The devs are certainly dickbags, but I wouldn't say that all of the positive reviewers were paid off by the devs. A lot of them seem to be pretty honest.
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They actually gave Steam keys to people who contacted them on Desura with positive comments prior to the Steam release.
I'm sure some of these are genuine, yet they have still been bought off with free keys. They made sure only those who would give a positive review got keys.
Still, according to SteamCharts, no one is actually playing the game.
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I'm actually one of these guys, being italian myself i'm kinda happy if some developers get throught greenlight with their game.
Of course i'm one of those persons wich says what is thinking but seems like this is not what they espected from me :x
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These indie games are often a labor of love, especially those made by small teams. That's what it's so sad when the devs act out like jerks once they manage to get their game in front of an audience. I was actually looking forward to that game before those events started to pile up and even after all of this I was hoping the game would at least be enjoyable.
To be honest, I'd be perfectly content with an apology and a change of attitude. The game key was always secondary. A bad game can be improved and I'm sure there are people who will enjoy it. A negative attitude towards the community is not the way to achieve success though.
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But they were positive comments to the dev and they probably asked for keys. Do you think the devs directly asked for positive Steam reviews when they sent the keys?
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I think the dev gave keys to people who already contacted with positive comments about the game. They might have asked people to review the game but since they chose people who already liked it, they knew they would get good review. They got only one negative review from those free keys they gave away and the guy already said he received messages trying to convince him to change his review.
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This "devs" are really shitty, first they spam us to vote their game on greenlight and later refuse to give keys to bundle buyers.
I stopped caring about the game at that point, but deleting comments and trying to hide opinions is disrespectful to their costumers.
I upvoted your review.
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Upvoted.
Also couldn't refrain from posting my 2 cents on your review's page on how i feel on EA in general. This is my post there:
"I think the dev's reply is yet another showmanship on how some devs are shameless and how Early Access is 95% of the time a rip-off these days. It's devs like these that have given Early Access such a bad rep and for good reason too. Upvoted of course, devs like these are a scourge that steam needs to get rid of."
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I wonder how long it will take this one particular dev to have a public meltdown and get removed from steam, too.
I get that games in such small teams are real labours of love and it can feel scathing to receive certain kinds of criticism, but responding in certain tones only makes things worse. Broken promises naturally make people grouchy, so really they only have themselves to blame. As for stacking the reviews, that's also a pretty shady tactic. Sure, indie games sometimes need a bit of extra love to get noticed, but to also censor out certain negative responses just because they are blunt is a seriously bad way to go about it.
It's only a matter of time before someone rubs them a particularly bad way, and they explode in full view before they can control themselves and then it'll be all over. Their behaviour will be public knowledge, and the next step is the meltdown and "I'M LEAVING FOREVER".
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Don't think I'd even heard of this game until now, but this all sounds pretty awful, and the dev responded like a complete ass. I definitely made sure to upvote your review. It's a shame Steam doesn't actually seem to do anything about these scummy practices, though. Only time they ever seem to respond is when someone threatens Gabe directly.
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Did he delete his review? I can't see it anymore.
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I just saw the reply to your review, I haven't laughed that much in a long time. XD
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Yeah I upvoted, usually I give games and reviews a fair shot of course, but damn, the devs review... that really isn't a professional thing to do, awks. Again, worth all of my upvotes.
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I definitely have nothing against ScummVM. I love that piece of software. :P
I've reported the dev to Valve from his account. I don't know if they'll do anything but I don't plan on taking things any higher unless the dev tries pulls another fast one on me. (The Reddit army hasn't been unleashed... those guys can brew one hell of a shitstorm.)
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I had entirely forgotten about this game, possibly because it sucked. Never realized people were wondering about keys from the bundle. I guess I assumed there was no key due to it never getting greenlit. Guess it was more because the dev is another douche that really needs a pr person.
Your review will probably just disappear from the store page someday soon. No shame in trying though.
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Someone else posted a negative review earlier today. I wonder if the dev will try to bully him as well.
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I got this in the BM11 bundle too, and have been mixed on the issue
What the dev claims is in fact true, there is no mention of Steam nor Greenlight on the bundle page at all.
https://groupees.com/bm11
e.g. Look at Ultonious on the top left, which has the Greenlight badge in the description with the standard "will provide a Steam key once Greenlit" text. TBC does not have that, nor is it an item anyone could intentionally pick to buy anyway, but a free bonus to all purchasers.
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I agree that there was no promise of steam key at the time since the game wasn't yet on Greenlight. And if the game had released and no key had been provided to any of the bundle buyers, this would have blown over really quickly. I still feel that they should treat all their previous buyers equally no matter where they purchased from but they're still entitled to not provide keys to bundle buyers. (And I don't buy the "it's a free bonus game" argument. It's part of the bundle as much as any other game. Groupees bonus are simply games which are revealed after x number of sales has been registered.)
The real issues started when they gave keys to those that gave them positive comments (probably in hope of getting good reviews) and told everyone else to basically deal with it and deleted threads from people wishing to discuss the issue. Personally, I was perfectly content to leave my review and let nature follow it's course. The thing that really ticked me was that the dev is trying to censor me by marking my review as off-topic, which is why I chose to raise awareness about these guys.
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Really? Wow, and i've actually spoke to one of them, he was an Italian, he seemed like a pretty nice fella.... Damn.
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From what I've heard, they are nice people to chat with. They only take issue with you if you dislike their game or their business practice.
Like many indie developers, they should probably let someone else handle PR if they get too emotionally involved to be objective.
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This will be another reminder when I finish and release game on Steam. Well if I ever made it in the first place.
I read and upvoted.
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Sometimes it feels like all those developers are living in a glass bubble, totally unaware of what hurdles others have faced before them. They all keep committing the same mistakes.
Someone should really set up a mandatory indie dev crash course before they're allowed to publish anything on Steam.
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Seriously. I really can't believe that some people are so clueless about PR
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We, software developers, are not exactly known for our people skills. If I ever complete and release one of my game project, chances are I'll need to get some help for the PR part. I probably can't be as bad as those guys since I know better than to mistreat people you're expecting to buy your game but I'm sure I'd find some way to put my foot in my mouth.
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I've had one of the other reviewers contact me because people have been harassing him over this.
Please guys, feel free to upvote or downvote any review but keep it classy. There's no need to stoop down to that level.
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Let's make once a month "the national day of fight for better Greenlight" aka Against Bullshit Day. I don't mean some raid in manners of infamous hacker known as "4chan", but we have the power and it's our duty to downvote everything fishy and, on the other hand, give some free promo for nice guys' promising looking games. It's already happening time to time and I'm glad for topics like this, but they should FEAR US!
Wasn't Greenlight supposed to shutdown anyway? I haven't heard anything new about it for a while.
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The thing is, this game actually looked promising and I was looking forward to it when I first saw it. It seemed like it could go somewhere. I didn't know at the time that the dev would act like this and that the game would see little progress.
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So, the guys behind The Body Changer have been deleting every negative comment about their game on both the Steam community and the Desura game page for a while.
They got a lot of flak from the Steam keys debacle following their Greenlight campain. For those unaware of what happened, the developers put their game in a Groupees bundle that included Desura keys. They later put their game on Greenlight and , to help raise awareness, they spammed anyone who had redeemed the game on Desura with requests to upvote their game. That got them greenlit and the game was subsequently released on Steam. At that point, they doubled their price and provided Steam keys to those who had bought the game directly from Desura and those bundle buyers who had brown-nosed them. The rest of us got the shaft and we were told that if we wanted to play on Steam to buy the game again. They started deleting any thread that popped up discussing the issue, and kept on deleting negative comments up to this day.
The people that got their keys went on to write all kind of positive reviews and never played the game again. Looking at steamcharts this game was DOA and no one seems interested in actually playing it. There's bound to be some legitimate reviews among the lot but I can't figure why anyone would actually enjoy this.
When I saw that the game was part of the gem auctions and going up for next to nothing, I decided to grab a copy. It only costed me pennies and none of that money went to the dev so it was a win-win. I figured I could do an actual review of the game that they would not be able to delete. I did give the game a fair shot though because I wasn't going to post a "This game it shit" review if it was actually great. I was going to include a warning about the developers themselves being scum though, no matter what I thought about the game. The fact is, I quickly figured out why no one is playing. The game is clunky and boring as hell. It was that way when they first released on Desura but I hoped it had at least significantly improved.
The dev was quick to claim that my review wasn't honest and that people thought their game was the best indie game they had played this year. (Could be true if it was the only indie game someone had played.) I wrote a lengthy reply and what the dev did in return was to flag my review as off-topic and reply to it with some really immature comment. Apparently, you're not allowed to dislike their game.
I would appreciate it if any of you would be so kind as to upvote my review (as long as you agree with it of course) so it stays on top and help raise awareness about these guys.
Also, since you made it all the way down here, I think you deserve something for the time spent on reading this wall of text.
Please do not harass other reviewers. They are entitled to their opinion whether you feel it's legitimate or not.
Update
The developer (or Valve support, who knows really) has removed the off-topic flag and is now blaming my posting of a giveaway at the end of my rant as a dishonest way to promote my review.
They also banned me from their forum for "Trolling and insulting"
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