed them in a box somewhere. Hell, I keep some shitty DnD Fighting game for the PSX around so I can remember that sometimes, it pays off not to buy everything you think could be awesome.
So, again: The only thing I think Steam should do is what a poster below me said; pick out the obvious lies and deal with them. But if Joe Idiot fucks up in a buy, it's not the store that's at fault. It's the idiot.
Or wold Game Stop/Game be forced to, for example, grovel because they sold ME3, a game that some consider the Spawn of Cthulhu?

It's as much the store's fault for carrying poor products than it is the people who buy them from the store. Actually it's probably more the fault of the store because the products will try to deceive the customers into thinking they're good, through fraudulent trailers and promotional materials, fake reviews and ratings, and deletion of all criticism.

Games are a black box - you never really know if they suck or not until you play them. Well maybe not a completely black box, if you put your eye up to it maybe you can see inside sometimes without opening it, or ask someone nearby whether the contents of the box are crap or not, but once you open the box there's no refunds, so the people selling the box are to blame for knowingly selling it to you knowing it contained crap.

Yeah, no. We're to blame there too. The customer can't sit on his fat arse and go "OMG! I AM OUTRAGED!" if he does a stupid buy.
But back to my core point. If Game Stop or Game sells me a shitty game, is it their fault, all of it, and I should get a refund because of it? I don't have any responsibility to find reviews, word of mouth etc? I don't agree with that. Sure, it'd be nice if Valve were nicer with refunds and not as legendary dodgy about it as they seem to be. But the guys making this shit are the real baddies, followed by the lazy and uniformed jackass, and then the damned store.
Gamers really are a entitled bunch :/.

 

[DanHibiki]

as a half assed game dev myself I have to say that you need to work long and hard to make default unity elements look that bad.

I mean, there's a fully working FPS that you could just grab and replace a few elements to make that game. He would have had to meticulously strip all that out and replace it with his crap.

 

[Freyar]

I find myself depressed with easily Steam is damaging it's own business model with things like this.

 

[gNetkamiko]

It also sounds like a story of any video game developer(s) who feel that their game is great and/or what they modify within the game is better than what the majority of gamers say.

Take, for a prime example, MechWarrior Online. Some months ago, the development team added a feature that, if you alpha strike more than a certain number of listed weapons (2 PPCs, 2 Large Lasers, 2 LRM 15s, 1 AC 20, etc), you accrue something called "Ghost Heat", which basically means "extra heat on top of the normal heat". Before that "feature", the majority of their fan base had contacted them, practically begging them to reduce the normal heat penalty to begin with.

I'm sure you can imagine just how upset that these people where when "ghost heat" was implemented as a feature. The fan base (myself included) felt like they were stabbed in the back by people they trusted. 85% of those fans are old Battletech fans that GAVE the developers money, even buying Gold Mechs from them to support the developers. Those people... their accounts no longer exist, as they demanded their money back (which, they did receive) over the "ghost heat" issue.

I know it's not an isolated issue, but it shows the direction that many game developers, pro and amateur, are heading these days.


*hopes that the Starbound Development team doesn't go down that same route*

 

[Demonchaser27]

This is getting towards falling foul of at least UK product description laws. The law is woefully behind the times (otherwise the worst 'free to play' games would probably have fallen foul of this) but there is supposed to be some basic expectation of accurate description and functionality when a product is purchased.

Unfortunately - much like eBay - Steam does not recognise international law when it comes to this sort of thing.

As a quick example, I once spoke to Steam about getting a refund on God Mode (a game which while more playable than Earth: Year 2066 was still bad) and got no dice with it. Even after citing the UK's "Distance Selling Regulations 2000", Steam refused to issue a refund, citing that the law did not cover Digital products.

And yet, this is despite...well...

Boy. If only the US actually cared about consumer rights. One can dream.

 

[Thanatos2k]

So, let me get this straight. One asshole releases a shitty product. The fault is his, but the real villain here, the mastermind of madness, the dictator of darkness...Is VALVE! They(or , Steam as they've apparently renamed themselves) are the true blight upon PC gaming! They, as the owners of a gaming store should enforce draconian rules so as not to sully the genepool of the master race!

Why, of course this is so, just the other day I tossed excrement at a Game Shop employee for daring to carry a bad game. It is my duty as a Member of the PC Master Gaming Race after all. We cannot allow free choice...

Shame about you Jim, thought you had some good stuff for a while, but your "STEAM NEEDS TO ANSWER!" stuff is a bit tiresome. Steam is a damn store, the only thing Valve need to answer is refunds and keeping obvious scams gone. But people here seem to want for steam to crash so they can roll around in their own smug filth and go "Told you so! Filthy pleb!"

If crime is high in a city, in order to lower crime do you blame the criminals or the police?

Valve is the police here, if you didn't get the analogy.

I did. It's probably the most inept one I've ever heard, but I did.
Because, ding ding ding ding! They're not the cops(too little random beatings for that) and it's not a city. It's a game shop. Filled with games. Some of which are shit.
I've bought shitty games in my days, and I refunded them or just tossed them in a box somewhere. Hell, I keep some shitty DnD Fighting game for the PSX around so I can remember that sometimes, it pays off not to buy everything you think could be awesome.
So, again: The only thing I think Steam should do is what a poster below me said; pick out the obvious lies and deal with them. But if Joe Idiot fucks up in a buy, it's not the store that's at fault. It's the idiot.
Or wold Game Stop/Game be forced to, for example, grovel because they sold ME3, a game that some consider the Spawn of Cthulhu?

It's as much the store's fault for carrying poor products than it is the people who buy them from the store. Actually it's probably more the fault of the store because the products will try to deceive the customers into thinking they're good, through fraudulent trailers and promotional materials, fake reviews and ratings, and deletion of all criticism.

Games are a black box - you never really know if they suck or not until you play them. Well maybe not a completely black box, if you put your eye up to it maybe you can see inside sometimes without opening it, or ask someone nearby whether the contents of the box are crap or not, but once you open the box there's no refunds, so the people selling the box are to blame for knowingly selling it to you knowing it contained crap.

Yeah, no. We're to blame there too. The customer can't sit on his fat arse and go "OMG! I AM OUTRAGED!" if he does a stupid buy.
But back to my core point. If Game Stop or Game sells me a shitty game, is it their fault, all of it, and I should get a refund because of it? I don't have any responsibility to find reviews, word of mouth etc? I don't agree with that. Sure, it'd be nice if Valve were nicer with refunds and not as legendary dodgy about it as they seem to be. But the guys making this shit are the real baddies, followed by the lazy and uniformed jackass, and then the damned store.
Gamers really are a entitled bunch :/.

Yes, Gamestop will give refunds (some shadily in store credit but still). Valve does not, unless you really put the screws to them and only on a good day and you find a customer service guy who hates them.

There is nothing you or I can do to stop these "baddies." Are you saying we should find the dev's house and beat them up? Send death threats like what usually happens?

No. The only people who can stop these people are Valve. They are the only ones who can make it stop. Even if word gets around and only 10 people buy the game, that's scammed money the developer didn't deserve. Only Valve can say "No, we're not sending you a check this month. And we're shutting your scam down." The "community" may have stopped more people from falling for it, but some people still did. Valve needs to take some of the responsibility for keeping their streets clean.

You're dancing and dancing and dancing around the statement you really want to make and that's the usual "Buyer Beware!" nonsense. Fortunately Jim already debunked that:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/8974-Buyer-Beware

You should probably go back and rewatch that one.

 

[ihavetwo]

"Announcement for everyone!
We are going to add exclusive package - Earth: Year 2066 - Jim Sterling Edition for 100$ for all Jim fans! God bless Jim!" Muxwell just posted this.
You buy the ticket you ride the train...

Page: http://steamcommunity.com/app/290750/discussions/0/540739405981852341/

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Hmmmm... something has just occurred to me here.

First of all, look at the quickness with which Mr Sterling pointed out that a texture in the game was "a basic Unity texture". I've used Unity myself and even I didn't realise that.

Second of all, think of all the ad revenue that Jim, as well as the many other commentators that will doubtless appear here, will get as a result of this video. So much tasty controversy, eh?

And lastly, there are bound to be a few people who still naively buy this game. Hell, some might know of the controversy and do it anyway, just to see what the fuss is about. Add that to the potential ad revenue listed above, and you have a nice revenue stream! If it's all going to the same place of course.

G K Chesterton once wrote a "Father Brown" story in which a man who wants to get a political point across creates an "opposite" of himself. The two men - both played by the same person - libel each other in newspapers, insult each other, even challenge each other to a duel. And when the entire country has taken sides with one or the other about this issue that nobody cared about before... the "opposite" suddenly admits that he's wrong and fades out of the public eye, in disgrace. And everybody cheers for the man who had "bested" him.

Call me crazy (because I totally am) but I have to ask... is "Muxwell" a coalition of Internet personalities looking to cash in on the controversy? A coalition headed by our very own Jimothy Sterling?

If so, that is diabolically evil... and utterly brilliant.

(Yeah, I don't really think that, obviously. But still, it's a nice thought, isn't it? Nicer than this "Muxwell" just being another common-or-garden ripoff merchant. As is often the case, the correct explanation is the most boring.)