As someone who has never bought any games from Otaku, it sure seems like this sort of thing happens with that site a lot. This has to be at least the 3rd or 4th time I've heard of a dev revoking their keys featured in bundles on that site.
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And yet every time it has turned out it has nothing to do with Otaku doing anything wrong.
In this case it is a developer who cannot read and/or understand English well enough, and perhaps being impatient besides. The evidence he provided clearly shows Otaku didn't violate the contract and still had time to pay him.
In the other recent incident, the developer seems to have thought there was a leak of keys. It's unclear why he thought that (probably yet another developer seeing people activate products months after a bundle and thinks they're stealing) though would again not be Otaku's fault.
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Not really. The contract doesn't specify an end date for the sale, giving Otaku complete control of settling the contract. It's common for courts to rule that when the terms are unfair for one party and there is no room for that party to negotiate, the contract is unconscionable and therefore unenforceable. Language difficulties causing one party to not understand that the terms are unfair is not a valid way to trap the unfortunate party, it's considered a reason to invalidate the contract - https://legalvision.com.au/what-makes-a-contract-unenforceable/
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Yes, that is what I am talking about - there is no end date for the sale in Otaku's standard form contract, giving Otaku complete control of settling the contract. Under French law, any clause in a standard form contract creating a “significant imbalance” (déséquilibre significatif) between the parties may be considered unfair and deemed to be of no effect by the courts (Article 1171 of the Civil Code). Furthermore, this could be regarded as a misleading omission, which is an offense under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive.
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The end date is not in the contract, and contrary to Otaku's advertising, they're still selling it. If Otaku had wanted to formalize 26 December 2018 as the end of the sale period, they could have done so with a very simple response to Electrostalin's two weeks of increasingly frantic requests for information.
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I think that's a definite possibility, but I suspect it's more a comment on what sort of "developer" is willing to sell their game to that sort of bulk garbage bundle site. :)
You know, random clown pays $100 to get their "game" on Steam. Sells a pile of keys to various crappy bundle sites. Wow, that bundle site is run by idiots. I can't believe they're actually going to pay me for this thing. If I keep this up, I'm going to be rich! :)
Then, several months later, the developer finally realises he is the idiot, and the tiny payment he received is all he will ever get. Maybe he finally reads that contract he signed? Oops.
So he tries to retroactively un-sign the contract and revokes all the keys. Umm, I was robbed. Bundle site owners are crooks. I have no money. Go complain to them about it.
Really, the whole thing feels like some gullible person falling for a scam. Ok, it's probably a lie, but I'm just going to play along for a bit and scam them instead. Heh heh heh. I'm so smart! :)
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It was actually a pretty standard contract, the dev is to receive 70% of the revenue once the sale period ends.
The dev did not understand when the sale period ended, and his English is not so great. Also, Otaku has terrible customer support, it takes awhile to hear back from them. So the dev decided to revoke the keys, because the dev doesn't understand the contract he signed or what fraud actually is.
So again, the theme in this is that idiot devs that cannot get their game bundled by a better site are going to Otaku. These devs don't understand how to make a good game, and they don't understand basic contracts. They don't understand public relations either, because if there really was an issue any good dev would simply inform the community well in advance and act in good faith. A simple announcement a month ahead of time and I bet people would have been contacting the store on their behalf trying to help, but we are not dealing with genius devs here. xD
I am not going to say Otaku is purely innocent- their slow customer service shares a small part of the blame; but it is mainly the devs that are at fault for revoking the keys they authorized for false reasons. They are abusing the key revocation system. Valve shares a small amount of blame as well because the entire system is 'self policed' and as we've seen it is open to abuse.
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I laughed. XD
+whitelist
After this fiasco, this developer will change their name to Lenin or something and do the same thing all over again...
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That is true! :P
(Heck, there are plenty of a$$holes now as well lol :P)
Thanks for the WL :)
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Actualy developer said that he named so becouse live in Electrostal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektrostal
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It's penny-price shovelware after all; I'm surprised he even responded... after this the dev will change his name and continue making more shovelware like nothing ever happened... and people will continue buying it...
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With all the people that call for getting their money back through paypal because they call it scamming what that dev did... I'm wondering about if they realize that by requesting their money back, they'll "scam" the other devs of that bundle?
Actually I'm not sure how that will work out, since I haven't been in that situation.... just thinking about it, since it sounds like if you request your money back and already have activated the other keys that are in the bundle, some would use that dev to get the other games for free and therefore try to steal from the devs that got cought in the middle...
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What Otaku could do is take this dev's share and credit it back to the customers.
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The dev just posted this response:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/746760/announcements/detail/1692691474050164292
Dear friends!
Because of the conflict with the store "Otaku" we have blocked all the keys and return the old keys can not. All this week we have been thinking about the solution to the situation. Those who had their keys revoked as: Typical Nightmare, Outside and Not my day.
Please see the application form at email: EvilGamesStudios@yandex.ru.The application form should consist of the following:
Message subject: Locked keys
In a message to paint the points:
- What games were blocked and their number
(for example, Typical Nightmare-1 key)- Proof that your key is locked
(a photo or a message from steam locked games)- Attach a receipt for the purchase of the game
(if you do not have a check, the application will be considered longer)
To speed up the application process, please provide more information about the purchase.Response time may take some time. Please do not flood in the comments. The application form is mandatory.
The application is accepted only by mail!
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Dev sent me the replacement keys within an hour. No other dev has requested proof "that your key is locked" since they should know which ones they revoked. I used a screenshot of the steam support page for that proof: https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithGameTechnicalIssue?appid=746760 that states "CD Key was revoked on: Jan 2". However, this would not be possible for keys bought in a groupbuy.
For proof of purchase I just sent a screenshot of my otakubundle.com orders page.
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Got my replacements quickly.
I took captures from each game here (changed app ID accordingly) https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithGameTechnicalIssue?appid=746760
Then I took capture of the email I received from bundle host, showing just "Here are you keys etc" -text and the games/keys.
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The dev sent me replacement keys right away for the following games...
Typical Nightmare
Not my Day
Outside
So kudos for that.
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Aaaaand another dev got scammed by Otaku. I'm interested, do Otaku fans still think it was another accident where dev was faulty?
https://steamcommunity.com/app/615180/discussions/0/2789318172111918396/
Efelatte:
Hey there! Unfortunately we had a problem with OtakuBundle, we haven't been able to contact them for a long time (they didn't answer to any of our mails) and they delayed the payment for months so we had to cancel the unactivated keys.
They also didn't send us the unsold keys and hold them for "future bundles" without giving any information to us. So, we've blacklisted OtakuBundle because of this and decided not to do further business with them.
But don't worry we are willing to fix this issue. Please simply send your purchase receipt and the key given to you by OtakuBundle to contact@frymoregames.com and we will provide you with a new key.
Note : At the moment we are waiting for Steam to give us some keys to provide you guys with. Some users are requesting 100+ keys for their purchases and I'm afraid we won't be able to provide them with that many keys. We will only handle personal amounts for a short period of time. We still haven't heard from Otaku, but we are trying to minimize the damage caused because of lack of contact between us and Otaku.
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+new game got revoked. Are there any remaining buyers of Otaku still?
https://steamcommunity.com/games/873210/announcements/detail/3166494641911991333
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Kids will buy their couple cent crap as long as it's available imagining they are getting something of value. They should wake up to the reality that those bundles were never worth buying unless the games had cards and they haven't had those in ages.
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Typical Nightmare
Not my Day
Outside
Upcoming games.
Paws and Soul
Mike goes on hike
What bundle it's from.
[Edit]
Official comment
"Evilgamesstudios [developer] 4 minutes ago
Hi, We do not understand why all claims go to us. All revoked keys were seized from Otaku store due to fraud. Write to the store where the key was purchased."
[Edit 2]
Dev closing any related topic and criticism.
[Edit 3]
Dear friends!
Because of the conflict with the store "Otaku" we have blocked all the keys and return the old keys can not. All this week we have been thinking about the solution to the situation. Those who had their keys revoked as: Typical Nightmare, Outside and Not my day.
Please see the application form at email: EvilGamesStudios@yandex.ru.
The application form should consist of the following:
Message subject: Locked keys
In a message to paint the points:
What games were blocked and their number
(for example, Typical Nightmare-1 key)
Proof that your key is locked
(a photo or a message from steam locked games)
Attach a receipt for the purchase of the game
(if you do not have a check, the application will be considered longer)
To speed up the application process, please provide more information about the purchase.
Response time may take some time. Please do not flood in the comments. The application form is mandatory.
The application is accepted only by mail!
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