itchio not worth it but thanks anyway
edit: thank you cowlikesapricot
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its a steam key silly me http://www.paperash.com/checkout-dark-train/
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No steam keys for newsletter subscribers. They posted the following message:
ONE YEAR CELEBRATION:
Sorry to all honored fans and players but there won't be any STEAM KEYS! Only download! Please, read our comment below.
We are deeply disappointed with all scammers who tried to take STEAM Key, not the game itself.
Now we exactly know why Itch and Humble are no giving away free STEAM keys. Since we wrote you will get one key for subscribing our newsletter, it doesn´t take 4 hours and we have 4000 subscribers with really strange addresses and so on... It is obvious these emails are from scammers or bots who want STEAM key (for re-sale?) and not for the game itself.
Since we are really small developers, we cannot take that risk because these scammers would overtake control of our sales.
To all true players with the heart, please apologize us for this misunderstanding, we are new in this business and this is really new valuable experience what we didn't expect.
You can still enjoy the game through download or amazing Itch client but again – no steam key.
Thanks for the passion and your support!
<3 Paperash
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No wonder, I was wondering why I didn't recieve the mail. I'm fine with itch.io though, looks like an interesting game.
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Steam or itch.io? Doesn't really matter for me as I'm interested in the game itself.
BTW: Thanks for sharing this!
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Since we are really small developers
True statement. They are really small developers in every possible way.
They advertised a promotion through their site which offered TWO options, either download the game through ichi.io now, or subscribe and get a steam key sometime later. Most of people went for the popular Steam option as most games prefer having their games organized, having achievements, maybe review the game afterwards and report bad developers. When they realized they couldn't fulfill the expectations -or they've planned it from the beginning, setting up a devious honeypot to get thousands of emails to sell them to partners- they posted a rant about "scammers" and "strange email addresses". My questions are:
- Why would anyone sane, prefer ichi.io over Steam? What's the point of promoting two channels of distribution if you are going to judge those who choose the easiest and the most popular (by millions!) platform?
- What defines a "strange email address"? Is there some kind of validator for strangeness? It's either working email or not. If you really wanted that to work, you could easily have implemented steam oauth login or even use others channels of distribution like steamgifts.
- HOW can a receiver of a key of a promotion be a scammer? What did he scammed you of? These are strong accusations only made to support the initial purpose of your devious honeypot. Accusing legitimate members of scamming you just because they used their legitimate email address to receive your newsletter it's mere insult.
- And HOW on earth those "scammers" would overtake control of your sales? All they could get is a steam key and either activate it on their account. Or maybe sell it as you claim in your announcement (i guess there's some badass clairvoyant skills involved in that). I mean, the least you could get in return is some reviews. If you really wanted to get a handful of good long in-depth reviews , you should target specific groups of players, not starting an open promotion!
- Finally, Isn't this technique (setting up a fake site just to get emails) the definition of scamming?
I hope they grow up someday and become less of "small developers".
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they scammed users into giving their emails for them to sell to spammers. :P
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Apparently you can get a Steam key for a 100% discount. You just have to PAY $0.5 on itch.io :D. The price is not high but for the bait and switch I will not buy it because I believe this marketing campaign was deliberately managed as such and I don't support such practices.
For those not caring about it, $0.5 is a small price to pay for a Steam copy of what seems to be an interesting game.
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What defines a "strange email address"?
afrostrcjemsdjh.1@gmail.com
afrostrcjemsdjh.2@gmail.com
afrostrcjemsdjh.3@gmail.com
afrostrcjemsdjh.4@gmail.com
afrostrcjemsdjh.5@gmail.com
afrostrcjemsdjh.6@gmail.com
afrostrcjemsdjh.7@gmail.com
afrostrcjemsdjh.8@gmail.com
...
afrostrcjemsdjh.98@gmail.com
afrostrcjemsdjh.99@gmail.comHOW can a receiver of a key of a promotion be a scammer?
Harvesting hundreds of keys to re-sell them later on G2A.
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Thank goodness someone has some sense in this thread.
I can't believe the people pretending like there are not people (perhaps some of the same people here acting offended at the "bait and switch") who will take advantage of every promo. Whether it is to giveaway copies on SteamGifts or other sites, or to sell, or to trade with, people will exploit it.
I don't blame the developers at all for recognizing that this was going on, and choosing not to deliver Steam keys.
And what were people supposedly "scammed" out of? An email address (which for many is not even their primary email anyway)?
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No argue here, there are bad apples everywhere and the devs chose the worst distribution for the promotion of their game. But their announcement is an insult to everyone who responded honestly and with real email to their campaign.
If they wanted money for their game they should ask exactly that, all this was pure bait and an opportunity for ranting towards potential customers.
We should also mention that their game was bundled about a month ago and its effective value in the bundle of 12 games was $0,25. Also, that it's a good game with positive reviews that may achieve more by itself without the need of fishy promotions.
Edit:typos
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Yes, as a small inexperienced developer they made mistakes.
- They put a 100% discount on the game on itch.io, but then discovered that no Steam keys are given for free games.
- They tried to fix that by asking people to provide their email but ended up with enough spam addresses to make it impossible for such a small team to sift through all of them and figure out which are real addresses and which are just aliases.
- They backtracked and said they could not provide the Steam key under the circumstances.
- They later realized that the way itch.io id designed, if you provide a small contribution of at least $0.50 a Steam key will be provided. They let people know about it so people at least have the option to do so if they really want a Steam key for cheap.
If they wanted money for their game they should ask exactly that
They wanted to provide their game for free for a limited time, which they did. Anyone is free to get the game from itch.io and play it to their heart content.
They also tried to accommodate those who wanted a Steam key but that backfired on them and they had to abandon the idea.
You're acting as if they had planned all along to offer Steam keys and not deliver, while there is not a shred of evidence to support that theory. They messed up, period. What they should have done would be to put a 100% discount on Steam as well as itch.io. That way people could have gotten the game for free without scammers harvesting keys for resale.
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Agreed, much more people would buy it from Steam store, if they priced it for 0,50 or even 0,99 for a couple of days.
You're acting as if they had planned all along to offer Steam keys and not deliver, while there is not a shred of evidence to support that theory.
No I'm acting as an honest user/gamer/customer who saw their promotion on my timeline, checked out the game and then i browsed through their site. I saw they're 100% legit studio and gave my primary email to get the -more convenient- steam key. I went to sleep and this morning i read about "scammers who only wanted free STEAM keys".
What bothers me here is that they messed up way more with their announcement. I couldn't care less whether they provided keys for whatever reason, none is entitled to get promotion material, anyway. But they should treat people with more respect. Of course I'm not saying they've planned it ahead but they seem quite biased:
...Since we wrote you will get one key for subscribing our newsletter, it doesn´t take 4 hours and we have 4000 subscribers with really strange addresses and so on... It is obvious these emails are from scammers or bots who want STEAM key (for re-sale?) and not for the game itself...I mean, how can they be so smart to tell that those 4000 subscribers in 4 hours are "obviously scammers" (!) , but they couldn't predict the outcome of a messed-up promotion when they asked for our emails and not even steam login or anything else? 😉
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I mean, how can they be so smart to tell that those 4000 subscribers in 4 hours are "obviously scammers" (!) , but they couldn't predict the outcome of a messed-up promotion when they asked for our emails and not even steam login or anything else?
They're a small developer who didn't much attention so far and didn't realize that putting a game out for free would suddenly attract thousands of people.
Seriously, these developers should really build some kind of support group, talk to each other and learn from other's mistakes.
Most of the time, it's us customers who have to tell them what works and what doesn't.
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Agreed again, so I'll keep a positive mind and hope that they'll find a place -eg. this community- to discuss their concerns.
All in all their game is good and it's a shame it gets negative publicity, unavoidably.
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4000 subscribers with really strange addresses
They always ready to invade everywhere
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someone remind me not to buy any bundles they are in
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Apparently if you support the developer on itch.io, you can get a Steam key.
https://itch.io/t/154944/so-a-few-people-can-have-some-keys-maybe
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As usual, there are assholes that ruin it for everyone else.
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It still works but you contribute 50 cents and get a steam key for the game...
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I ended up doing just that. The game looks nice enough.
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Assholes as in grabbing everything that's free? I'm not sure this is the right place for that kind of opinion.
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Assholes as in using a bunch of alt emails to get more keys than they should and sell them on the grey market. Just read a few comments above yours for more info.
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Well, yeah. Either that or people don't want to use their real mail address to sign up to a random newsletter.
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Devs you'r offering free keys, what you really expected? 4k subscriber in 4hs is really a huge number? strange email, what you expected, that people use the same email account for their homebanking, of course poeple use "strange" name account to subscribe for this kind of offers, like cptpepito1978@hotmail.com or nbk_0001@yahoo.com -.-
Guess there's no point to keep the subscription to DARK TRAIN, Paperash.com.
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Seems like they are more naive than being a small and new publisher.I mean you don't have to be a genius to figure out that this was a bad idea.The second thing is if they are worried about free keys cannibalizing their sales than why in the world offer it free.Lastly, why did they not get in direct contact with Ichigo to see their full options?
All well we are human and sometimes we have to learn the hard way.
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Just a suggestion but updating the thread title to something like this would probably be good - "Donate $0.50 for Dark Train on Itch.io and get a Steam key"
Adding the link to the game on Itch.io in the OP would be good as well
https://paperash.itch.io/darktrain
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UPDATE: They decided to give the keys out via orlygift instead, I guess. 500 up for grabs in that hourly giveaway thing of theirs.
Gee, I sure hope no bots get them... /s
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when you win can you see the key or does it redeem directly to your Steam account?
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Should show it on the page unless they've changed it since the last time I won about four months back.
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You see the key but I think part of Orlygift terms is that you have to redeem the game on your account or you can't enter future giveaways. In case you wanted to pass the key on.
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I can't see that that would stop keys from being resold, especially from throw-away accounts. So much for the bullshit they fed everyone about the whole "scammers" thing and the reason for cancelling their original pledge to give away the game with the newsletter subscription. This is not any better from that standpoint. It is less keys though. Maybe that is what it was really all about. It's obvious from their previous comments that they (naively) didn't anticipate the volume of responses that they had gotten and perhaps when they saw that they quickly changed their tune and didn't want to give out thousands of copies.
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Yeah, I think you're probably right. It was more about the amount. There might be other terms on Orlygift that help prevent people from passing the keys on but I wouldn't know without checking. In any case, I'm gonna try and win a copy. It does look quite good :)
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Eh... not really worse than the number of bots who were going to get them from the original method.
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I'm lazy so this is all I got:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FreeGameFindings/comments/78hnoj/itchio_game_dark_train/
Update: The developer decided to not give out Steam keys now.
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