Jimquisition: Air Control - A Steam Abuse Story

[Fdzzaigl]

What the heck is this... I don't even...

Come one, this is so obviously a scammy troll attempt at making cash. "Killjoy" games makes an airplane simulator that does nothing to simulate anything, but is complete with copypastad and untextured zombies and whatever else?

With the author practically stating it's "the bestest airplane simular evvah lololol" in his description.

How does this kind of thing even get on there?

 

[Benderthegreat]

I agree 100% with Jim Sterling that Steam needs some improvement in quality control. With the rapidly increasing number of games available on this platform, Valve may reach its limit of resources to provide QA for each and every game. I don't know if it is of any use, maybe some steam features can assist in the choice whether or not to purchase a game on steam
(though negative customer reviews might indicate some issues with game quality).
Still in Beta, Steam tags could be used by the community to point out questionable products?

I though i give it a try and added the following tag:
"Cave Ludum - Beware of the game..."
(Similar to "Cave canem" - Beware of the dog - in ancient rome... You can enter my residence, but my dog might bite you a little)
or as Andago put it in his post(#37):
"In terms of it just being rubbish gameplay, isn't it caveat emptor?"
The customer can consider this tag as a subtle hint - but still leaves him the choice to give the developer his money. Any comments if this is a reasonable idea? - Or could this backfire and be abused?

 

[Deadagent]

snip

xD Hard to argue with that.

But seriously though, the video is more about people asking to limit steam releases as a means of quality control.

No, it's talking about the very thing Jim is talking about here, the video even specifies that the people calling for this company controlloer quration are themselfs reviewes whos job is to inform consumers.

Jim isn't asking for that. He just wants them to kick out the trouble makers. Like the Earth 2066 game. Which they did do.
He's saying that they should be able to do so quicker though and let the customers have more ability to bring how bad a game is to light in the comments.

Such is not as unreasonable.

No, he want's quality control before the fact, not after the fact, wich again, is against Valves idea of steam as a platform.
I'm sorry but I think they should be allowed to experiment with this idea and yes fail. And if you think that this game is causing massive harm to consumers, then consider this. How well know was this game before this video?
I never heard of it, I dont know anyone who owns it or had heard about it before now. Same with Earth: 2066.
And Yeah Im one guy, but these games are so ridiculouly bad that the word of mouth spreads very VERY quickly.

It dosen't matter if you're "Triple A", If you're "Indie", If you're big, small, if you're a team of 600 or if you're a solo man job. If you put shit on the internet and you wanna charge for it, you're offically making a product and you will be critizised as such.

Unless you're an attractive looking woman of course,
then you can scam people as much as you fucking please and get praised for it.

Care to share what you're talking about?

Edit: Never mind. Keep it to yourself, please.

Indeed you know what im talking about so why don't you just leave it there huh? There's a reason I didn't fully say that name.

 

[Deadagent]

snip

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to raise the specter of Anita Sarkesian, stopping all legitimate conversation in it's tracks to in order to needlessly whine about something that isn't relevant to the conversation, no matter how much they ~Insist~ it is.

It mostly isn't, but I do want to point out hypocrisy when I see it. Also I didn't mention any name to keep the conversation from derailing completely. So far it has worked out nicely I think.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

This is just funny in my opinion. Anyone who buys this crap deserves to be ripped off.

I also like how it claims to have "high quality models" and yet the entire game takes up 1500 megabytes of space...

 

[Canadamus Prime]

THAT was/is being sold for real money? That looks like refried shit of a crusty roll. What the hell Steam? This is why Steam needs quality control and not quality control in hindsight.

 

[Darknacht]

I bought this earlier today based on Jim's videos and was not disappointed this game was a blast. The price is a little high so you should definitely wait for a sale as long as steam does not pull it.

 

[Mark B]

Of course Steam lets you add tags to a game if enough people add tags they show up for everyone.
Here are some I have posted:

Shameful
shady
Worse Than Beta
Requires Content Control

Its a shame "Ripoff" and "Incomplete" are banned terms

 

[teamcharlie]

Is the problem here that Steam has given indies the same control over their reviews and products that larger companies have? That's what it sounds like: banning negative threads, posting lies unchallenged, putting up paid reviews or reviews by friends.

I mean, it's annoying, sure. But it's fair at the least, and 'quality control' is a nebulous term. How do you implement that? A program? A galley of internet reviewer slave-interns? Or maybe just let the Jim Sterlings of the world have at it, presuming that the cost of doing any remotely good QC would at best raise the barrier to entry (money-wise), as they'd presumably have to pass the cost along to the dev because even interns aint totally free, and leave yet more aspiring but poor indies out in the cold.

 

[Babaganoosh13]

In order to get this game to run its best, you need to add the expansion pack to your N64 console.

 

[Gerardo Vazquez]

snip

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to raise the specter of Anita Sarkesian, stopping all legitimate conversation in it's tracks to in order to needlessly whine about something that isn't relevant to the conversation, no matter how much they ~Insist~ it is.

It mostly isn't, but I do want to point out hypocrisy when I see it. Also I didn't mention any name to keep the conversation from derailing completely. So far it has worked out nicely I think.

~Sigh~ "Hypocrisy" isn't exactly the right word to describe this situation. The whole "Anita Sarkeesian is a scammer." story going around is based on some pretty circumstantial evidence, and general intuition without much solid evidence as opposed to the "Earth 2066" debacle, which is obvious lies and scamming no matter how you look at it. So yeah I'm not going to get my nickers in a twist, and cry "hypocrisy" if Jim doesn't feel like addressing the Anita Scam controversy with the same fervor as the Earth 2066 controversy. If a woman were to release a broken game on Steam for money, and moderate her forums so that only positive word of mouth was going around, and Jim acted like nothing was wrong I'd be on your side, but Muxwell does not equal Anita in this situation.

 

[Gerardo Vazquez]

snip

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to raise the specter of Anita Sarkesian, stopping all legitimate conversation in it's tracks to in order to needlessly whine about something that isn't relevant to the conversation, no matter how much they ~Insist~ it is.

It mostly isn't, but I do want to point out hypocrisy when I see it. Also I didn't mention any name to keep the conversation from derailing completely. So far it has worked out nicely I think.

~Sigh~ "Hypocrisy" isn't exactly the right word to describe this situation. The whole "Anita Sarkeesian is a scammer." story going around is based on some pretty circumstantial evidence, and general intuition without much solid evidence as opposed to the "Earth 2066" debacle, which is obvious lies and scamming no matter how you look at it. So yeah I'm not going to get my nickers in a twist, and cry "hypocrisy" if Jim doesn't feel like addressing the Anita Scam controversy with the same fervor as the Earth 2066 controversy. If a woman were to release a broken game on Steam for money, and moderate her forums so that only positive word of mouth was going around, and Jim acted like nothing was wrong I'd be on your side, but Muxwell does not equal Anita in this situation.

 

[sneakypenguin]

Steam really needs to break up its marketplace into 2 storefronts 1 for established AAA and indie devs,and then a storefront with the random junk. trying to filter all the junk is getting absurd. Just allow games to break out of the 2nd one once they hit say 1000 sales.

PC gaming is sometimes annoying enough as is the #1 store doesn't need to make it more obnoxious.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

So, for all the people who want Steam to filter content, can you give one consistently enforceable policy, with little to no inherent subjectivity, the would prevent Air Control from being on the store, but still allow Surgeon Simulator 2013?

Why does it have to lack subjectivity?

I support filtering Steam's content, but I believe it should be done subjectively. I'm not sure why you think objectivity is required. Humans aren't objective beings, we aren't algorithms. Games are a creative field, and should be judged subjectively, not objectively.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

I'll withhold copyright infringement allegations until said copyright holders actually file suit to such effect. I suggest you do the same. Seriously. How do you know they did not optain express permission to use the assets they did. I've heard no legal filings, I've seen no cease and desist orders.. So really if the people who legally own the copyright aren't throwing lawyers at them ... well then it may be safe to say the guy has found some nifty fair-use loophole.

No, that's not "safe to say" at all. In fact, it's a rather silly thing to say.

Firstly, lawyers are expensive, and this developer probably has no money. There is likely nothing to be gained, and a lot to be lost, by filing suit against this developer. Secondly, this title is obscure - the owners of the copyright are likely not even aware of the infringement.

The lack of a lawsuit is not evidence of lack of infringement. Thousands of copyright enragements happen every day without a lawsuit ever being filed. Hell, I'm a photographer, and I've had my images used without permission. But the costs of prosecuting those infringements is prohibitive, and the infringers live in other countries. It would cost a large amount of money to start litigation, and most likely have zero reward.

Using your same logic - if a person is found murdered, yet nobody has been charged with the murder, does that mean the murder never happened because there is no lawsuit over it?

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Sure you can point to things like Earth 2020 or Airplane but I'm much more worried about GOOD games that have gone through thanks to steams laissez faire policy that wouldn't have made it otherwise, and had steam users had their way, wouldn't have let them in either since it doesn't appeal to their specific tastes.

To give an example, I'm quite fond of some VN games made by winterwolf, who struggled since over a year ago to get their games into steam. Once they were finally in, you had a fair few steam users raging at VN type games and dismissing them as shovelware and moaning about steam letting crappy devs in. Had a rigid steam quality control existed, I'm not confident winterwolves would have made it onto steam.

So what?

There are plenty of other ways to sell or release games. Steam is not the only vendor on the market. People who want to release games can always sell them direct from their own website. Not being sold on Steam is not the same as censorship.

 

[Darknacht]

So, for all the people who want Steam to filter content, can you give one consistently enforceable policy, with little to no inherent subjectivity, the would prevent Air Control from being on the store, but still allow Surgeon Simulator 2013?

Why does it have to lack subjectivity?

I support filtering Steam's content, but I believe it should be done subjectively. I'm not sure why you think objectivity is required. Humans aren't objective beings, we aren't algorithms. Games are a creative field, and should be judged subjectively, not objectively.

So whos version of good do you want them to use judge games to not allow on steam?

 

[Aardvaarkman]

So whos version of good do you want them to use judge games to not allow on steam?

Whoever they hire to do Quality Control.