"Publishers" preying on indie developers

Also, there was an announcement made linking a reddit and twitter post that attempted to refute the claims of Video Game Attorney. Little did he know that his account was shadowbanned from /r/gamedev for the exact reason he was trying to refute so his reddit post was only visible to him aka "removed from reddit" to us -- so he also deleted his twitter post after deleting the announcement but I took a screenshot of it and here it is (including my final unsent reply).

Edit add: Also, if you weren't even a member of the group(s) I made you the honorable poll option of "Potato Salad".

View attached image.

My bad, the link title seemed similar to one that I read prior.

Bump for scum awareness. I left those groups.

Nothing new... there is like 4-5 of groups doing same shit

I was going to leave the groups but then I saw your "Potato salad" option on the poll.

On all seriousness which other groups do this?

Well, the good news is that that contract won't stand up in court.
The bad news is, it'll cost more to litigate than to abandon the IP altogether

lol, i knew they were trash since i saw them getting related to rex network.

all these groups exists for 2 purposes: getting donations/free money, or free games. they don't promote anything, they only look for profit.

Sadly, this doesn't look surprising at all...
I hope the 2 people who voted "No, I support ripping off indie devs" are joking...

I don't remember who is Nutlope (group's owner) but I do remember that I've had a pretty bad experience dealing with him in the past.
I'm not sure if he was that guy who took over a nice group I moderated with promises of keeping it alive with giveaways, only to turn it into a spam fest for his crappy Gleam stuff or advertisement, or if he was that person who wanted to "buy" FGF from me.

I've dealt with quite a few of these shitty group "network" owners, and let me just tell you that not one is better than the other. Generally, any group which makes big Gleam giveaways is probably doing some shady stuff behind the scene.

This is appalling, and I say that as someone who has been made a curator of the group. Compared to other publishers, they seemed good (in my eyes, at least) and I was having fun writing reviews for them/scoping out good-looking greenlight games that I thought deserved attention. Needless to say, I'm going to have to look into this before I devote any more time to them.

Unfortunately it's not surprising.

I picked "potato salad" because I have never joined these types of groups (to my knowledge, feel free to correct me if you wish). They've also pushed me the wrong way, just like groups run by people like "that one duck guy" who, to my knowledge, STILL gives games away on this website. Hilarious.

Bump to help end this kind of crap

Not shocking, it's really easy to cheat people the way business works.

I was in the USG group, but I don't know why. I must have joined it for a gleamio thing or something. Left it, needless to say.

I talked to a moderator from the Ultrashock community, he said that 'some' of the games do better when they come to Ultrashock, 'some do okay and 'some' do bad. I currently don't know what their ratio of success is, though.

I left the group after multiple Gleam and event spam. I guess it was the right choice.

That screenshot of the publishing agreement at least shows that USG aren't hiding anything. They willingly outline how they are going to rip off the developers. Regardless on how asinine USG is being anyone stupid enough to commit to any contract without reading the fine print is an idiot and are only contributing to keeping USG in business longer. That, to me, is almost as scummy as what USG is doing.

Where is the giveaway?

This has been going on in the exact same way since the 80s. I'm baffled why people act like as if it is some shocking news, when this practise never went away. And the fact that there are still more than enough stooges to fall for this to keep several of these companies alive could speak a lot of how much some people do their research when they accept a business opportunity.

The world is dark and full of terrors, it's not exactly a breaking news, but if you don't read the damned contract...

I can't blame people who want free keys, I blame people who accept their stupid contracts, it makes literally no sense, 500$ + 20% for life ? for real ?
you can advertise your stuff way better with that money, I don't think reading a contract is harder than developing a game.

Oh, it's the USG, good thing I refused because of their website (old one) and their info (via chat) doesn't match at all.
Shame there's one on my friend list currently being published by USG and doesn't seem to do anything better.

I have been contacted by a few similar group, can't seem to remember the name, though.

Thanks for the heads up.