Because of this I have now three unactivated wins here on my account...
http://www.sgtools.info/nonactivated/Fenris77
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These get whitelisted in SGtools. It just takes a bit for them to catch up.
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No need to worry about it on SG, a mod needs to manually suspend you for an unactivated game.
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http://s1.zrzut.pl/ooSJm4r.png
So I guess I'm good?
Well, that'll teach me to enter mass dev giveaways just for the sake of it... ;-)
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Any clue how to remove an expired coupon? Usually they got removed automatically after they expired.
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I'm more bothered by the cards being made unmarketable. At least those games were a cheap way to level up.
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Squeeze them until they turn into gems. Did the same.
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They should still work fine for making badges and they remain tradable so it's not like they become useless, just harder to obtain.
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You can't get them on market, that's right, nothing else changes.
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If no one else has, I've alerted KnSYS and we are working to update our own internal tools.
If something happens accidentally because of this, feel free to contact me or have someone you know contact me. :)
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I wish they would just get rid of everything related to asset flips and achievement spam. But they won't
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You mean now I won't be able to get glorious badges for masterpieces such as Brilliant Bob or Absconding Zatwor?
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Does anyone have a time frame on when the games were removed?
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The Silicon Echo stuff got removed 5-10 minutes before I posted this in the first place. The Zonitron stuff was probably right before that.
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Almost certainly for running card farms for games (most of them asset flips) pretty much nobody actually bought unless they were "quantity over quality" achievement hunters.
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bump for visibility
Hopefully sgtools will be updated soon.
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Holy shit... I'm honestly surprised they finally did something about this. Now they just have to deal with any sock puppet accounts and the other assholes that are abusing the system.
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I just remember 3 months ago I won this......
https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/ExPHR/barclay-the-marrowdale-murder
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damn i lost 40+ games from my game count. was so close to 4,000 games too :(
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I was getting close to 5k when Valve started mass bans of devs at first. I was almost hitting this 5k 3 or 4 times ;p I was on 499X, like 5 or 6 games till 5k and went town over 100 gasmes with first wave ;p
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but we get the old count back anyway, right? if i recall correctly, it was like that the last time.
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no, we do not. It depends on the game and how it got removed - things that got simply purchase-disabled or some of games that got removed due to licensing expiration mostly stay in API and are increasing numbers on your profile. Games removed because Steam is banning exploiting developer are removed from API and subtracted from your gamecount number. You can still download and play them but they do not count as your owned games.
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but there definitely was a case some time ago when we all lost like 100 games, and then got the old count back a day or two later. i don't remember what games that was about, but i am pretty sure it was just some exploitative junk that got removed (probably same as now). i mean, you don't lose 100 games at a time due to expired licenses. ;)
i wish my memory was better... ^^
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I just won a game here, activated it, and my game count dropped by over 20 games XD
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wow I was gonna have a 1k games celebration post but volvo sent my game count back down at least 20 so I guess itll have to wait lol
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Full list of released games that got nuked (all thanks goes to Madjoki for keeping track).
- 397620 GooCubelets (3 GooCubelets Games Vol.1)
- 416270 GooCubelets 2 (3 GooCubelets Games Vol.2)
- 431270 GooCubelets: The Algoorithm (3 GooCubelets Games Vol.3)
- 460660 GooCubelets: OCD (3 GooCubelets Games Vol.4)
- 385200 Absconding Zatwor
- 657490 Airon Ball
- 663260 AironBall: The Floating Lands
- 674820 AironBall: The Loop
- 675550 Ball of Paint
- 605470 Barclay: The Marrowdale Murder
- 447880 Beast Blaster
- 676640 Berry Pop Match
- 677110 Berryblast Matchmaker
- 708380 Black My White
- 708400 Black My White Again
- 667830 Blu Bandana
- 395980 Break Into Zatwor
- 644630 Break The Wall
- 368900 Brilliant Bob
- 710260 Burger in Partyland
- 676300 Carnival Ball
- 655450 Clickey
- 662310 Clickey: The Velocity Click
- 676200 Color Balling
- 675760 Color Snooker
- 675670 ColorSpill Ball
- 677140 Crush The Berries
- 462370 Cyborg Detonator
- 685610 Edges
- 685620 Edges 2
- 410590 Fiends of Imprisonment
- 654790 Flipper Hazard
- 677890 Flipper Hazard 2
- 678020 Flipper Hazard 3
- 678070 Flipper Hazard 4
- 678110 Flipper Hazard 5
- 677000 Fruit Candypop
- 662270 GooCubelets: Color Blocking
- 659850 GooCubelets: RGB
- 505440 GooCubelets: The Void
- 703010 Gravity At Its Finest
- 703020 Gravity At Its Finest 2
- 681430 Grin Bandana
- 710340 Helium Skies
- 706720 Hexa Faction
- 706730 Hexa Faction 2
- 667730 Laseronium
- 697220 Laseronium - The Reflexion
- 697200 Laseronium 2
- 670520 Laseronium: Over The Line
- 697230 Laseronium: The Beam Focus
- 670520 Laseronium: The Line
- 677200 Match and Crash
- 699110 Mr. Jumpington
- 699120 Mr. Jumpington 2
- 676280 Paint Polygon
- 675710 PaintPool
- 676230 Paintsplash Ball
- 698380 Paper Knights
- 699890 Pins
- 699910 Pins 2
- 701120 Pins 3
- 697070 Point Connect
- 697080 Point Connect 2
- 697090 Point Connect 3
- 697100 Point Connect 4
- 681440 Purpul Bandana
- 678810 Raccoon Hero
- 680060 Raccoon Hero: Among The Cacti
- 680080 Raccoon Hero: Monkey Business
- 680050 Raccoon Hero: Starlight
- 680000 Raccoon Hero: The Frost
- 679360 Raccoon Hero: The Marsh
- 679170 Raccoon Hero: The Sunrise
- 679330 Raccoon Hero: Under The Sea
- 449630 Rage Parking Simulator 2016
- 656960 Rage Parking Simulator 2017
- 701170 RINGOGNIR (RINGOӘͶIЯ)
- 701200 RINGOGNIR 2 (RINGOӘͶIЯ 2)
- 699880 RunZ
- 699900 RunZ 2
- 680460 SHAPES
- 680490 SHAPES2
- 680510 SHAPES3
- 680520 SHAPES4
- 680530 SHAPES5
- 680540 SHAPES6
- 680570 SHAPES7
- 680580 SHAPES8
- 685640 Sketchy
- 685650 Sketchy 2
- 694010 Sketchy 3
- 694020 Sketchy 4
- 559500 Sleengster
- 559940 Sleengster 2
- 660100 Sleengster 3
- 694030 SlingSkull Zombies
- 694040 SlingSkull Zombies 2
- 694910 SlingSkull Zombies: Gravedigger
- 694900 SlingSkull Zombies: Graveyard Shift
- 694920 SlingSkull Zombies: The Dawn
- 674610 Sound Balling
- 674640 Sound Balling 2
- 681880 Sphere Toss
- 681930 Sphere Toss 2
- 682190 Sphere Toss 3
- 682210 Sphere Toss 4
- 700640 Staplers!
- 701130 Staplers! 2
- 701140 Staplers! 3
- 676790 Sugar Fruit Match
- 677170 Sweet Berry Crush
- 545950 Tesla's Best Friend
- 488200 The First Spark
- 461570 The Last Photon
- 664220 The Return of Bantara
- 585580 The Safeguard Garrison
- 618340 The Safeguard Garrison 2
- 665390 The Safeguard Garrison: Space Colonies
- 432150 They Came From The Moon
- 677050 THREE CANDYBERRY MATCH
- 501690 Torch Cave
- 533710 Torch Cave 2
- 656950 Torch Cave 3
- 702370 TOREj
- 702380 TOREj 2
- 576080 Tracks of Triumph: Good Old Times
- 492240 Tracks of Triumph: Industrial Zone
- 528210 Tracks of Triumph: Summertime
- 681770 Whait Bandana
- 331710 Why So Evil
- 354850 Why So Evil 2: Dystopia
- 662130 Wild Goo Chase
- 681420 Yello Bandana
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Not surprised since they were all $1 shovelware poop. Most did not have cards and though they had achievements, they were nothing special. A few on this list just released on Steam today, so very few peeps actually own them (though it is kinda pointless now, even as a collector, but w/e).
There were a few others that had Steam pages but not released which I discounted from the original list. Figured it was not worth adding to the list if no one actually owned them.
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Ah I see you guys are already on it.. I submitted a ticket to you concerning this a short time ago. I'll close the ticket.
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Camera Obscura is a game that has nothing to do with all the Zonitron crap and sockpuppetry. Its only guilt is to have a developer called "Anteater Games", while one of Zon's puppet was "AntEater Games". Yes, you can get the same name as another developer by just changing the capitalization of a single letter.
However, I see it's still in its place on the Store, so either the removal was momentary and they quickly realized the mistake, or it's just an error on part of who compiled the list, but I don't blame them for the mix-up.
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In some ways I'm glad this dev's been nuked from Steam, but I'm also kinda glad he had his time on Steam in the first place. I hope future devs continue the good work he did in devaluing the achievements system, but in better games without all the asset flipping and card farming.
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Damn, looks like I'll have bad evening today - friend is again going to spend hour(s) whinning how we again lost games count on profile :)
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There are definitely hypocrites and flip-flopping users that appear in these threads, and this one isn't exempt from that fact.
They may not be the majority, but they are nearly always present.
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I've been avoiding those games like the plague, and found the whole discovery system useless because of all the terrible games that nobody in their right mind would actually play that it keeps recommending. So I've wanted to see these things gone for a long time now :P Might just be different people who want to keep them and who want them gone.
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That's certainly a true statement if you define "everyone" to be some value much smaller than 1% of forum goers.
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The point was, a whole lot of people wanted these games for various reasons, and a whole lot of people wanted them removed, for other reasons. That has always been the case.
Even if you read only this thread, not everyone is cheering for the removal of the games. So even the extra clarify, your statement isn't really true.
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You're trying so hard to imply that people are hypocrites for wanting the games, then cheering when they're gone, but the people who wanted the games for +1, cards, and achievements are clearly not the same group as those who are glad they got removed
Personally speaking, I couldn't give a shit what people buy or add to their library. I also couldn't give a shit what games get removed from Steam.
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Personally speaking, then don't post your opinion on an open forum if you don't expect replies, including differing opinions.
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I stated my opinion - no one forced you to reply (twice).
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I believe you already know this isn't going to end well if you continue to make this personal.
Just know this in advance - I won't put up with your petty insults and rants in my direction like Mully did.
I'm a patient person, but even my patience has its limits, as you've discovered in the past.
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I don't really get why so many people cheer about removed games... Do you complain that any other store (say, Amazon) sells crap you don't care about? Why the special treatment for Steam? 😐
(And yes, I know the suggestion algo is "broken". The solution is to fix it, not to purge the market...)
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Amazon sells only the goods and cannot be exploited with a card collection system. Amazon is also not flooded with shit just to game said additional system. Steam is the only platform in the video game world that uses additional crap to gain money from, and several developers and small groups are now working full-time exploiting this system, a system Valve really wants to pretend that is still working flawlessly.
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Why would you care what cards other people collect? I mean, none of those crappy games/cards/achievements will force their way onto your account/profile. You can just ignore them and live a happy life, no matter whether or not they are on the store. I couldn't care less if John Doe farmed 10k crap games to get to level 2000 or if Jane Done got 500k phony achievements. I'm not the fun police, good for them if they have fun this way...
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It is a little more complex, as card farming operations exploit a hoarding habit. From Valve's point of view, it also denies them a lot of profit.
But the eventual problem is that thanks to this system, products are not made to be played as games but to boost arbitrary numbers, setting a precedence that you do not have to actually design a game, just take a pre-made asset and rake in the money. This already made a bad enough reputation on Steam that now nobody actually considers any indie game to be more than an achievement farm or some trading card cash-in, and we rely on Humble to sometimes find a few real indie games that function as actual games on Steam. Valve removing 130 of these is just a tiny baby step on trying to win back the Steam store from the sea of non-games, which are now making up more than 50% of the available Steam applications.
Or, to use your analogy, it is as if half of the products sold on amazon were bootlegs and they were doing nothing about it.
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As talgaby said. There is so much crap on Steam, that finding there something worth my time is nearly impossible. That's why I rely on 3rd party recomebdations instead of browse Steam Shop to buy something.
When I tried to check Store last time I saw few big AAA games that were released recently and trash. Nothing else, just trash. Why should I browse through tons of trash, wasting my time to maybe find something worth buying? So for someone that doesn't activate every crap just for +1 shop is unusable. And that hurt Valve profits, as people don't browse shop and don't find bunch of nice looking games to add them to whitelist.
Using your Amazon example - it's like putting into search bar "XboX One S controller" in "Console Controllers" and get 50 pages of content with 500 products. But among those pages there are only 5 actual controllers, other 495 "items" are just photo of XboX One controller, cardboard XboX One controller, stinky slime silhouette of XboX One Controller. So you have click next, next, next to find actual controler on 10th page. But oh noes, it's white and you want black one. So you have to skip additional 5 pages to find it. Sure, someone might want to buy all those 200 photos of XboX One Controller. But at the same time it makes shop totally unusable, hence it doesn't happen.
That's why Amazon has working categories, and you can't sell brick in cardboard, but with photo and description of XboX One Controller. Every item that doesn't fit into category is removed. When you see sidescroller that was made only to profit from cards it shouldn't be tagged as "platformer" "adventure" and "logic". It should have " card trash" or "achievement trash" tag, and should be easily filtered from shop. Or shouldn't be put there in the first place.
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It would be fine if cards couldn't be sold. The problem is that these games aren't entertainment, but money making devices. People don't buy them for fun, but to make Steam credit. This is true even for legitimate games, that do offer fun but also cards, but games which are bought only for cards aren't really serving as games, and therefore shouldn't be available on a games store. In general I'd say that cards that can be sold hurt game development in general, as they encourage games to be bought and judged not by merit.
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As Steam's library grows, it becomes harder and harder to find the games you want. When there was a couple of hundred games, it was not an issue, but when we're having several thousand, it starts to get problematic. That's why they introduced things like the Steam Discovery queue, and that sort of stuff. These games harm the steam discovery queue, and other "recommendation" systems that Steam has.
Do I complain when Amazon sells crap? Well, I would complain if Amazon was selling broken products, products not fit for purpose, and if I could not trust that the product I order from Amazon at least functions, I would not order things from Amazon. Most stores, even big online ones like Amazon, has some kind of curation, to avoid them selling products that are too bad. Even if a store tries to position itself as a budget-store (we're stepping out of the realm of amazon here), they're trying to avoid getting a reputation as junk mongers, who sell broken, or nearly broken stuff, because such a reputation does in the end lower consumer trust and harms the store.
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These games harm the steam discovery queue, and other "recommendation" systems that Steam has.
=>
(And yes, I know the suggestion algo is "broken". The solution is to fix it, not to purge the market...)
Valve pretends that fixing their algo is hard. It's not, they just can't seem to be bothered hiring competent machine learning engineers for some reason.
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How would they actually go about fixing it though? They can't go by playtime, that's easily gamed, and there are many games that are about the same length as it takes to get all cards. They can't go by achievements, as we've seen what developers do with those. They could start measuring how much user activity it is when you play the game (like are you just sitting there and not doing anything of substance, or are you actively pressing keys and moving your mouse), but not only would that mean that they would start gathering an uncomfortable amount of information about their users, but it would also put games like point & click games, visual novels, slow paced turnbased strategy games and such at a disadvantage.
Also, machine learning... even google has issues getting that to work for their algorithm. I looked up one furby burning video, and now youtube has decided that I want to watch furby reviews! Worse than me getting furby reviews are all the false flags their bots keeps giving. If google can't do it, I would not really think Valve is in a position to be able to do it either.
Also, it would not fix steams ever growing reputation as a junk-monger, where you can't be sure the product you buy is fit for purpose.
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How would they actually go about fixing it though?
Playtime (total but also distribution), card farming detection, achievements (how many, how fast are they unlocked), NLP on reviews (reviews tend to mention cards and achievements on farming games), price, etc, would constitute a decent amount of observed variables. Add to this some guys that would sort games, determining if games are farming stuff or real games, so as to build their training set. Then train some kind of neural network on this, for instance.
that's easily gamed
The key point if they want to succeed at detecting these games is to NOT give any incentive to players to game the system: let cards drop normally, don't prevent farming, etc. Otherwise, they're only making the phenomenon harder to spot. If the only consequence of a game getting spotted is that it will be remove from suggestions, only the dev might care: not enough to screw the data, if all the normal players don't give a damn.
The recent restriction on card drops was a very stupid move in that respect: they are plainly encouraging players to ruin their data. And then, they'll go "muh, we don't know how to detect bad games, it's too hard, wooo". Remember:
To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment died of. (Ronald Fisher, 1938)
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even google has issues getting that to work for their algorithm. I looked up one furby burning video, and now youtube has decided that I want to watch furby reviews.
They could just systematically bury farming games, instead of trying to be smart and assume you want them ;)
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Then train some kind of neural network on this, for instance.
That's not nearly as easy as you make it sound. Again, look at google, and how bad they're at it.
Playtime (total but also distribution), card farming detection, achievements (how many, how fast are they unlocked), NLP on reviews (reviews tend to mention cards and achievements on farming games), price,
Can steam event detect card farming? Can it tell the difference between you genuinely playing the game and you farming cards? Valve can't even make sure that you're getting your achievements the "right" way. And there are many smaller games that fall into the low price, 2-3h playtime, plenty of achievements camp that are genuine games. Also, cards tends to be mentioned on games that people don't like as well as games that are just there for card farming. This is a metric that would end up harming niche games that end up in bundles. It's going to be very hard for a system to actually see the difference. Again, look at how bad googles system is at detecting things, how often its wrong. And that's for things that are all happening on their platform, they don't need to start collecting data from other things (like from games made by a 3rd party).
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That's not nearly as easy as you make it sound. Again, look at google, and how bad they're at it.
That's 2 different issues. In your Google/Youtube example, the problem is to suggest relevant videos tailored for you. In Steam's crap games issue, the problem is to identify crap games (same for everyone). "Simple" supervised learning.
Can steam event detect card farming? Can it tell the difference between you genuinely playing the game and you farming cards?
Random thought: when you farm, you don't even download the game. That should help.
And there are many smaller games that fall into the low price, 2-3h playtime, plenty of achievements camp that are genuine games. Also, cards tends to be mentioned on games that people don't like as well as games that are just there for card farming. [...]
That's the point of gathering many variables and then stuffing them into the model. Sure, a game with an average playtime of 2h doesn't say much. But 2-3h playtime + $1 price + cards + 5k achievements that unlock at 1 per second + all reviews mention "achievements" or "cards" or "farming" + dev already released 5 crap games this year, that seems like a pretty sure thing...
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That's 2 different issues. In your Google/Youtube example, the problem is to suggest relevant videos tailored for you. In Steam's crap games issue, the problem is to identify crap games (same for everyone). "Simple" supervised learning.
Well, the worse part of youtubes faulty algorithms is that it keeps flagging videos as bad (thus demonetizing them). Nothing about youtubes current algorithms works to any real satisfactory degree. It keeps giving crap recommendations to the user, and worse yet, it keeps flagging videos as bad.
I simply don't trust Valve to be able to pull it off. They can't even get their darn chat to work. Nor do they seem to be able to get simple time-stamps to work properly. We're nearing the 1 year anniversary of their major chat & message notification bug, and they've still not been able to fix it.
If google can't get machine learning to work, and keep flagging things incorrectly, I don't trust a company that can't get simple time-stamps to work to be able to do it.
Random thought: when you farm, you don't even download the game. That should help.
That might work, with a large enough sample base. There are other ways to get steam games than directly download them through steam. Some people with slow connection do get the files form friends, or on physical media. So this would work, as long as you've got a sample base large enough for any given game.
That's the point of gathering many variables and then stuffing them into the model. Sure, a game with an average playtime of 2h doesn't say much. But 2-3h playtime + $1 price + cards + 5k achievements that unlock at 1 per second + all reviews mention "achievements" or "cards" or "farming" + dev already released 5 crap games this year, that seems like a pretty sure thing...
That would be very easy to get around though. To get around the whole "5 crap games in a year" thing, the devs would just have to set up a sockpuppet account, something that Zonitron and co. already did (and other companies does this as well) As for achievements, have fewer achievements, don't unlock them at entirely predictable intervals, and you've fooled the system.
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Well, the worse part of youtubes faulty algorithms is that it keeps flagging videos as bad (thus demonetizing them)
I'm pretty sure that's on purpose. They want to demonstrate to their sensitive advertisers that their ads will 100% guaranteed run on politically correct videos. They can afford the false positives: content creators whine, but they never actually leave.
In a similar way, yes Steam can afford kicking shovelware: good devs and almost all players won't even mind. It doesn't mean it's right, just like it doesn't feel right when Google over-demonetizes.
I simply don't trust Valve to be able to pull it off
That I agree, more or less: they can't pull it off if they aren't willing to hire some competent people to work on it. It's not very hard, but it's not something your average random engineer will find trivial either.
That would be very easy to get around though. To get around the whole "5 crap games in a year" thing, the devs would just have to set up a sockpuppet account, something that Zonitron and co. already did (and other companies does this as well)
The algo would be unknown to the devs and there wouldn't be some kind of hard threshold. It's machine learning: you feed variables (like: number of previously published normal games, number of previously published shovelware, both of these numbers again but over the last 12 or 24 months), you get a blackbox guessing a relationship between those variables and the risk that the game is shovelware. If devs set up one sockpuppet account per game, the algo will learn that "no previously published game" is particularly at risk.
Also, setting up sockpuppet accounts takes work. Do shovelware devs really want to bother with this? Again it's a matter of incentive: do devs have an incentive to game the system? If the only bad thing that happens to shovelware is that they're buried in the store and discovery queue, is this really an issue for those devs? I don't think they make many sales from the discovery queue, they probably make most of their sales either from off-Steam sales or from people who play one of their "games" and from there discover the rest of their collection.
As for achievements, have fewer achievements, don't unlock them at entirely predictable intervals, and you've fooled the system
Will farmers still buy the shovelware for 100 achievements that take 10h to unlock? Again, it's probably more profitable to stick to indecent amounts of blazing fast achievements and accept being buried: people who look for shovelware will find it anyway.
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I'm pretty sure that's on purpose. They want to demonstrate to their sensitive advertisers that their ads will 100% guaranteed run on politically correct videos
But they're not 100% guaranteed to run on politically correct videos... in fact it's proven to be really bad at detecting when a video is bad. At the moment it's more of a crapshoot if it actually hits its intended targets. Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not. It's simply not working.
I know the basics of how machine learning works.
Also, setting up sockpuppet accounts takes work. Do shovelware devs really want to bother with this?
No it does not really require more work. You can just type in what you want the developer publisher should be when you submit your game. The only annoyance is that there's a slightly longer waiting time for a game to get on steam from a "new" developer. Putting new developers as a certain risk factor is in itself quite risky as well, as you now risk burying the potentially good new games with all the garbage.
Will farmers still buy the shovelware for 100 achievements that take 10h to unlock? Again, it's probably more profitable to stick to indecent amounts of blazing fast achievements and accept being buried: people who look for shovelware will find it anyway.
You don't need to make it 10 achievements per hour. You could make it like 30-50 per hour, and you're within the realm of some legitimate games.
I don't think they make many sales from the discovery queue, they probably make most of their sales either from off-Steam sales or from people who play one of their "games" and from there discover the rest of their collection.
That depends on the game in question. Going by what has been said about sales on other platforms with similar systems (like the ios app store), for a game with an alright marketing budget the discovery queue won't be the primary source of early discovery, but for some little known indie game from a new developer, it very much does matter.
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All of their games seem to have been removed from sale, and the cards I had listed on the market are now returned to me with the "Valve no longer has a business relationship" message.
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Silicon%20Echo
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Zonitron%20Productions
Update from Valve:
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