What confuses me is the point of it all nowadays. There's no way they are selling enough to justify putting these 0.99 mobile games over and over under new names. Steam has limited free keys a few years ago, they get no cards or items to farm... Is it just for the foot in the door?
Comment has been collapsed.
Steam may have limited free keys for games, but 5000 by default is still a lot, not to mention the keys "For beta testing" that are a smaller number, 2500, but still there. Now with these keys, they can sell bundles of "random Steam games" or other related stuff where they don't have to pay the Steam 30% fee, so it is profitable for them to keep doing this. On Steam itself, you are probably right, they don't get enough purchases, not like they need to care with their method where they go around the 30% Steam fee.
Comment has been collapsed.
I think that was brought up in Mellow's last piece about Fabrik, either in the Steam Group comments or here perhaps. I recall there being something about Fanatical's Mystery bundles and/or DIG bundles, etc. But to sum it up Frozen is spot on, the keys were sold to DIG and Fanatical for a nice profit.
Comment has been collapsed.
As other have said.
7500 Keys.
Sell them each for 0,05 € to DIG.
You get around 375€.
In a country like Romania it can be enough money to live if you "develop" one each week.
Comment has been collapsed.
With 3 per month you'd already have more than the social welfare level including rent in Germany is.
Comment has been collapsed.
Damn, Romania standing that bad? I expected it would be worth it in some other countries but... I mean compared to doing anything else offline...
But again, how many people are there buying DIG bundles and stuff? Probably less and less every month.
Comment has been collapsed.
A LOT .... take a look into the GAs that get made for DIG bundle games, that are often listed as full value but only 1-4% of the orginal price gets paid for the bundle.
And, of course, more buy the bundles to pump their game count on steam and "own every game".
Comment has been collapsed.
tldr; none of this would work for them if other people weren't greedy in their own way.
Comment has been collapsed.
Exactly.
Indirectly, or directly, they support the crap devs.
That, sadly, earn partly more as some good devs that invest a lot of energy and time into their indie games.
Comment has been collapsed.
That, sadly, earn partly more as some good devs that invest a lot of energy and time into their indie games.
That was my perspective, I know for myself and dozen of solo devs that I've talked to in the past, not to mention public reddit threads, not even 1% can "live" of gamedev, it's a very costly hobby for most of us... time-wise, money-wise, patience-wise... and it's not even about earnings, it's about seeing someone find your game and enjoy it... and no one can find it... and if they do, they don't trust anything they didn't hear about before... "It is known" most devs don't finish and release a game ever, and from those who release one, majority never releases a second game...
...and yet, these random asset packs sell enough for them to fight to push more and more, to be back under a different name... sure, off steam but still... it's like applied dead internet theory... bots making new accounts with bot-games for bots to buy and post bot-reviews and make giveaways to more bots...
Comment has been collapsed.
Not exactly off Steam. A few of their games are on the Epic store, but they didn't continue releasing games there. So we can see that the games themself aren't what's important and not what sells, it's their status that they are another +1 to collect on Steam.
Now if you are to complain that a cheap, asset flip +1 somehow holds more value than the efforts of solo devs, then you'd be right. In the eyes of most apparently that's the case, sadly it's about supply and demand. Just to note, I do value a well made game more than a +1 you can collect and I'm just sharing my observations about what works economically.
Comment has been collapsed.
There's nothing to complain. I doubt they actually give +1 in the library officially, as they'll never get out of PFL. And every library is private property, sort of, so you fill yours with what you want and appreciate... so... you know... if that's what people prefer, no wonder there's supply.
I'm just saying it's sort of sad, there's more demand for "empty slot fillers" than for actual games to play. A digital game license became a collectible commodity instead of a... game.
(you = someone, not you personally)
Comment has been collapsed.
For game collectors, that official +1 doesn't matter. It's funny, I see this new announcement from Sentinels of the Store, so for example The Cube of Love is put up on the curator for games at risk of removal, I go to my friend activity page, I see someone buying it, because it's at risk of removal. :D
Depends how you look at it. If you narrow it down to looking at it like a collectible commodity is demanded more than actual games, then yes, it's sad. But realizing that you are on a marketplace so big that that can actually happen is a good thing. Because you can be assured that you are at the right place where the buyers go to. So all you gotta do is provide the niche the buyers want and you are happy to create games for.
Comment has been collapsed.
for a second there i thought you may be the actual "developer" behind it just by asking that. But I had a shock when I checked your SG profile: zero giveaways entered and almost 3k sent!? hat down to you and a big thanks!
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't really have much interest in playing many game myself - but I do love making giveaways
Comment has been collapsed.
Technically no, but they found the Atomic Fabrik name within the game files of two of the "Martha B" developed games. I think it would be pretty unlikely for an unrelated developer to have a unity account named Atomic Fabrik
Comment has been collapsed.
The fake reviews are as obvious as they are on IMDB really. I wonder how Steam doesn't implement auto-moderation for these by now.
If it's not written by AI, they certainly look like it. And they all use the exact same words to describe the "games" with !!! galore
Comment has been collapsed.
His TwitterX post was the most hilarious thing I have seen in a while. You know you're doing good work when scammers are calling you a handful of pointless people with no life basically.
I particularly love the way he was insinuating that there is no way anyone like you guys could do all this for free so you must be "working" for "competitors". That's the thing with scammers, liars and cheats, they spend so much time in their bubble of lies and deceit that they just end up picturing everyone else living the same way they do.
Comment has been collapsed.
I made an archive ahead of it being deleted: https://archive.is/k86F0
It was certainly a colorful wall of text, maybe rivaled by our response: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/announcements/detail/6524113244463489181
Comment has been collapsed.
Ah yes, I don't know the corners of my rented house.
(???)
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah, I presume he was trying to do a "you live in your mom's basement" kinda jab which just didn't land.
Comment has been collapsed.
I find it really hilarious (and sad) how his defense of everything you pointed out was just "yeah I do that but it abides the rules"...
You say I use AI logos? Well Steam said it's ok... You say I use asset flips? Well no one said I can't...
Comment has been collapsed.
It's sad because some of the things he said that didn't violate the rules (which he preports so often to know so much about) did indeed violate some rule. Review manipulation being a biggy. Even the AI images, they don't go against Steam rules if you use them as screenshots, but the rule is you also must use at least 1 in-game screenshot, which he didn't do.
Comment has been collapsed.
Christian is at it again smh. It's a neverending cycle of bullshit from him.
Comment has been collapsed.
A cycle of crap that never ends. And because don t have oficial page still I can`t ignore this (old) dev.
BTW good job
Comment has been collapsed.
This is great, really useful stuff. Excellent work.
It would be even more useful if there could be a curator group, so all the associated games could be clearly flagged on the store page.
Comment has been collapsed.
Comment has been collapsed.
Most likely so, however I checked their files but there was no similar listing in the App Info folde. Still likely to be him, but I've withheld them on the curator until definitive proof rather than circumstantial stuff arises.
Comment has been collapsed.
- For this 2 games were GAs created on sg at the same time as for the Martha B games
- From the same user
- In all cases keys
- All of the games, from the dev/publisher Martha B and the other ones, have the exact same AI art style for their logo.
- The 2 different Devs/Publisher have nearly the same name, so definitive visible that one person/group is behind and not different ones (and it have the style of Christians used dev names in the past)
- All of the games must be purchaseable/available somewhere at the same time (which usually indicate that they come from the same source)
Too many "coincidences" for me to see only a "most likely".
But, of course, is each one free to have a other opinion as i.
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh yeah, I'm 99% convinced those are him, but my resistance is my 1% of uncertainty. If I'm even 1% in potential doubt, I hold off on listing them as confirmed.
Comment has been collapsed.
So, a couple of months ago, there was a lot of discussion about a Steam developer called Atomic Fabrik. Their demise eventually came about when Valve banned them for anti-consumer practices, including review manipulation of their 170+ game catalog and using multiple developer aliases to hide their connection between titles.
In the last month, they have resurfaced under a new account called Martha B, and I feel it best to alert the community about this to ensure people do not support this scammer following his previous attempts to deceive the consumer and who is now circumventing a ban placed on him by Steam.
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/announcements/detail/4553794020397063787
Someone in the thread also advised me to add the curator into the OP, as it currently lists the games confirmed to be owned by AF: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/27507830/
Comment has been collapsed.