Developers abandon unfinished Steam game after selling 200,000 copies

[KakaoDj]

Kitguru article

The Verge article  - Added later

 

Yesterday a Steam Early Access title had to be booted off of steam, which raised some valid worries about how Greenlight and Early Access are run. Today we have more cause to not trust the Greenlight or Early Access programmes as the developers behind Towns have abandoned the project completely. 

 

^My thread on this from earlier: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/148728-steam-yanks-scam-game-from-steam-early-access/ ^

 

Early Access isn’t a good format, it’s far too easy for developers to release sub-par or unfinished games only to get lazy or stop working on them shortly after (or they can just do what EA does...).

 

Here's the funny part: the game is no longer in Early Access but the unfinished game will continue to be sold on the Steam store for £9.99.

 

So, this is discussion time guys. What do you guys think of the Early Access programme? Should Steam have better quality control on these games, and how could they go about doing that? Do you buy greenlight games?

 

 

 

[wilbso]

Quality control is needed. Sure, allow people to post their game etc, but at least have a team test it, do some background work on it and make sure it's not scamming people. People with loose faith in it soon if this continues to happen.

[brownninja97]

i might post my game up, its just a ball that goes left and right, £40 seems right

[wilbso]

i might post my game up, its just a ball that goes left and right, £40 seems right

 

Seems legit

[StingBull]

I think Greenlight can be revised by just getting rid of the "Early Access" concept but I hear Valve is going to do away with it in the near future.

 

One idea to save Early Access concept would be to turn Early Access into Open Beta and don't charge money for it.

[Vytautas]

The question we should be asking is who should pay for that? I worked at software QA for 2 years as a tester. That is really expensive and time consuming. Would you be willing to pay, lets say double or even 50% more for your games on Steam to be confident that the game you buy, will run as reported by developer in games store page and deemed good enough by valve?

[hawthorne]

They should really call it early access just Alpha...

[qwertywarrior]

people are losing trust ?

lol ... valve said they are killing greenlight  some months ago

[MetEishYa]

Total Biscuit did a good video on early access. Worth the watch.

 

[Misanthrope]

I saw Jim Sterling's tweet on this, No doubt he'll do a full blown Jimquisition on it come next monday. Difficult situation however there's not much that Valve can do without turning everything back into a slow and restrictive system with few games dripping in. What they need is to take away some of the developer controls on commentary and user reviews since they have also been found deleting negative reviews to continue to scam people.

[pixeldensity]

I feel that steam should require a refund rule.

[Misanthrope]

Steam Greenlight is a great concept but it suffers from the same problems that Early Access and other crowd funding websites suffer from. The majority of projects that are needing to use these services to raise finance are doing it because they are shit... not because they suffer without it.

 

There are some truly great games that have come through Greenlight, Early Access and other services. Some of these games are finished and others are not and I personally feel it is a great way to increase community interest in the projects as well as allowing the developers to gain funding that would otherwise come from them signing themselves up to some publisher who will try to milk the game for money. However, this has come with a price - a lot of projects are on these systems as a last resort and the developers are just desperate to raise some money to continue building their game for as long as they can until they just can't keep the community interested enough to make the continued development worth while. We have seen plenty of projects do both good and bad things on Greenlight and Early Access. We will also see plenty more of both.

 

Solving this problem isn't easy though. Valve will need to spend a great amount of time doing quality control. However, I also feel the community needs to be involved in this program as well. We could potentially have a Greenlight tester system that allows members of the community to receive small awards for taking their time to potentially make a project get the boost it needs or stop a project from hitting the systems that would give it a bad image. This would be done before people can buy the game on Steam and it will also be done the line at monthly intervals to make sure the developers are keeping to their commitments. If it fails to meet the standards it either doesn't get into Steam and if it is during development, Valve top sales of the game and give people refunds if possible while not removing their copy of the game.

 

Some developers, publishers and even community members might not be happy about this but at the end of the day this is a two-way system. Both the developers/publishers and community have agreements and commitments they need to stick with. I only have one game on Early Access, Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball, and I have already given the developer some feedback on what I've played after about an hour. I did only report on resolution support (lack of 1366x768) but it is feedback that nobody else had given. I have trusted the developers with my money by buying the game already and I trust that the developers will continue to develop the game until it reaches an acceptable standard that the majority of people would be happy with. If down the road this doesn't happen and development stops or grinds to a halt, then I will contact the developers asking for an explanation to why this has happened and then I will eventually, if needed, contact Valve to report the issue and obtain a refund for the game.

 

True but as it stands, the scammers (because they're not even worthy of the name "developers" sometimes) have way too much power to control public opinion:

 

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/9075-Salt-Of-The-Earth-A-Steam-Fail-Story

[jaqiefox]

I am really angry over how steam handled things like towns.  I happened to be shown that game by someone and it seemed by the steam page to be a finished full game which was indie, something to be held to the same standards of torchlight 1, by having a full steam game page without any warnings of it being unfinished or anything.

 

So I dropped the cash for it, and began playing it.

My god it's full of holes (bugs). Ill wait for a patch.... it really really needs some basic programming fixes, things that can very easily be done by a skilled efficient programmer in a matter of hours of coding if not less.

 

And then I wait, and wait some more, and get upset that it never sees any patches at all.

 

And now I find this thread, about it being completely abanoned, and feel like steam helped this game "author" con me out of money. I am really upset, it makes me think twice about buying any more steam games online, and I have been a steam user for 9+ years now and this is the first time I have had serious doubts about finding a game on steam through search functions and just dropping some cash on it knowing it will at least be playable.

[aeterna789]

Steam is like an escape artist or an acrobat who wows his audience and gets applause all around. To please the audience even more, the performer spends every other waking moment coming up of tricks and stunts that are both untested and dangerous so when he finally attempt those performances, he ends up hurting himself.

Valve should slow it down. Most of the PC gaming community already love Steam and would rather have slower updates than rushed features that causes it to go bad.

[KakaoDj]

I feel that steam should require a refund rule.

I agree, Origin has it, why not Steam?  :blink:  If EA can do it, surely our lord and saviour can

[theroflcopta]

Why not have steam kinda hire/fund any game on greenlight. Any game that passes the system will have to sign a contract with steam where they get a small donation or monetary support as long as they promise to give a finished and polished product or face lawsuit and removal off of steam if they don't? 

[easmussen]

I only have one game on Early Access, Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball, and I have already given the developer some feedback on what I've played after about an hour. I did only report on resolution support (lack of 1366x768) but it is feedback that nobody else had given. I have trusted the developers with my money by buying the game already and I trust that the developers will continue to develop the game until it reaches an acceptable standard that the majority of people would be happy with. If down the road this doesn't happen and development stops or grinds to a halt, then I will contact the developers asking for an explanation to why this has happened and then I will eventually, if needed, contact Valve to report the issue and obtain a refund for the game.

 

Hi! I'm actually the developer of Disco Dodgeball, and this popped up in a Google alert. In case you missed it, your resolution option suggestion was included in the version I uploaded last night (.264) along with several other improvements.

 

I've been very disheartened by these other stories of Early Access failures, and I'll do everything I can to keep improving my game and earning people's trust back into the system because I think it has the potential to be a great option for certain developers and certain games.  

[ericlee30]

I think if Developers had to sign a contract with Steam before they could put their games up, this would salve a lot of problems.

[flibberdipper]

i might post my game up, its just a ball that goes left and right, £40 seems right

Mine goes in 4 directions. Maybe I can sell it for $80...

[rentaspoon]

I was actually going to buy this but it has many bad reviews IIRC, I still be happy if this was "complete" but not the best optimisation HOWEVER if this happen to next car game today I would flip out as with that I enjoy the game but it feels like a demo atm.

In fact I might still buy it when I have some free cash to see how it was left

Edit: patch came out on the 30th maybe it is finished

[ShadowCaptain]

I am not sure how I feel about this.

 

On one hand I feel that steam should have some level of quality control and responsibility for what is on its shop

 

on the other hand, it is a shop not the game creator. If I bought a game from Amazon, lets say Battlefield 4, and dice stop supporting it, ... is that Amazons fault?

 

On the fence here. Sucks that the game got abandoned. I think rules on early access should be clear. The game is not finished and if you are not prepared for that, dont buy it

[Misanthrope]

I am not sure how I feel about this.

 

On one hand I feel that steam should have some level of quality control and responsibility for what is on its shop

 

on the other hand, it is a shop not the game creator. If I bought a game from Amazon, lets say Battlefield 4, and dice stop supporting it, ... is that Amazons fault?

 

On the fence here. Sucks that the game got abandoned. I think rules on early access should be clear. The game is not finished and if you are not prepared for that, dont buy it

 

Amazon wouldn't let people who sells products in their store to intentionally delete negative user reviews and ratings now would they? Yet this is not only possible in steam but it has been done by scammers selling early access crap.

[ZetZet]

Now it will happen to DayZ and Rust.

[catbutts]

Now it will happen to DayZ and Rust.

I thought that already happened.

[ZetZet]

I thought that already happened.

pretty much, they don't announce it yet so people buy even more copies though.

basic logic, dayz sold million copies or smth and still has like two devs working on it alpha for years.