IndieGala and Steam are companies. Their main purpose is not sell quality games, nor offer a great experience to gamers. That's their "mission" or "vision" as per their marketing departments.
Their main purpose is making money. As long as this behaviour continues to give them more money than losing it, they'll continue. Somehow one day they'll realize that making some statement and action about these schemes will give them good marketing and the earning will overcome the loses, and then, only then, they'll do something.
Until then, keep pressing "ignore" on those games. Reports do nothing unless they're doing something illegal, not unethical. Having their games in thousands of ignore lists at leasts prevents them to randomly appear in suggestions, exploring queues, etc.
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steam is also a platform so they do offer some sort of experience for gamers by giving you ability to add friends, screenshots, library counts etc, just like a social media .. and also a business so they gotta make money.
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I'd just think Steam would want to ban them because they're not making money via direct sales, the only keys being activated for these games were already sold long long ago at a much cheaper price, retail sites like Fanatical though I've never seen these games there so a much less reputable retail site.
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I don't think there's a rule that the game should make any money. Steam already got a submission fee from the developers.
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it's quite loosely tied to that statement (but who knows what extreme number means, 1000? 100000?)
"If you request an extreme number of keys and you are not offering Steam customers a comparable deal, or if your sole business is selling Steam Keys and not offering value to Steam customers, your request may be denied and you may lose the privilege to request keys."
source
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Pretty vague sentences, unfortunately. And only "may lose the privilege".
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Steam has taken down games before that paid their submission fees for worse reasons than this.
It's one thing if they're paying to market a free game people can actually play, but in this case buyers of the keys via external shops aren't buying them to play the game but rather to give them away to fraudulently gain social credit to play better games.
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I think you're overestimating a role of SG (or any other site which makes giveaways). Valve doesn't care if someone "gain social credit" here.
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I think they still make income selling keys used their their platform even when it's not directly bought through the store and instead through a reseller like IG/humble/fanatical
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I think eventually steam will do something about it, problem is these games are too irrelevant for them to do whole investigations into them. There's around 34 new games released every day on steam. You have to consider steam might recommend a price, but the seller decides at the end of the day what they want to sell at. Lastly, this game released for around $5, and stayed that way for like 8 months, then the price changed. Even if they do investigate, these sellers probably just claim a mistake, and they don't get perma banned. Also some of these publishers make many different accounts under what they publish, so even if they stop one or two of their accounts it means nothing.
I think in their view, the seller can set the price as high as they want, and it's in the interest of the buyer to see if they are interested in the game or not at that price. If the price is too high, then it wont sell any copies(or so you'd assume, but people buy them just so they can leave some cringy review and then refund). People can try out the game for less than 2 hours and refund. So imo on their view on sellers, they want to have whatever price available like if someone was offering some sort of software package that's worth $1000, it can be $1000.
I do think they should limit the max price of products to whatever the max of a AAA title currently is. So like $80 or something like(if you don't want to start counting deluxe editions and other bullshit).
Keep in mind that they are making slow moves in better directions, as like not offering more than 5000 beta test keys or something like that for new games, and making publishers have a 1/1 ratio of keys they can request vs sales they have made. I think those are both things that are now in effect. So I think soon they be more aggressive on that.
For us on SteamGifts, I believe users who abuse these high cv games should maybe get suspensions for them. I can see how some give these away, boost their level, enter higher level giveaways with less users who can enter since not everyone is at their level, win there, and by the time their cv gets adjusted and their level is adjusted, they might have stolen a few games by using an exploit. So I definitely think there should be punishments for that.
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perhaps if enough users reported said games, it will "nudge" steam to take action quicker on these clearly overpriced asset-flip shovelware..
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The problem is Steam not having an option specifically for Asset Flips or Shovelware. If a game is released overpriced but has a massive discount, you can report it as breaking the law, but until these things get manually reviewed before being approved, it's going to be a sadge.
That said, if a person is paying 190€ for a game like this, they kinda get what they deserve.
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I realize there's always going to be some gray area but I'm sure out of the 34 games a day most of them aren't over 100 dollars, so prioritizing the crazy-priced ones just so you don't look ridiculous is probably the best start.
I wish this was more of a concern than policing the content of the games, they seem to have energy for that.
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I think at some point public perception might sway significantly against these, then Valve has to act, but until then they are happy to take their cut. I am sure an argument could be made for predatory pricing in this case. Valve definitely needs better quality control. It's strange, because actually publishing a game isn't that easy, because Valve rejects vague or short descriptions and unclear screenshots. So there is some quality check,just not enough.
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the store is full of vague or short descriptions and unclear or misleading screenshots. there are some rules and guidelines but even valve doesn't give a fuck about them, so it'd be foolish to expect scummy devs to do so. surely one of them would be 'if a developer submits a price change to 500 fucking thousand euros (that's half a million), don't approve it', yet it still happened. what's automated doesn't work, what's outsourced to users/devs is abused (tag system, prices, etc.), what support has to do anything about is ignored or pretty much auto-approved. but hey, achievements and stickers, steam is the best...
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There are jusgsaw porn games with roughly a weekend's worth of work on Steam with art generated by Midjourney's free version. The low effort stuff is pretty ridiculous at the moment. I really wish Steam did what Epic is doing and actively curate their library of games.
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doesn't even have to be porn. jigsaw and hidden object are the most spammy and low-effort genres. grab 10 stock photos, cut them up, jigsaw game. I don't mind more of the same but this is ridiculous. and they're obviously selling because 'look, cats and it's only a dollar' or some bullshit.
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i don't see much of a problem Steamgifts will or does mark them as 0 CV - you can see prices and game content on store pages before purchase and they are never in bundles like the mystery key ones Fanatical sell - yes on Indie gala it is a great wack of XP to level up quick and for not much money but is stopped giveaways over there a while back (yes i might have some games like these to giveaway but....)
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yeah it's because IG doesn't 0xp them like here that I won't donate randomly over there, I'd rather just give it away to someone I know donates good games
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Maybe they'll end being investigated for money laundering or something and they'll get better "quality control" checks in place.
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Valve is just a shop aka buyers of those "games" are bigger problem And I almost never see those games in my steam recommendation, because I don`t buy those type of games
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- Top Down Games
- Aztech
- Hede
-Azerbaijan Technology
publish/developer
same individual
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yeah would not be surprised if they're the ones running the obvious botting accounts on here too
Did this ever used to be a place full of mostly people?
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read that the key are been given for free in a russian website witch probably the dev is complicit
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I just don't understand how Steam gives out these free keys only for it then to get priced.
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There must be some interaction with them since they activate the keys, not sure I understand it since I've never marketed a game there.
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yeah am people behind reviews are real people I added a few once and they said hello asked if the review was real and got blocked
usualy high level account too
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Like if you go to https://www.indiegala.com/giveaways and arrange it by price (highest to lowest, click twice) you get this:
screenshot
it's supremely annoying, these are dollar games at best:
Climb Challenge
King's Castle
Supreme Race
These values on the steam store of 100+ dollars each I think are done to drive up the value of the keys when sold elsewhere artificially.
Instead of it being based on the value of the game (people's desire to play it) it's instead valued at the "social credit" you get for donating the game (XP,etc) on IndieGala or SteamGifts or whatnot
I think I've complained to steam/IG a dozen times and nothing's happened. At least here there's the option to block games like this from display manually so they don't clutter the results.
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