Jimquisition: Salt Of The Earth - A Steam Fail Story

[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.

 

[GamemasterAnthony]

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?

You have no rights on a private forum. They can delete anything they want to. Doesn't mean there won't be retaliation by the users, and make you look like a complete D!@k, but thems the breaks.

I...honestly...am not too sure about that. Muxwell's actions, while probably within his rights within the bounds of a private forum, could be construed as something else in the eyes of the right people...

FRAUD

*gets some weird looks* Hear me out.

Let's be honest here: What EXACTLY was the point of deleting negative comments about the game? The only purpose I could see would be to make the game look better than it actually was so people would buy it. Essentially artifically inflating the "goodness" of the game to intice people to buy what is basically a defective product. Any good prosecuting attorney could easily take Muxwell's actions and not only make a good case for fraud, but also open the door to further investigations against other developers on Steam. Not exactly something Steam wants, to be honest.

Even worse is that Steam could be caught in it! Because Steam allows guys like Muxwell to delete negative reviews, the same prosecutor could say that Steam "allowed" it to happen and thus were culpable...possibly even being called an accomplice after the fact. (Sounds extreme, but I've seen a few news stories where something like that had taken place...usually involving employers who let their employees do whatever.) Only way Steam could avoid be named in such litigation would be if Steam itself brought charges against Muxwell and others who engaged in such practices.

Truthfully...I don't know if this COULD happen. I'm no law expert nor do I pretend to be. I'm just seeing the worst case scenario here. Now that what Muxwell did has been made public, I can't help but think that there will be SOME kind of backlash as a result...legal or otherwise...that will hurt Steam as a result. Just my 2 Zenny on that.

 

[Keava]

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.

 

[Gilhelmi]

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?

I am sure someone posted this before to respond to you, but it needs saying again...

(dang that is bigger then expected)

Like the XKCD pointed out. Private companies do not legally have to give you Rights to Free Speech. Most reputable places (like the Escapist) do because free thought and discussion helps with creativity, but they do not have to by law.

Government owned/funded organizations do however (unless the speech is being 'disruptive' then they have to prove that it is, in theory). In short, the First Amendment only protects us from the Government (again, in theory, I could go on for a long time about how the current administration is trying to suppress political dissent, but then I would be getting way off topic. Maybe later in R&P).

 

[jklinders]

Stories like this sadden me a bit.

Steam at one time was a refuge for small quality indie devs to sell their games on. Letting the floodgates open so that every brain damaged ingrate can sell a "game" on there is going to hurt the good indie devs and in the long run Steam as well. I remember still the smooth quality and ongoing support for "Space Pirates and Zombies," for example. Check it out at least, made by a 2 person team with a lot of love behind it.

Now with all the dreck filling Steam up who the hell is going to give guys like this a chance?

Steam could if it wanted to, fix this with 2 simple steps.

One, retain some kind of mod authority over the devs sub forums, they are given to them with Steam's permission after all and if they violate simple terms of use they could lose their mod authority.

The second being, have their own QA team vet the fucking things before the devs are allowed to ask for money.

If both of these are done responsibly, that might restore a bit of confidence, but my money is too scare to risk on these indie titles now until I see outside positive feedback these days.

 

[Madman123456]

Go buy any games that allows for big mods, Bethesda games being the prime subject here and go download mods from a platform that has a rating system. Some mods will turn many of the game play aspects around and some tell new stories in new lands.

With the steam greenlight games you might burn your money with something like this "earth" game.
With mods you'll get more bang for no bucks at all.

 

[direkiller]

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

yes, but that's no excuse when his twitter,you tube, and Destuctoid/escapeist employment are the first things to come up on google when you get half way into his name.

 

[nevarran]

It's all Steam's fault. People go there trusting that they won't be scammed. Surely there will be bad, poorly made games. But nothing of such magnitude.

But like I said before, Steam takes his own, even when gamers end up being screwed.

 

[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?