Jimquisition: Salt Of The Earth - A Steam Fail Story

[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.)

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

"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/

HOLY COW!

All of a sudden, my ridiculous conspiracy theory, above, suddenly looks a little less ridiculous!

...No, it really doesn't, does it? But again the Chesterton effect (Muxwell = Jim) is a pretty nice idea.

 

[kenten]

While I understand some concern that people are raising about Steam becoming more closed, you have to bare in mind that there has to be a straight line between paying for a supposed complete game and a unfinished, no testing at all done game.

This among his relative(?) is known for releasing buggy, unfinished games case in point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egoboo_%28video_game

 

[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.

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.

I still think that somthing more substantial than a mere design doc and some screenshots should be required before the submisson to Greenlight is considered and even then Steam should be filtering out all the Earth: Year 2066s and rejecting them before they even get onto Greenlight.

 

[Infernal Lawyer]

"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/

Goddamnit, and here I was hoping I'd be the first to notice.

Speaking of which... https://twitter.com/JimSterling/status/458698945578143744
Jim says "Just FYI, legally I do not give Earth: Year 2066 permission to use my name to sell itself. Just sayin', brah."

 

[Atmos Duality]

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.

I wouldn't bother.

The key part that Jim Sterling keeps failing to recognize or acknowledge, is that until consumers actually start making good on threats; that is, to start walking away from obvious less-for-more money schemes, broken games, and producers who constantly make false "misleading" claims, nothing will improve.

Mainstream gaming has looked at the wailing of its consumers and their critical savagery, wrinkled their nose and declared "Let them eat cake."

As long as the stupid masses keep paying, nothing else matters to them.

So until consumers grow out of that mentality and stop buying into all that junk, "Buyer Beware" is reality.

 

[Infernal Lawyer]

Well, I just got myself banned from the "game"'s forums by Muxwell himself for "spamming"... though I think it probably has more to do with making a thread reminding people about the "report game" function on the Steam Store, seeing as it's magically disappeared.

 

[Strazdas]

This us pure gold. Jim Sterling Edition incoming [http://steamcommunity.com/app/290750/discussions/0/540739405981852341/]

Hmmm...I wonder what would happen if someone dared to, I don't know...threaten Muxwell with litigation for violating people's rights to their opinions? Seriously...I say hit these idiots with the potential for the worst case scenario and they may stop this bullcrap.

What do you think, Jim?

Not possible. Steam is a private company and thus have a right to censort its content in any way it choses. If you could sue them for that i would be already suing IMDB for censoring words like "hitler". Seriuosly, if you post "hitler" on IMDB boards it will treat it as a swear word and turn it into *beep*

I really wish there are detailed sales statistics available for Steam. I really want to see how the shitstorm resulting from cases such as this affects sales.

Sadly, steam refuses to show any sale data.

I take issue with one thing you said. We shouldn't be allowed to return a game that is simply shitty. If that were the case I'd get my money back on CoD in a second. Being able to get our money back on broken or misleading games is a must to save Steam imo.

Using the community to provide checks and balances could work. But without returns that requires someone to get burned. Someone has to pay money before they can find out the game is shit.

and you returning COD would be fine. As long as you didnt just do the i compelted the game and gamed the system deal its fine. you bought a gate that turns out to be shit, you return it. Especially when steam can easily see whether your abusing the system or not since it knows when you turn it on.

ANd the community cannot provide checks and balances when its being censored. thats not how its suppsoed to work.

Also according to current laws, at least in EU here, i have a right to return a product if it is not the product i was promised during the sale. It is obvious that the product and the store page does not match. This means i have a legal obligation to return it.

But if some of the nuclear waste can give you superpowers, and there is no simple way to filter that one in advance, then you are still better off letting in the whole package and take control of the whole area, dumps and parks and all, then giving Originville a chance to gain superpowers.

no your not. few supermutants arent worth the slow radiation death of the rest of your population.

Early access should only be in the hands of the most hardcore Steam Users.

Thats not a bad plan you got there and i would support it. but i do see a flaw. As one of people who uses steam back in 2003 even altrough i dont have my old account anymore i can see a potential problem here. The problem is, i wouldnt want to be an alpha tester here. Some of even most hardcore steam users dont care about early acess at all. so you would need a lot of them to compensate for indifferent ones.
also 500 beta testers are too little in my opinion. most games seem to have something closer to 10000 beta testers, so even slashing that by 5 times to 2000 for indies would be a start.

The best solution to let them have the ability to delete comments, but in a way that users can still see them if specifically chosen. Works against NSFW and most types of spam, but still gives people an option to reveal foul play.

i think deletion by hiding (like used in escapist for example) is the best way to handle it.

 

[Strazdas]

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!"

Valve is at fault here not because that person is an asshole, but because they have created a system where such scammers can easily profit without reprecution. the rules should not be draconiam, merely at least fit the costumer protection laws of the civilized world. Such as not allowing false advertisement and implementing a reasonable return policy. Also providing quality control against such examples where a game downloaded from steam without the .exe file and did not even start.
Your poor attempts at name calling isnt funny and serve no purpose than to insult. You seem to think bery highly of yourself while criticizing others of doing the same thing your doing.

Steam should certainly try to pick up on obvious lies and games that aren't playable (like the EA ones that were shut down), but this just seems like a bad game. Is he upset because people are going to be looking to him for reviews now? So that he might have to start doing his job? : 3

Game reviewers have been a joke the last 4-5 years now. They should be grateful someone's making them useful again.

So quick to judge others when you lack even the basic research on the subject. had you actually watched Jim Sterlings video on the game that he has done previuosly you would have clearly understood that this is more than "just a bad game".

Is it me or does it seem that the smaller companies do this more often the larger companies? A lot of AAA more or less seem to either ignoring negative criticisms or at least doing something about it in patches or next game. Whether you like it or not is a different question all together.

BIg AAA companies got a lot more to loose. meanwhile this guy has created and killed 2 companies within 6 months already. Big AAA companies got brand and name that they get recognized for. Can you tell me what company made this game?

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.

If you cannot produce a playable product to sell, maybe you shouldnt be trying to sell it then and isntead wait till you have something to show?
And if you want to sell ideas, go to kicstarter, not steam.

It is Anita......Just don't open it.

looks like i will need to borrow some of imperator henchgoats and pay you a visit for this one.

On the other hand there is Ebay, another quite successful business model, that doesn't offer much quality control against exploding monitor brands as long as any of it's sellers wants to keep putting it up, and only offers the legal basics of customer protection. And people know that, and that's why they use it.

see, the difference is, if you buy a monitor that exploded on Best Buy, its going to give you your moeny back instantly and then go legally after the seller, meanwhile steam will just tell you to STFU. Steam does not provide basic buyer protection as defined by law.

There are more than 3000 games on steam. That is 3000 forums to moderate. How many man hours would be dedicated to this task every single day? Even looking to see if new posts had been made, saying nothing of the content of those posts, would employ several people full time. They would need many employees to do this. And managers for those employees, and a new building for those employees, etc. It would be a massive expense for a very small purpose. Every year enough money to make Half Life 3 would be pissed away on managing forums. All so developers can't delete negative comments about their game, which, as we all know, is completely ineffective anyway and results in a Streisand effect that spreads the news more effectively than negative comments ever could.

or they could do what other forums do and have a report button and have moderators look at report que. moderators here on escapist said they dont read every single reply due to time constrants, but they certainly read every reported post. This would need they need far less manpower. Oh and moderators can easily work from their own home, no extra building is needed. in fact moderators living around the world is beneficial, because then the working hours would overlap in such a way that there is always a moderator online. Another solution is voulantary moderators. yes, it would take some time to find out the good ones and you would need a manager to oversee them, but cheaper than full paid moderating team. and there are people that do this voluntary. the moderation is not always black and white situation.

You know it is in fact possible for someone to not know who you are.

He is Jim Sterling. It is not possible that any person anywhere does not know who he is.

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.

sort of how hitler burned the parlament down to get into power? i can see what you did here.

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)

there was a EU court of justice ruling recently that digital products such as steam games are products under EU law and thus are subject to first sale doctrine. This would mean that they are products and can be returned under same laws as other products. I however do hope somone forces Steams hand there. some german group tried but failed sadly.

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

when it is run by a known scammer?