Although the first one is listed for EUR 329 on Steam you can buy it for 1.95 in a DIG bundle with eight other masterpieces.
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Who in their right mind is actually going to pay $200 for that shit.
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If the 2nd link doesn't work (no games found):
https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&type=-1&keyname=23&operator=3&keyvalue=wandwand
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holy sht, the chicken coop game costs $9448,25 ARs with taxes and fees.
that's just bs
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Probably, it is money laundering, allowing them to buy the game (with funds from wherever) and convert it to a paycheck from valve, deposited into their bank account.
The other possibility is it's a bait and switch, meaning it isn't meant to actually get bought on steam, but to generate keys for bundles and resale at a fraction of the cost, and use for boosting of sites like this one.
I was talking to a friend the other day who noticed that there's a huge increase in mid-level entries from years past, upwards of 2,000 entries for the recent choice games in stuff like level 4-5, with more people eligible than ever before. The question is with what, since we seem to have less giveaways overall. Sure enough, asset flips with silly prices seem to be in their histories.
As much as it pains me to say it, these flippers know what they're doing and have found a niche market. Not a big profit, but enough to get a return and a little spending cash.
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The other possibility is it's a bait and switch, meaning it isn't meant to actually get bought on steam, but to generate keys for bundles and resale at a fraction of the cost, and use for boosting of sites like this one.
This is definitely one of the reasons. From my understanding sometimes the person that creates the bundle recommends the dev/publisher to raise the price of the "game" if that's what you want to call it, to those ridiculous prices to help sell the bundle because people will buy it for CV. Most of the time the CV is nuked, but obviously there's cases that slip by as we won't catch at first, but when it's realized it gets reduced from the point of change or bundle launch.
It's not always about bundles of course. Sometimes the devs/publisher, which most of the time is the same person does it on their own. They sometimes give away this crap to select people with the ridiculous price raises to give them CV in exchange for "helping promote" their "game".
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Most of the time the CV is nuked, but obviously there's cases that slip by as we won't catch at first, but when it's realized it gets reduced from the point of change or bundle launch.
Sadly, a lot, slip and will never catched because the active support members on sg are much too less and cg don't change something on it since years :o(
Alone from me are ~550 add game tickets open (up to 3 years...) and i couldn't say that the last few (2-3) active mods are lazy or something like that, they have only no chance with the ammount that happen each day.
And because of that are people level 10 with only giving free stuff.
I am sadly not allowed to post a example here, but if you want contact me on steam and i send you one of the extremest ones.
To the rest, yes you see it very correct and described it very well with this special asset flip games with ridiculous prices.
One little info added, a lot of them appear in the shady russian stores, mostly for 6 - 16 cents, before they appear in the DIG bundles.
So when the DIG bundles, get set to bundled (and that don't happen often), it hit only a part of the exploiting members.
I gone each day throught 5 sg members GAs to see what is new in the shady ru stores and reported this games after checking the known stores. But it takes much too much time as i could do this endless AND on the other side would be a mod needed that could handle the ammount of tickets. Both isn't possible.
The extremest abusing users are maybe 50-100, it would be easier to create a new rule that this ones could be suspended for constantly trying to abuse/exploit loopholes. That would lower the workload extreme and maybe would send a sign to the ones that abuse/exploit such loopholes in a lower ammount that they should stop with it.
And yes, i don't believe that such a rule will be implemented
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Nope.
Not for free, with cg as boss that don't care and don't give the needed possibilities and tools. It's like a fight with bound hands behind the back.
I would, perma, suspend left and right and i think that would start a riot from the multiaccounters and autojoiners :-D
Besides that i am a guy that people like or dislike, it, mostly, don't give something between. So let's say, i assume, a part would have problems with me as mod.
So in short, that wouldn't end very well ;o)
And when i know that from the begin, i know it would be wrong
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alternate solution if many find this problematic: zero CV for profile limited games?
well, i don't really care, but that could be a valid option to filter out these exploits.
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I'm not sure how well that would work or if that's even possible with how SG works with the SteamAPI.
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Usually the problem only with profile limited games so i guess that would work.
Some achievement tracker sites allow games to filter out profile limited games (which sadly not available when you search on steam), so i guess it is possible. Can't find any proper key for that on steam's webAPI, but as those sites use it to add profile limited tag to games, I guess the normal API should have a related key as that has more available data.
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Reaching out to an Ultra or Super Moderator about this would be a good idea as they have a better understanding than me about how SG works and what can and can't be done with the site.
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I think it's a bit more complicated, as a money laundering scheme this doesn't make much sense, since Steam takes such a high cut (30%), that other methods might be more ideal. However non-Steam Wallet based in in-game purchases aren't getting cut by any margin, but these kind of asset flip games rarely include those.
I believe it's more likely, these games are sold by the millions to grey markets sites.
Steam definitely needs a quality control, similarly to what Epic is doing with their catalogue.
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I think it was Lemurzin that was shown as being plausible linked to money laundering with its super expensive DLC, so it's not unheard of that steam ends up being used for these purposes, and considering how hard Valve went down on the game and its publisher, they must have done something bad beyond having a stupidly high price
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A game called drowning also has a similarly high priced dlc that one is till available in the store. However I find it odd that they go through Steam wallets effectively loosing 30% of the money. I imagine Valve is making a fortune from these alone if they are really used for money laundering.
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Has there been any actual evidence? I briefly looked, and I saw a reddit post about a video that made this claim, but purely based on the fact that the DLC is expensive. That alone is not evidence at all, of course.
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What other possible reason could there be for such an unusual pricing model?
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Well, since we're on SG, it could have been an attempt to gain extra CV here (wouldn't be the first time). Or the guy simply thought if he sells just a few copies, he's already making profit. And there are probably other reasons that I am not thinking of right now. The point is, just because you maybe think it's likely, doesn't mean it's actually true. Which is why we need evidence.
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I am sensing Occam's razor entering the room.
So someone would go throigh the trouble of creating a game, paying 100 bucks to Steam, spending hours with Unity documentation to make gameplay and DLCs work just to gain CV in the hopes of winning a few games? I find this extremely unlikely.
I don't know how much you know about selling stuff on Steam, but selling a few copies by accident and making a profit doesn't really happen. Even indie devs with well thought out gameplay and graphics struggle to break even. Customers almost always stick to sales, no-one buys full price after release, meaning a person would need to sell a lot, to make a profit. That requires marketing, and a lot of effort.
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Maybe he already had the game and then decided to raise the price to make it possible for people to farm some extra CV? I would have to look it up again (and I'm not really in the mood to invest more time into this), but I am pretty sure we already had cases where cheap asset flips sold their games on russian sites for pennies, but raised their Steam price and offered this as sort of a service on certain websites.
But it doesn't even have to be that. We already had devs that were just angry about certain comments on their forum and either changed the price or did some other extreme, nonsensical actions (like deleting their game, so that nobody can play it anymore). People don't always act rationally. What I'm saying is that there could be a number of reasons, and I refuse to accept one as truth if there is no evidence whatsoever. Occam's Razor doesn't really apply, if you ask me, since I could imagine several reasonably probable possibilities.
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Valve really cut back on generating keys as well a few years ago. I wonder how many keys Valve allows to be generated for these overpriced asset flips that have practically zero sales on Steam itself.
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I believe it's more likely, these games are sold by the millions to grey markets sites.
Valve has limited the amount of keys you can generate and sell off Steam. You can't just distribute a few hundred thousand keys on a whim anymore as you have to meet a ratio of Steam sales/keys for third parties.
Edit:https://www.polygon.com/2017/8/18/16167462/valve-steam-keys-limiting-developers
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Production costs are minimal and the entry fee is $ 100. If a few suckers buy full price on Steam they can turn a profit.
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Sounds extremely unlikely since a refund policy is in place. With a 2 dollar entry cost they would need to sell more than 70 copies to even get back the Steam entry fee and possible 3-4 times that much to turn a profit. That's already around 240 copies which is an incredibly high amount for a game with no appeal, no fan base and no marketing.
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Do not forget that such developers also sell the game to various resellers where people can buy the codes for much less then steam price is.
Just checked such a game that was freshly released on 23 June 2022 with price tag $39.99 it steam... One can buy a key for just $0,39 cents from such a retailer. And such retailers are buying keys in bulk (like thousands per game). So probably "developer" already got some margin.
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Read the whole thread. It was already mentioned that Steam no longer allows key generations like that.
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I would agree if such resellers won't show how many keys they have on stock.
Game released: 3 June 2022
Keys on stock: 4825
So despite "Steam's best efforts" there is still a way (or even ways) to generate thousands of keys for future resale in (most often but not always) shady shops.
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Just to poke a bit, I dont think I would call that game an asset flip. The gameplay seems far more complex than asset flips and the overall style and cohesiveness of the visuals indicate that there was effort involved. Also it has 12 genuine reviews which means that it probably had over 500 sales on Steam (based on the Boxleiter method). With that amount of sales, I'd imagine that they could generate that amount of keys. Other asset flips barely have reviews to speak of.
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Ok, I admit that I might be wrong and might have lack of knowledge on the subject. But still I can see a lot of keys for games that are available in big amounts. Including such titles, as Where are my potatoes?, DUCK Mission, SPLAIT RAGE, Villwars and many more that is closer to title of "asset flip" that were released in last two months and are available for fraction of their cost in Steam.
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A lot of "crap" games/extreme asset flips are copies of existing games that only exchange the graphic assets/templates.
You see partly 30x the same game with other graphic themes or other tiny changes like a changed color.
This devs/publishers sell a lot of copies to shady ru shops, after that go, nearly, all, of them into the DIG bundles. Before and after are this games on freebie sites, that demand that the people do task like follow, subscribe, like, retweet etc. a publisher/dev, to generate at some point a income for them and to give them the touch of a "real business"/"serious publisher/dev". This publishers/devs buy services for fake reviews or do the fake reviews by themself/friends/other fake devs on steam and that way are, mostly, the first ~20 reviews nothing worth because in nearly all cases fake reviews (it's mostly easy to spot).
This publishers/devs pay mostly only 1x $12 for the assets plus the steam costs. The tiny changes they do then by themself.
They earn money from the sold game copies, they earn money from the freebie sites or the follow/subscribe/retweet stuff, they earn money from the games that they get for free when they involve one or more own curations that get pushed. And they earn money when someone is so dumb to buy the games on steam.
Oh and yes, to create unlimited ammounts of keys isn't possible anymore but to create keys isn't impossible for them. So they can't sell 1 million keys as before but selling 40k or 80k outside of steam isn't a problem.
All in all they earn with each crap game more as they pay, or they wouldn't sell 30x the same game with different colors etc..
I don't checked the game that Andy brought up, my words are meant in general.
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I'm getting tired of seeing these asset flips flooding the Steam store. I wish there's a way to shut down these "developers" completely.
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Don't forget this problem was created by Valve. First with Steam Greenlight and now with Steam Direct. It's unlikely Valve will forego this revenue stream as long as they can avoid allegations of assisting to money laundering.
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What? How can this be used for money laundering?
nvm, saw the comment above.
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I won't say Greenlight was that bad, especially considering that the final decision was after Valve, not the community. The community itself could only raise some attention towards one or another game
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There were innumerable campaigns and greenlight bundles that promised steam keys for the game if it got greenlit all you needed to do to place it in a groupees greenlight bundle, and even a game without a gameplay concept could be pushed through the system. And the devs even got paid for it in that case.
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There were Steam Groups blackmailing developers for free stuff. Games dropping a few 100,000 achievements, farmers with thousands of bots destroying the Community Market (an unhealthy development initiated by Valve to generate more money for them).
Heck, there were people bragging about how they earned hundreds of thousands by speculating on/manipulating the market.
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You are mixing some different kind of problems into one. The farmer issue, for example, isn't related to this at all, but rather to Valve allowing to create thousands of accounts or infinite key generation for developers (which gladly was fixed after Greenlight retirement, but could have been fixed with Greenlight still in place, no difference)
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I just wanted to recap some of the heatedly discussed issues at that time.
In case you don't know the economist Yanis Varoufakis advised Valve how to design their digital Steam economy. He later became Minister of Finance in Greece during their debt crisis.
Seems hiring an economist is a sure fire receipe for disaster.
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it all went to UBER hell when they removed steam greenlight. by the end people were giving away free keys to get yes votes and bribing their way to the store page
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While I can sympathize with those who need assets to make their own games, due to lack of skills or lack of help, I can't stand asset flips. It is peak lazy. One should do better than just buying an asset pack, then putting it as is on storefronts like Steam.
It's as lazy as tracing someone else's art wholesale, then calling it your own.
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due to lack of skills or lack of help
One big factor is time. Indie devs often don't have the time to create all assets themselves. And frankly, it wouldn't make sense to make every tree and bush from scratch. This has bought assets, and most people don't even realize it:
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Of course! When it comes to creativity, time can be one's biggest enemy. And a good dev can make a masterpiece out of another person's assets. I'll probably use assets if I ever make a game, because I lack the time and skills to create everything from scratch.
Your example is one that is very skillfully done, by the way! And it's beautiful.
I honestly wonder how many games use assets from the asset store, and just do so well enough that it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb.
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Maybe they increased the price because we could filter most of these games setting games >2-3$ ?
A way to force the manual filtering ?
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I think the existence of these games is a good trade off if it means genuine games by really small or new indie devs can also get on Steam. I think Steam's algorithm mostly does a good job keeping the bad tuff away from general searches.
I think what would help is if Steam made it easier to ignore a whole list of games at once (sometimes I open a devs page and manually ignore each game/dlc one by one) or allowing the blacklisting of devs or publishers. There is a feature to ignore devs, but it has a really low limit which is a problem (same issue applies to following devs).
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I think the existence of these games is a good trade off if it means genuine games by really small or new indie devs can also get on Steam.
It only makes it way harder to find real indie games though.
I don't think the algorithm does any job of keeping this stuff away from searches.
During the Summer Sale, I browsed my favorite genres hoping to get underrated, smaller gems but once you were past the AAA and bigger games, it was all Hentai BS, cheap Porn and asset flips.
I think what would help is if Steam made it easier to ignore a whole list of games at once (sometimes I open a devs page and manually ignore each game/dlc one by one) or allowing the blacklisting of devs or publishers.
This. Very much. Why the hell is there even a limit on ignoring devs that are obviously not devs, I'll never know.
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That's a fair point too. I do agree that especially when sorting by new releases, the flood of low quality games makes it kind of hard to find good stuff.
I use website's like itch which has no requirement to put anything there, and while there are a lot of really bad games, because there's no barrier to entry, there's lots of weird and experimental stuff that I've enjoyed that aren't in traditional stores.
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Itch is really great for that. But then they're also not exploited like Steam is by fakers and other wtf trash.
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I report games, with extreme high prices for mostly "game shaped objects" or bare minimum games, on steam for money laundering.
When enough do it, they will look into it with each of such games.
And i think when such a game costs $200 it don't give much reasons for them to not react/look closer into it after very few reports.
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I won't be surprised if this is aimed exactly at exploitation of SG.
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It sucks with gaming industry at all. Asset flips are even worse and more pricey, but normal games are spreading with early accesses or being released full price unfinished. And not all devs care finish their games after release.
Btw, I can understand indie game for 20€ as they incomes are a lot lower then big games studios, but real game from money laundering title is easy to recognize in few mins. I bought a few unknown small games at high price to support small devs, but real devs.
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I've heard somewhere that some of these low effort asset flips are used sometimes to launder money on the Steam Market, using painfully bad skins or items.
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Totally true, thought it would be the end of it when steam was doing major clean sweeps, but they seemingly stopped doing that.
Often you can see the banner though and already guess it will be an asset flip game, or basically most games that has an animal name in it.
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force of nature is trash and they abandoned it, v rising it's gonna be good if they wont focus only on pvp
i guess it depends on the effort put into the game
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Asset flips with minimal prices are simply annoying. But the ones with 20+ USD price on Steam are a huge risk for Steamgifts' integrity. These 'games' that are 20+ USD on Steam but only a few cents in shady keyshops are used to get multiple accounts to pass Steamgifts' 100 USD account value registration limit for a very low price. If you know where to look you can get a Steam account to 100 USD value for a dollar or even less. I have seen users here whose Steam accounts didn't have a single playable game, only asset flips. And it doesn't stop there, these asset flips can also be used to pump up your SG level. They are usually caught way too late and often the mods don't set a correct reduced or zero CV date so if you were fast you get to keep full CV for them forever.
What I don't understand though is quite often I see reputable, well-known users joining giveaways of these. But why? They don't have cards, they don't even give a +1 and it's a waste of time playing them. Are they collectible despite the no +1?
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While I understand your resentment of people having a lot of games on some level please understand these are the ones keeping the site alive.
If you want to exclude these people you could look into joining:
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/3JyIQ/less-than-1000-games
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/orrR5/unlucky7-a-group-for-those-that-won-7-or-fewer-games-new-gifter-rule-23rd-feb-2020
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I can also recommend Playing Apreciated group. Later they will open requirement again. If winners don't play their wins - they are kicked out of group. So chances that game you are giving away will be played are high )
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and often the mods don't set a correct reduced or zero CV date
If you see something with a wrong date, you can create a "add game" ticket with the needed infos, that it gets set to the correct date.
I done a good bunch of such tickets and they get handled, after some time.
More we can't do.
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"Add game to list" should be used to ask to restore game to the "create giveaway" page. Like when game is not yet released and someone wants to make giveaway for it. Any other requests are in the wrong category here. e.g. adding games to bundle or change effective bundle time.
IMO it would make more sense to make them in Other category. Otherwise add game to list is cluttered with piles of tickets in wrong category. Another matter is that we don't have category specific for that, same as we don't have category for e.g. game revocations. But when there is no right category it should land in Other.
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I must say your info are wrong.
The, few, mods that handle the tickets for free games, bundled games and wrong free/bundle dates, wanted it this way and i hold me on their wish because they do the work.
All of them said the other category should be avoided at all costs, for such tickets, because nearly nothing gets managed there (and that is my experience from my made tickets too).
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The fact it's easier for mods to filter those tickets when they are in the wrong category does not mean they should be there. As I said there is no category to report that game should be added to the bundle list or it's marked with wrong date as free. So I see why other mods find it easier to have them gathered in the wrong category but still in one place.
I would still prefer to have proper category for those but it would be up to cg to code it. But our SOP clearly states which tickets should be handled in the "Add game to list" category, and those are not the tickets about adding game to the bundle list.
All of them said the other category should be avoided at all costs, for such tickets, because nearly nothing gets managed there (and that is my experience from my made tickets too).
Ideally people would read site FAQ, that way most of the Other tickets would be never made. I would even like to have a pop-up with FAQ before being able to make a ticket in this category. If you have "free" hour and choice between closing 20 Request New Winner tickets, or going to Other and post 30 replies that "FAQ says you can't mark game as received when you could not activate the game" - which would you choose? That's why Other category is IMO with lower priority and not checked often.
Honestly I would like to have big-corpo system in place where users need to go throught pre-emptive questions that would solve 60% of problems, and then only those that can't be solved via quick reading of site FAQ would warrant ticket creation. But it would require support re-writing from the ground up, and will most probably never happen.
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I am not sure if you took my sentences as a attack or something like that, so if you done, don't take my words as attack or something like that. It wasn't meaned as that.
Yes, it is the "wrong category" but as you said too, it don't give a correct one because cg should create it (since years) and let's assume this will not happen, thats easier for all involved ones^^.
So, yes, it is a workaround based on the, since years, limited available ways and tools (or their restrictions).
It's a bit sad that a lot of tickets in the other category are stuff that could be solved with reading the FAQ but i know from a lot of other tickets that gather there dust -maybe hidden between all the "FAQ tickets"- without the chance to get solved by the user itself with reading the FAQ.
It give, of course, not really a perfect solution for this problem but the pop-up with the FAQ linked when opening a "Other" ticket would be a good solution that would not need so much programming. From my point of view the best solution with such a low ammount of active mods. You seen, a few days ago, that i try to help with the available mods... (i don't know if you got in the meantime the needed infos/thing, so i can only hope)-
And yes, i would prefer to handle other tickets as the "read the FAQ" ones if my available time to handle tickets would be low/very limited *.
So i fully understand this.
*Or i would link to the FAQ and write stuff like "read 3.1, thanks. If you still have questions write them in the discussions and if there none are able to answer them then write a new ticket or write it here in the ticket as answer". So very short answers, based on templates, without to invest much time. Sure a part would be still not able to read or understand^^ but a part could, maybe, be solved fast, this way.
I not expect that big-corpo system, pre-emptive questions would solve some problems on sg.
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I am not sure if you took my sentences as a attack or something like that, so if you done, don't take my words as attack or something like that. It wasn't meaned as that.
I didn't.
Yes, it is the "wrong category" but as you said too, it don't give a correct one because cg should create it (since years) and let's assume this will not happen, thats easier for all involved ones^^.
So, yes, it is a workaround based on the, since years, limited available ways and tools (or their restrictions).
That's what I meant as well. I can't "support" asking people to write tickets in wrong category just because they think they will be solved faster that way. I think you can imagine to what anarchy it would lead.
I still think it could be easier to make one big ticket in Other category and submit more cases each time someone has something. That way it would be kept in one place and better structured. If someone follows those tickets they could bookmark the ticket, instead of having to open 20 tabs in web browser each time "Add game to list" is checked. But that's my opinion, I don't really check this category when adding games to list, I just go to bundle website or giveaway website and check if we catch everything.
So very short answers, based on templates, without to invest much time.
That's not really possible, as users often write in convoluted way or it looks like they meant something but in fact want something different. When you focus on one ticket category and want to solve as many tickets as possible - it's possible to misread and send wrong response. Been there, done that. And then you may have confused user that get wrong advice and did something wrong while acting on it.
But that's enough for off-topic in this category :P
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i don't know an easy way to find the overpiced asset flips but here https://barter.vg/giveaways/ you can at least find all the free keys we constantly see giveaways for. many of these are only added to the bundle list after a while but not the free list.
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Ohhh this one is nice, thanks!
I see some websites I was not checking before. But they are missing like keyjoker that spams asset flip giveaways all the time.
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But why? They don't have cards, they don't even give a +1
How do you mean? They're ignored by the Steam library?
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They are profile features limited which means that they don't increase your game count on your profile. (Nor your achievement count if you unlock achievements in them.)
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Ah. I didn't know that. Not that I really check those +1s
I myself got fooled into entering for one of those a long time ago when I first joined SG, and was... let's say surprised by what I found when I tried playing the "game".
I have become more thorough since but I can only assume that everyone can be fooled once so maybe that's the case for those you saw entering.
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You fail to see the collector's perspective: there exist only a few dozen keys for the original Watch Paint Dry and some people would pay a pretty penny for a key.
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Wow. I actually thought you had made a funny there but it's an actual game. Ooook.
Yeah I am a collector of things but games are to play for me so I only try to get my hands on those I'd like to play at some point.
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Yup pretty much. Dmitry Sozinov is a prime example of someone who floods the store with asset flips and also does ridiculous price increases.
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How does Steam decide which games are "Steam is Learning" games which appear to later become "Limited Features"? Are these all considered Asset Flip?
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No. Definitely not all of them.
An Asset flip is when a so-called developer creates a game using only ready-made assets. There is no game play to speak of. They've just followed an online tutorial to make a basic game. Any of us that have any technical knowledge at all could do that.
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Another example is they'll take a tech demo or asset pack that someone else created on an asset store and they'll throw it on Steam. There are ones with actual "gameplay" per say, but it's meant to just showcase the assets, not be used as an actual game. Often times these have a ton of bugs and other issues.
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It's purely about sales figures on Steam store not a quality judgement.
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Steam announcement refers to addressing fake games. Since these appear to always become "Features Limited" then wouldn't it suggest a quality issue? How many great games can't sell 1,000 copies, for example? What great games have the "Steam is Learning"/"Features Limited" tag?
https://i.redd.it/ji3iyxq471411.png
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All games are features limited now, unless a trusted publisher whitelisted by valve.
Valve believes sales figures = quality, so if it hits a threshold and gets some kind of review? then valve graduates the game to "full" status.
I can point to many examples of recent +1 games that earned full status and are not quality at all. This hasn't really changed anything, because people who bought for counts and rankings still buy restricted, since you never know when a game will get cards or be banned and now is a collector's item. Valve requires a must deeper systemic change that I don't think they care to make.
I think, Valve's definition of fake games here is asset flips and low effort applications created purely to drop cards, inflate achievements, and add to game counts without any thought to quality content. Valve has no idea how to define quality.
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At least big sales figures = it's not an asset flip. There is simply no way an asset flip will ever get enough sales.
Please, don't tell me some asset flips actually got enough sales :(
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See some of the Hentai series games. Tile swap with lewd artwork, the only thing that differs is slight UI variations and the pictures. Priced at the minimum possible, often on sale.
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Being skilled in developing games doesn't go hand in hand with being a PR genius necessarily. Put it another way if you aren't well connected with streamers, youtubers, gaming news outlets and don't find a publisher who does PR for your game you'll have a 99.99% chance of no recognition.
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This reminds me of a thread somewhere called "why did hollow knight succeed," and is an example of an indie game with AAA production values, a price point below its worth, little marketing, huge community backing and support, and a lot of luck. They didn't follow a cookbook to become a top metroidvania, it was a combination of circumstances, social media (by fans), and word of mouth that gave the project legs. Even the kickstarter wasn't spectacular by any means. There are many Hollow Knights waiting to be discovered out there that haven't been as lucky, and are sitting in "learning" status.
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That's what you get when you don't have proper supervision. When anyone can make "one man company", pay 100 dollars and then hope it will be refunded to them when they sell enough of their "work".
It was argument years ago when Steam ditched Greenlight in favor of Direct. That Steam is shop and it's up to shop to curate what they should sell, to keep some degree of quality. You don't allow any junk manufacturer to put their moldy bread on shelf and say "it's up to people to decide if it should be there!".
But curating shop cost money. So it's easier to just let decision be made by algorithm and react to most egregious offender by banning hundreds of asset flips they made.
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I only asking how may people buy asset flip/Limited Features game?
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Often, they only get bought to give away on Steamgifts, where they often qualify for full CV because they are so new. I see a lot of giveaways with these where the creator hasn't even activated the game in their own account. They don't want the game but it gets full CV on SG. SG should have reduced CV for these so that it is not as big an incentive to buy them for GAs. This doesn't affect games received for free but if these games aren't bought it even reduces incentive to give them away for free.
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The veterans of SG still remember the name of LordKres.....
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I knew I've seen that name before, Jim Sterling did a video on that person and their "game", Journey of the Light.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LBG51Pafig
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So here's a prime example of someone buying an asset template from the unity store that someone else created and throwing it onto Steam. They literally have no idea what they are doing as the people who actually tried their game couldn't even get into an online match despite it being online only because the function didn't work. They also removed the reviews that were there on the store page as well as removed feedback and questions from the discussion boards including mine.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1977960/Battlerace/
They even made an "official reveal trailer" as well as a Steam launch trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-zlxunQa0c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULkcWBHSwnM
Here's the asset template created by the people who made it.
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/packs/mfps-2-0-multiplayer-fps-101171
Here's the developer's video showing it off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHC_4mIuNpk
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On a vaguely related topic:
New Unity Users (Coupon code: WELCOME2022): https://assetstore.unity.com/
Unity Blink megabundle ($30-40 USD)
Blink RPG Assets 50% off sale
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The number of so called developers making these games is getting even worse then before and now they are charging stupid prices for this junk.
This one shows how bad it is getting, the lowest price for his asset flips is 24.99 and the highest is 44.99 USD.
Then there is this one who is selling his asset flips at a staggering 49.99 USD
If anyone wants this might be a good place to list other games that are over priced asset flips so when support has time they can zero the value.
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