https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/b736C/tool-sgtools-new-section-deals/search?page=83#KBBX8BB
"Publisher: Gamesforgames, Cristian Manolachi, Atomic Fabrik, Gamesforfarm"
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/b736C/tool-sgtools-new-section-deals/search?page=83#4GkEGQP
"Nearly all games from Atomic Fabrik and co seems to be banned, for false reviewing and other things."
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One down, thousands more to go.
Still, I'll take each garbage-disposing ban as a win.
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No, it's not a win, there are 2 more created in this place.
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So, you're saying that if they had NOT been banned, no new ones would have spawned?
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So there's one less trash games publisher on Steam, how is that not a win?
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It's the same as CS ban notice a few players one time per 2 years.
- They did something
- Nothing changed.
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Oh, I see. You mean "Nothing changed in the grand scheme of things even though some action was taken". Sure, I agree. It's quite the negativist attitude though. I prefer some sort or action, even if small, to move things forward. Otherwise, what's the point of doing anything?
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It is like - you took hundred kicks and landed one punch - most commonly it is not a win. So not bad maybe, especially if it is just a first step, but not a good job, and not the one that will produce necessary results, such as "a win"
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Surprised they did ban Hede while they were at it. Those $200 Top-Down 3D "games" are obnoxious.
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Alex hasn't done some of the shady things that Christian has. I wouldn't be surprised if Alex's "games" eventually are removed also though.
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So the 10 positive reviews on each game are legit?
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I'd say review manipulation is more than enough shady to deserve being compared to Christian in terms of shadiness.
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While the review aspect is definitely shady, to my knowledge Alex hasn't done the things that Christian has to get his games removed.
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Looks like most of their reviews are fake though,. that's what caught AF after all.
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*not
fake reviews were the step over the line, CM just couldn't control himself and keep it with trash crunching only
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The act of increasing the price to $200 after a week or so, after they get enough fake positive reviews, so they can then sell the keys on grey sites and have the games added to bundles on said sites due to the games now positive ratings...is not on its own enough to be banned apparently. But when a dev makes it obvious by receiving 100 fake reviews in a week, that's when Valve can no longer ignore it. Otherwise, they're content to look the other way unless devs also start dropping thousands of keys onto penny sites.
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Christian has been doing shady shit by switching the "games" to different "dev" and "publisher" names, the guy has tons of dev/publisher names. It's not surprising that Valve took action.
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Great news, by itself. Finally. But I doubt it'll stop alts from popping up again...
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DIG is one of the -so very multiple- ways to get these keys. what imo differentiate it from others, is that owner perfectly knows what is selling.
sometimes, you can even spot these "bans" in advance by only browsing DIG :)
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🙄“Atomic”.☣😱
Just looking at the title of this article, I was thinking of the recent “accidental” crash of a plane.
Was worried because it reminded me of the recent “accidental” crash of a bomber packed with nukes.
Oh, so the “Dust Asset” vendor was sanitized with a nuclear warhead?🤔🔥💻🔥
Was unaware of these disturbances.
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...finally got banned from steam.
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Not quite, there are 59 games still on Steam https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/announcements/detail/6524113244459853923
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This publisher is also similar trash: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Hede
Makes you wonder why they are left alone for so long.
The reviews are obviously mostly fake after all:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3079420/3D_PUZZLE__Flooded_Grounds/
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Atomic Fabrik have responded to their ban: https://x.com/atomicfabrik/status/1824349264064995660
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A very unprofessional reply.
I almost wrote that I'll miss some of those games, as I entered a lot of the giveaways, because they had this "amateurish user content from random website" vibe to them, which i honestly liked. But now, seeing the kind of vitriol coming from them, all my symphaty evaporated.
The way they tried to play the "we were doing this for charity" card at the end is insulting
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I see a big old TL;DR and heavy amounts of copium going on in that message.
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Oh, my god. It was an hilarious read from start to finish. (the part trying to convince to steam to give back their games because "100% to charity" bullshit actually pissed me off)
Seems like a politician bullshit.
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I am really curious if all the revenue from 2020 and earlier went to charity.
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I mean he could be saying the truth. All the money he earns from steam would be donated to charities.
But we all know that the real money doesn't come from steam but the keys he sells to shitty giveaway pages. Money that I'm sure he keeps.
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When the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to do so than your position has an issue. It is like a very sad concession. (the phrasing is not from me but from a somehow similar argument from this comic: https://xkcd.com/1357/).
At least I agree with him that everyone else doing this stuff should also be banned/removed.
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He write it by himself :
"but when other developers practice the exact same abuses as we do, for example, the reviews method"
One Abuser lesser is a win and that he cry around because only his games got banned this time is a tiny bit of extra whipped cream with sugar on top for me ;o)
They should punch him a second (or better a second, third and fourth) time for his "i am not alone a bad guy, each one do it, the charity bullshit" and the "steam want it this way".
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We don’t think we’ll continue in this field of games because [blah blah]
The best part. Please don't continue.
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That account has been removed so either they are out the games market as said or they will start under a different name
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Their games are in the epic games shop, as other ones wrote.
So, sadly, not out of the games market.
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so? do people even buy games though Epic that much
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They've rebranded their account, but they've also deleted the response.
It was archived and can be found here: https://archive.is/k86F0
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https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/browse?q=Atomic%20Fabrik&sortBy=relevancy&sortDir=DESC&count=40
At least Epic Games Store is rescuing them from evil Valve's ban.
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Epic tried that before,. and banned a similar dev not a few days later.
They just want the attention.
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If Christian starts doing his shady shit there, they'll probably get rid of him too.
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like what? No reviews, no keys, no cards, no collectors.
The whole business model does not work there.
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EGS supports both user ratings (not reviews) and key distribution which is enough for this publisher to continue the scam. EGS keys are certainly much less attractive than Steam keys to consumers but I'm sure that complicit stores like Fanatical would add them to their mystery bundles anyway with the promise and half-truth that they contain only highly rated EGS/Steam games.
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user ratings
ever looked at those? Completely useless.
key distribution
not open keys, but account linking. Not suitable for mystery bundles on key sites.
complicit stores like Fanatical
woah stop, Fanatical never carried that crap
much less attractive
like yes, nobody gonna buy it, that's the point
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User reviews are useful to inform consumers about a specific product. But you can't choose what you get in a mystery bundle, hence... User ratings. Mystery bundles promise to contain only highly-rated games - which they sorta do. Last I checked, ages ago, everything on EGS was rated 4+ out of 5, regardless of their actual quality. And EGS supports retail keys like Steam does. I remembered some users on this forum being puzzled for getting those kind of shovelware from some mystery bundles, perhaps some other storefronts do these kind of bundles too which I'm not aware of then.
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fact is you're aware of Fanatical being complicit. that's the fact.
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You mean DIG - aka daily indie game,. or perhaps indiegala.
Fanatical does not sell trash like this.
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7 years ago they were bundle stars.
They've since rebranded and changed a lot of the formula.
mystery bundles are still around though.
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"changed a lot of the formula" not really, no
unless you mean becoming a big corporate asset like humble bundle did
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IIRC I stopped buying bundles sometime before Bundle Stars (aka Fanatical) introduced their mystery bundles (which I find to be sort of a scam in itself), so I'm not really up to date with which products have been selling in those storefronts. Concerning DIG, that's a given that they're shady AF and complicit in the scam, and mayhap the bundle I remembered was actually from them.
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How are delisted games handled on Steamgifts? I am wandering about group ratios that were messed up by those games price hikes.
As game does not exist any more on Steam does price from last refresh stays forever in Steamgifts database? Or API still pulls price for those games from Steam on every refresh?
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We should band together and make August 14th a worldwide holiday in remembrance of this Great Purge of garbage.
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Any reason why Steam left two random games of theirs on the store - I mean if they didn't break the law or TOS of the store why not leave them on the store or remove them completely
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Would be helpful if you'd name the two games you are refering to, because there are 59 according to SotS. Due to the various developer and publisher names it's not that easy to get a profound list - neither for us nor for Valve.
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There's 3, Control Craft 2, Control Craft 3 and MechDefender - Tower Defense, I assume because they are under the
Conglomerate 5 publisher.
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https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/atomicfabrik - the ones here
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I see. Usually if only one dev or publisher is banned, games where dev/publisher are different or have multiple devs/publishers, Valve keeps them on the store. Which is correct until there is evidence that they were part of the shady methods or knew about it.
For these two I don't get it though, since it's AF and the person behind it, so noone else affected.
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So Sentinels of the Store missed these 3 games because they changed publisher to Conglomerate 5 on 7th August 2023, 3th October 2023 and 14th November 2023? https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/3qEC9GM
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Hi Frozen, those games are not owned by Atomic Fabrik. They used to be, however Conglomerate 5 is indeed a separate publisher who bought up the rights. Unlike the other games listed, those games have a reason for having their ban evaded.
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Is Conglomerate 5/Dnovel/FreeAnimals_Software/My Way Games/Repa Games, maybe more aliases, also another developer/publisher that abuses positive reviews?
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It's obvious, same like how Hede creates new developer/publisher name for almost every new game.
Or maybe how Galactic Geckon is doing the same while ban evading the previous name galesoozka.
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So it's based on you thinking without 100% proof? I mean I don't really care that much but I just wondered that's all
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Since you don't care, no reason to continue this conversation.
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I don't understand, which is it? Do you not care? Do you want proof? Or are you just provoking me for an answer? In which case, it's not a pleasant way to have a discussion.
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You claim to know what you said is true but yet to show anything to back this up - truly sad
No I don't care if they are the same what I care about is when people go around saying something they can't back up and prove is true or correct if you showed a reason why you think or know these companies are all the same people - that would be great
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You can check SteamDB update history, past giveaways for those games including the tasks they require, the many positive steam reviews, https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithGameTechnicalIssue?appid=xxxxxx where you can put appids to see they share the same email for contact, but I'm sure someone like the Sentinels of the Store can do a better job at digging stuff up.
What is "truly sad" is your way of provoking others instead of discussing things while claiming you don't care. It's straight up disrespectful.
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Re: Conglomerate 5, it's complicated. They buy up a lot of apps, so they most certainly, after inheriting Atomic Fabrik titles, will have apps they own that have fake reviews, but whether they're the ones behind them is unclear. It may very well be telling if the name transitions match up along with review postings if someone wanted to do that.
Those other developers I'm not familiar with unfortunately, but will give them a look and feed back later!
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of all those i find Conglomerate 5 ban kinda weird. and yes, why those two are ok. are they really random?
so curious, here
plus, some other stuff:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1531730/Japanese_Drag_Racing_JDM/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1531750/Highway_Traffic_Racer/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1555880/Beam_Car_Crash_Derby/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1605590/Fimbul_Winter/
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One down. A few hundreds to go.
Hey it's a tiny step for us but it's a huge step for Valve. Here's to many more to come
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Seeing as Atomic Fabrik's response seemed mainly targeted at myself and Sentinels of the Store, I've seen to make a response to the post here, discussing the point raised and accusations made: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/announcements/detail/6524113244463489181
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ok. but this is SteamGifts.com
so why you don't share infos you've got here on SG, instead of linking your Steam Group/Curator?
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Convenience first and foremost.
Many people get annoyed about self-promotion, but AF already mentioned the group/curator in the post on X, so I'm not exactly just yelling about the group for 0 reason.
In reality: the post is very much relevant to the conversation, so why wouldn't I take a chance to show something I made that bears relevance to the conversation?
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why you don't show here on SteamGifts what you made. you're giving almost nothing to this conversation, linking something else outside SG.
you talk about your convenience, i'm talking about community's one.
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Comments are limited to 10,000 characters bro.
If you have an issue and you don't want to go to my page, don't bother. Plenty of others on this thread have had no issue. They're not inconvenienced following a link to a trusted source.
Or maybe you just don't like me, and that's fine too, I wish you well! :)
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Steam direct fee need to be increased. To something like 300-500$ from the current 100$, and that value should be refunded only if much higher amount of revenue done than the current value.
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dunno.
100 dollars seems to be the normal, usual fee for a dev. should be easy, imo, to "enter" and publish your first work, kind of very easy.
game dev is (looks to be, as i'm not a dev) hella hard work and Valve should support more, truly more, good devs that are currently publishing and having hella hard times to get their work noticed by a few.
cause, yes, there are damn good dev on Steam but they're getting a lot less than Atomic Fabric (just to name the last one that has caught our attention, today) and that's not fair... but it depends on the platform devs are in.
(whitelisted you back, sorry, have messed up some lists, lately ... :P)
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Not to have a go or anything but (and your on my whitelist for a long time) some of the games you give away and some of the games I giveaway are also not that great and maybe give more attention to them than other - in your words better devs and better games
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the way i see it (this works for Discussions, too): i'm giving away (or writing) something that you should decide if that's "enterable" ("readable") or not, depending on your own judgment.
i can give away games to get attention on a certain game/dev/publisher. or, i can give away multiple games cause i want to get rid of those keys. or... something else.
just like with Discussions. one day i'm happy as hell cause girlfriend decided i'm a really good guy. the other one, i want to get attention on Moderation of SG, and then i'll create a train cause i've just bought that same Fanatical bundle for the second time. and. so. on.
cg has always, always gave this site a lot of freedom. freedom is wonderful, but can be a little hard to handle. and i don't like SG hard times. i'm here on SG cause i'm actually having hard times in real life :D
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While i agree, but these Atomic Fabric like devs doing more because of massproducing of shovelware, while with single IP they dont earn much (that is my opinion only tho, not sure it is right), so making the massproduction more expensive could make them abandon this business model. With less shovelware, the good indie devs might not be buried by these who releasing monthly 5 and filling up steam store with shovelware. As i said, i might be wrong, but this is how i imagine.
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how i imagine
that's the right attitude, imo too, my bud.
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For a beginner dev from a poor region $100 might be a lot.
I'd rather see a restriction regarding releases in a given period of time (unless the games are old releases coming to Steam). That would make it harder to quickly pump asset flips and shovelware onto Steam. Valve really reviewing games would be even better and they should be able to hire more people directly or indirectly (which again would be a good thing).
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Valve really reviewing games would be even better and they should be able to hire more people directly or indirectly (which again would be a good thing).
This is the way to start actually cleaning up Steam in a more far reaching manner.
Also simply eliminating blind key requests from devs, instead requiring some sort of disclosure as far as how they're actually going to be used.
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I agree. 100 seems enough. It's small enough for a small dev trying to make some money, and high enough so that your asset flip you made yourself gets buried.
Atomic fabrique and others what are doing is mass creating trash and getting their money with other means. But that's unavoidable. Hopefully if enough showelware companies get banned, they decide to cheat the system in other way.
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I argued when it was launched that it was too low. I still believe I was right. 500 or 1000 is not that big number for a commercial product. Maybe it could be tied to sale price or there should be discount for free products.
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As I said on the Indie Gala Avoid Mommy Bundle thread:
Well, I can't say I'm sorry or sad about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keuGmE6g3bo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eunBFoTLCo0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhcs9_4Hxq0
EDIT: All keys from this bundle worked fine for me. On to farm the cards and make tons of money! 😬
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I agree. 100 seems enough. It's small enough for a small dev trying to make some money, and high enough so that your asset flip you made yourself gets buried.
Atomic fabrique and others what are doing is mass creating trash and getting their money with other means. But that's unavoidable. Hopefully if enough showelware companies get banned, they decide to cheat the system in other way.
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Judging from the tracker: https://steam-tracker.com/changelog
It looks like that "dev who makes 50cp trash asset flips and other rubbish that get posted by the hundreds in DIG bundles" finally got banned from steam. Still a few of their alt accounts to go.
Hopefully this should reduce the sheer number of those excessively high CP yet trash games on SteamGifts.
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