Jimquisition: The King of Crap Steam Publishers

blackrave

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IamLEAM1983 said:
What's really sad is Strategy First used to be a fairly decent publisher, something Montreal natives like me could be proud of. Over the last thirteen years or so, I've seen them go from trying to push decent strategy or turn-based titles to grabbing literally ANYTHING and sticking it up for sale on Steam. I'll admit that they've turned into high-class shit peddlers, but I suspect they're doing what they do just to keep existing as a publisher.

At this point, they're really better off closing their doors.
szaleniec1000 said:
Looking at their Wikipedia page, they've got a really impressive back catalogue. Sad that it's come to this.
I remember playing Diggles and enjoying it
(For those interested Diggles is basically mix of Dwarf Fortress and Terraria)
While not perfect, flaws were mostly technical
For example biggest offender is 5fps glitch (fuck it, fuck it with large rusty xenofungus infected crowbar)

Shame really, that they ended like this :(
 

-Dragmire-

King over my mind
Mar 29, 2011
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Ima Lemming said:
Huh, I thought this was going to be about 505 Games, which you mentioned in your Steam Needs Quality Control video. Color me surprised.

But hey, 505 published Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, so maybe they're not as completely terrible as Strategy First.
505 don't seem that bad to me, but my view is colored by an article about the development process of Defense Grid 2. They're portrayed as pretty good guys.

http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/3/6/5465976/defense-grid-2-console-port
 

RedDeadFred

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May 13, 2009
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Jim. I am disappointed. You had a chance to say "I'm a real human being... and a real hero" at the end there and you didn't take it.

OT: Wow. That is a ton of bad games. I hadn't been paying attention to them, but I also look into my games quite a bit before buying them and never would have bought any of that garbage.
 

hydrolythe

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orangeapples said:
Sometimes it feels like game devs are having their own competition of who can release the worst game on Steam. I mean, shovelware is one thing, but this is just absurd. The Wii pretty much died because of shovelware, but it didn't see nearly half of the crap hitting Steam, but then again it is Steam and Steam users will forgive everything wrong with Steam because Gaben.
There actually exists an official crap games contest. Here it is: http://csscgc2013.blogspot.co.uk/ .

I heard that a similar one exists on the Commodore 64, but they probably do not have an official site.

Actually, this reminds me of something rather cool. What if somebody would make an alternative site to Lemon64 that is dedicated to reviewing games on Steam. Since it seems to me that the oversaturation of crap can be overcome in the same way you could overcome the oversaturation of crap on the C64.

Link to Lemon64: http://www.lemon64.com/
 

girzwald

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How many of these are you going to make? Steam has some shit titles. Get over it already. Did you buy "War operations"? Because it seems like you did. Congratulations. You just supported the problem. Most of these games you've been bitching about, I never heard of till you brought them up. I guess that shows how much of an impact these games have. Don't like it? Don't buy it. Its that simple. If morons want to buy a game without seeing a demo or reading a review, then that's their problem. I so rarely get screwed by buying a shitty game, its a non problem. Do you whine when you buy a new food product and don't like it? No, you don't buy it again and move on.

So move on already. Without greenlight we wouldn't have the opportunity to find the gems amongst the crap.
 

JCAll

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I'm just pissed that I had to vote a Nihon Falcom game through Greenlight, and any loser can publish through these guys.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Don't forget, Strategy First did publish Disciples 2. So there is at least one spectacular game published by them.
 

otakon17

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Goddammit I supported these shitbrains with my purchase of Sacred Gold... dammit I feel like a twat now. And that's a decent game.
 

hentropy

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Part of me thinks these games (especially the Air Control/Fish Simulator guys) are just governments, either our own or another one, intensely studying what happens when they just release this crap knowing how bad it is. That's what I'm going with, the only other explanation is someone is actually making money off of these which is just depressing.
 

Jandau

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Funny, I always associated Strategy First with niche semi-indie stuff. They were involved in some awesome stuff back in the day, like Kohan: The Immortal Sovereigns, the Disciples series (particularly Disciples 2, which was brilliant) and Etherlords series. I didn't notice that they turned to utter dogshit in the meantime, and this saddens me greatly...
 

Caostotale

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hentropy said:
Part of me thinks these games (especially the Air Control/Fish Simulator guys) are just governments, either our own or another one, intensely studying what happens when they just release this crap knowing how bad it is. That's what I'm going with, the only other explanation is someone is actually making money off of these which is just depressing.
While that could be the case in some instances, it's probably just the digital-gaming analogue to companies like Asylum Films and all those other direct-to-video/DVD/stream garbage companies that have somehow been in the movie business as long as I can remember. These days, a quick shop through Steam or the Nintendo Store has really become the experience that wandering around Blockbuster was a few years ago. Similar things have been going on in the music and book worlds since time immemorial. A used bookshop in the next town that I frequently has to turn down boxloads of mass-produced pulp novels and things like Glenn Beck's ghost-written conspiracy thrillers (i.e. the kind of impulse-buy slop that is sold at Targets and Walmarts for six months before getting shuttled to Family Dollar stores). One externality of the Western world's ridiculous relative wealth is that plenty of our country's worthless and uncreative fools can buy themselves into the market regardless of actual market signals like supply/demand. Still, we have to look at the good that accompanies this influx of bad. Just as it's easier now for some shit-rotten petty capitalist asshole to just wake up one day and decide that they want to get involved in the gaming biz as a means to get rich quick ('I mean, how hard could it be?!?'), it's also easier for talented indie developers to get a foothold in the scene.

EDIT: Thank you, Jim, for brushing past all of the sensational bullshit of the past few months and continuing on your much-more-worthwhile critique of the gaming market. If these feudalists who were pushing Gamergate redirected even half of their bellowing outrage and due diligence towards watchdogging gaming consumer habits and actual game companies, gaming would be some sort of utopia by now.
 

Thanatos2k

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Remember, insult a publisher with profanity laced tirades of criticism, and it's comedic justice.

Do it to an indie developer who makes bad games, and it's harassment.

(Strategy First does deserve it though. Steam should prohibit any game they make from appearing on the front page of the store.)
 

Demonchaser27

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I actually disagree Jim. It doesn't remind of me of the 90's games. The 90's games actually, sad as it is, had more polish, balance, and animation work (especially based on the videos I've seen from you and others) than anything these devs are doing. It's probably because in the 90's there was some form of quality control. Not the best quality control, but quality control nonetheless.
 

Demonchaser27

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Thanatos2k said:
Remember, insult a publisher with profanity laced tirades of criticism, and it's comedic justice.

Do it to an indie developer who makes bad games, and it's harassment.

(Strategy First does deserve it though. Steam should prohibit any game they make from appearing on the front page of the store.)
The sad reality of it all.
 

Jimothy Sterling

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Thanatos2k said:
Remember, insult a publisher with profanity laced tirades of criticism, and it's comedic justice.

Do it to an indie developer who makes bad games, and it's harassment.
Once my show is me calling up individuals to call them whores, threatening to rape/murder them, or otherwise attempting to run them off the Internet, then what I do will be equitable to harassment.

Edit: What's funny is I've also done profanity-laced tirades aimed at indie devs too. But of course, they don't count because of some reasons.
 

Demonchaser27

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RunicFox said:
Good thing the shit sinks to the bottom on store pages...what I'd like to see is a better review system than binary that users can assign and a working tag system so that you filter anything out with the globally accepted tags "shit","Garbage","Waste","Refuse","Time Murderers","Scam",etc.
I wish they would get rid of the "List by recommended" crap. It's like they just want to make every game look amazing on the surface. How does that help anyone? "Let's fill the first 3 pages of the 'reviews' with all the most rabid supporters of said game." No, I want the most descriptive reviews first. The ones that actually analyzed WHY it was good/bad. At the very least do a mix of the good and bad so that people don't just blindly see "Recommended, Recommended, Recommended, Recommended, Recommended, Recommended" and then say, "Well it must be good." It happens... I've seen it first hand.
 

RunicFox

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Demonchaser27 said:
RunicFox said:
Good thing the shit sinks to the bottom on store pages...what I'd like to see is a better review system than binary that users can assign and a working tag system so that you filter anything out with the globally accepted tags "shit","Garbage","Waste","Refuse","Time Murderers","Scam",etc.
I wish they would get rid of the "List by recommended" crap. It's like they just want to make every game look amazing on the surface. How does that help anyone? "Let's fill the first 3 pages of the 'reviews' with all the most rabid supporters of said game." No, I want the most descriptive reviews first. The ones that actually analyzed WHY it was good/bad. At the very least do a mix of the good and bad so that people don't just blindly see "Recommended, Recommended, Recommended, Recommended, Recommended, Recommended" and then say, "Well it must be good." It happens... I've seen it first hand.
I think they're still working on UI. When I attended Steam Dev days, the stuff they showcased was awesome, but it's all long-term testing vs. short term returns. I expect the system they use a year from now will be built off of the behavioral data....but it will be something completely different that we're tearing apart :)