Of course. It' sensitive stuffs !

Today I have learned quite a bit how sensitive is game developer when people talk about their game.

The story, sadly, I cannot provide any actual proof due to the it comes from a friend translator, working together with me in Steam Translation Server, Or STS

Recently, there is a new game, a mod to be precise, known as Estranged: Act I, appeared on Steam Store. As you can see the game is not yet released, but already have some feed back (positive obviously) due to the fact that early Steam keys were distributed for some testers as well as Translator.

To be honest, I took part in translating about 1/3 of this project, and has politely decline participating in taking the steam keys for early testing due to time constraints in real life. One of my friend, happen to be a translator, took the key and review the game.

However, it did not go well. He criticized (which according to him, and not any actual image) the games technical problem on missing texture, optimizations problem. The early review was still positive, but has since then has been re-edited to remove complaint about technical stuffs. The Developer (according to my friend), asked his superior in Steam Translation Server telling him to take down the negative part, in which he did.

So now there is no more negative point in the review. Strangely enough, this game was meant to be Free-To-Play. Why would the Developers go as far as trying to protect a Free-To-Play release using work-of-mouth to censor the negative part ?

We could not sure but wonder that, perhaps in future release of other Episode of Estranged, It would cost real money to buy. But putting that point beside, perhaps this somehow show us how big game company industry trying to control for early success release.

In the defense of the Developers, they did also state that the key given out is still for pre-release version, which contains bugs and some problems (but, it was not until the negative review). However, if game industry goes on like this, losing the confidence in their own product and cover up the negative review, I fear that the lost will be on both side: Players and game developers. If you are the developer, how would you act to both satisfy your customers (the gamers) and the friends, partners working hard together with you to make the game. There is clearly reason why even Free-to-Play Single Player game fears negative review.