What are these people thinking?
If you mean the cheap obviously no-effort cash-in junk flooding from Russia, then it is neither just your feeling, nor it is a Steam-only thing. Russians have been flooding the low-grade market scene since early 90s, when the shareware model was in full swing.
Similarly, there have always been many borderline law-breaking publishers of such games in smaller American towns and all over Western Europe that paid some money to flood the local markets with those games. (If you ever want to have a funny story, look up Alex de Vries and his company, Xing Interactive, also previously known as Crystal Interactive, or Crystal Software, before he sold out to the Chinese and now it is called Snack Games, a known rip-off business.)
Only two things changed with Steam in the past years compared to the other 15 or so years before it. One is that Steam made it possible for them to cut out the middleman, so they can publish these games themselves. The other is that the Chinese, like they jumped in on the black web/pirating scene eventually, also started to churn out similar games, so there is now a competition.
On the other hand, many people don't know that regardless of this aspect of the independent video game development scene, practically all of the known, famous, and beloved casual (and many of the mobile) games are also made in Russia and Eastern Europe. I essentially cannot name a single hidden object game in the past 11 years that was not created in this region.
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What I don't get is the fact that there are people actually buying those games, enough to incentivize the behaviour.
Anyway... I'd like a chance for that game. It's a genre I love, but honestly it will take a while before I will be really able to play it, so I will understand if I don't make the cut. ;)
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Um, I have no clue which game you are referring to. Also, I've never noticed (or even thought about) the question you raised before now.
I only pay attention to the language if it is potentially not in English.
However, may I join? I probably wouldn't get to it right away, as I have very limited time each week for playing, am trying to finish up some games I am in the middle of before going on to new games, and I'll be using my internet to download new purchases. (I need to make sure that they actually run on my laptop! :) ) I understand if you decide to not let me enter.
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I am definitely curious about how ethics develop on a national level. No nation is perfect in this regard though, and I know there are good people in each country too. It's a struggle not to make stereotypical snap judgments sometimes, but it's interesting (and annoying and a bit sad) how often the stereotypes hold true.
Typically, I notice stacks of positive reviews on less than stellar games... cooperating to create more shit in the world is so... disappointing.
p.s. thank you for not using "am I the only one..." :)
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Like you said, if "they" are publishing so many games, there must be a market - unless there is some underground economy with free keys against ad revenue, cross-promotion etc
ps: available for your whitelist if it is not too late and if you still need entries :)
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Well, first I wanted to start the topic title with "Am I the only one ....". But then I remembered my ever returning urge to punch everyone in the face who uses this sentence. Because with a probability of 95 % and higher the answer is "no" unless you are doing something really extraordinary. So with this small rant over here the question:
Who else has the feeling that Steam tries to make them racist/creating prejudices. This is actually meant half-jokingly but going through the store there seems to be a muster. I actually am in favor for an open store because more choice can never be bad and I will keep this stance. But there are several cheap games, often even the same game with multiple skins created by people from a certain country. I see the trailer and think: "Hey this looks effortless/uninspired." Then I scroll down the page to look at available languages and ....."Why am I not surprised?". Sometimes they try to circumvent it by not giving this information (even when the game actually has text) but then you see it by their names or even in the trailer because they were to lazy to change it there. Then followed by somehow suspicious review scores. I wonder what these people are thinking (see poll).
I purposefully refrain from naming a country/nationality here for several reasons. For once as it can be just personal bias. For second because it doesnt matter to much anyway. As long as people buy it they are somehow justified, so the problem is us the userbase too. And lastly as a little fun social experiment: I would like everyone to do the same. Not naming a country/nationality. So that we can all complain about something without naming it and never finding out if we actually mean the same. I wonder (once again) how many posts/much time it will take until someone does it anyway :P
And lastly, after stirring up people, the actually reason for the post. I currently have running a group giveaway (running until tomorrow evening). However, as the group is rather known for not entering much and I want to get to Level 7 one day I need more entries. As a safety net I made it a whitelist giveaway with an empty whitelist. So if you have the game in question on your wishlist (before yesterday) you can post here and I may add you temporarily to the whitelist. Depending on people I might limit it by random factores like games won, number of games on wishlist in total, played games won etc ......So check and maybe you have a chance. Note that I might add you to the list rather shortly as I have to work tomorrow.
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