i'm also unsure if "help" is indeed correct - i know plenty who do this in fact all but a few are not the ones i thought of but i will not be listing them as i don't see the point in adding them to this thread - others may think this is a good idea but i don't think i do - sorry
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is this not fixed little months ago when valve enable new rules for fight fake prices?
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/discount_rule_changes
is they find new ways to avoid it and continue do tbad ?
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See comment below.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1894240/Chicken_Coop/
$595 AUD
Can pick it up from DIG (Daily Indie Games) for under $3 AUD ....
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595 my god..,i earn 200 in 1 month and by broken my bones 🤣
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Add the ones in this thread:
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/FTDrx/its-getting-even-worse-with-asset-flips
One guy is charging like $600 (AUD)
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The other thread deals with Asset Flips which often are overpriced. This thread is for scummy developers/publishers who mass produce shovelware and put them onto the store with a heavily inflated base price to always have a huge discount.
I thought about just adding them to the Asset-Flip-thread, but a) many of the games made/published by the devs/publishers in the above list are no asset flips and b) those are two different topics.
Thank you for your help, tho :) I edited the thread title to hopefully make it more clear
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There will still be quite a lot of overlap, since it's the same mentality behind it: little to no effort -> big money.
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That leaves us with two possibilities:
A) We as a community maintain several small threads, clear presentation but possible overlap
or
B) We create one mega-thread for all problems without overlap but it might be confusing.
I am willing to create and maintain one such mega-thread, but I will and can not provide all needed information for such a thread. I will need the help of the community, otherwise one such mega-thread is doomed to fail right from the start.
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I am not necessarily against overlap. It just means, that some work will be done multiple times, but on the other hand you can sometimes take some work from the other threads.
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Thank you for this. This list will help me to avoid shovelware and assetflips publishers.
It would be great if we could get Steam links to them all so we can add them to ignore list and not only the games they make.
Add also these ones to ignore list:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38706685
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33019799
https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/witte-studio
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42290027
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38872489
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You can only ignore them on Steam if they have put up a developer/publisher page which most listed in the above list - sadly - did not :(
Edit: Also I won't list Asset-Flip-making devs/publishers in this thread because this is a different topic and I don't want to clutter the list too much to keep it short and easy on the eyes :) Hope you understand that.
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Yeah. I wish there was some way to ignore them all - all shovelware and assetflips - that would probably make 50% of Steam games disappear for me as I'm afraid there are a lot of people like that that even buy some assets or create some basic game and price it as a massive cost like this one: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1894240/Chicken_Coop/?curator_clanid=38706685
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...- that would probably make 50% of Steam games disappear for me...
This is a very optimistic estimate. 2015 Steam catalogue contained less than 8,000 items. In 2022 we have over 50,000 "game like objects".
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That would mean that like 80% of Steam is probably trash :/
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Visiting an art gallery you wouldn't expect to see your kid's first crayon drawings sold there. Then again I might lack the right perspective.
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WTF, just 329€ for that crappy game? I know that our world economy is flushing downwards at the moment, but I never thought it would be that bad already ^^"
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I report stuff like that on Steam when I see it. It's too bad there is no policy in place to protect the userbase.
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Erm...Bethesda and EA are out of the picture? Sorry, couldn't resist ;-)
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have an overpriced base price and as such are always reduced by at least -75% to trick customers in buying these games due to their reduced price.
Doesn't apply
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I know, and many of those apply to the overpriced, but I'm not sure that especially EA is famous about their deep discounts :D
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Hey now... they recently gave away free DLC for some of their...
checks notes
errm... 10+ year old games. ^^
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I think the bigger issue is that people don't care about the quality of the games they buy because they don't ever plan on playing them. The issue is that they are buying games because they have steam cards, achievements, or just to increase the number of games they own. These games are going to continue to be made and people will continue to buy them because these "gamers" are not gamers. They only care about making the numbers on their Steam account bigger so they can compare themselves to other random people on the internet. There are also people that just simply have an addiction and no self control.
Steam designed a system that encourages these type of junk cash grab games. They created a social media platform that has a competitive leveling system. It encourages devs to make garbage because they know it will sell. It encourages people to buy as much of this junk as possible because of human psychology.
Edit: Thanks for trying to help, but I don't think listing the developers/ publishers here will have much of an affect because people like me that only collect games they want to play will not need to look at this list because I do research on every game before I decide to buy it. Then you have the people that just collect to make their Steam numbers bigger and they also will not look at the list because they don't care about the quality of the games they collect.
Edit 2: I guess I shouldn't say that people who spend a lot of time collecting everything they can to boost the numbers on their Steam account aren't gamers since a lot of them do also play some of their games.
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These newer shovelware games don't have trading cards and (almost?) all are profile features limited, too. Meaning they don't increase your games and achievements counts on your profile.
Nobody buys these to play them, that's for sure. I think people using them to get their alts to pass the 100 USD registration limit and to level up here on Steamgifts might actually be one of the main sources of demand for these. Maybe the top one.
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I didn't know that. There must be a demand for the games though or else people wouldn't create them. Nobody is going to waste time creating products that don't make money. So, I don't think the issue is the people making the games, but the people buying them. There is a large amount of people buying garbage games for some reason and they are the ones creating the demand that causes people to fill that demand by creating the junk games.
It's just economics. When there is a demand, someone will fill that demand to profit. Yes, companies could fill the demand by creating better games, but that would be more expensive and is not how economics works. They are creating supply that fills the needs of the demand as cheap as possible so they can profit as much as possible. If we don't like the outcome, the ones to blame are the ones creating the demand.
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I happily hit the Ignore option on at least 3 of those before Steam remembered they had a cap on the number of publishers/devs you can ignore... for some reason.
I guess that means that 3 shovelware/crapware "devs" were booted from Steam since I last tried.
3 in a year, good job Steam.
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Considering the lackadaisical approach Steam has to approving anyone with a bit of money, they shouldn't limit our ability to ignore specific publishers and devs. We should have unlimited blocks.
This is one of my least favorite things about that hellsite.
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i know there is a cap of 20 devs/publishers, you can follow (pretty low, right?).
But I didn't know, that there was an ignore cap for them too?
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I think it's capped at 100 or so I read but I don't think I have 100 ignored so it must be way lower.
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There's a cap of exactly 99 curators you can ignore. Yes, 99, not 100, dunno why, just Valve being Valve, I guess.
Not only is it a criminally low limit that will hardly make a dent into the wall of trash, they even get stuck if the relevant publishers get booted from Steam, like delisted games in wishlists (I wonder if ignored publishers can also be removed via script?).
Turns out the best method to hide trash is still the good old ignore buttons on the store pages, though you'll likely need an extra mouse or two after dealing with some of the most prolific spammers.
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It turned into a Routine for me to vote (wishlist/follow/ignore) every game poppig up SG for a while now ^^
And you know what? 75% are Endung at my ignored list.
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I honestly wonder how many of these "games" are for money laundering. Like when folks just buy assets, and flip them in order to low key transfer cash between them and specific people. Shovelware can also be used in that way.
Here are two suspicious ones I haven't seen in this thread: Lghghre GAME and CoffSt. This sort of game is fitting for your thread. $45, for a shitty FPS is especially sus.
Not sure how shovelware-heavy these are, though. I don't have a list of things the devs have done or used. All I know is that they're shifty af and seem like they were all half-assed.
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thanks for this thread, there are some more games at my ignored list, preventing from entering them here at SG. Have my Bumpo and Kudos^^
Not sure, why you blacklisted me though🤔
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There used to be a script to ignore all game on the steam screen. That used to make it easy to ignore large amounts of games easily. Sadly I cannot remember the script maker and it probably doesn't work on the publisher page anyway.
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Have another bump! Hopefully we can find more garbage shovelware "games" for this thread.
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In addition to BubbyBobble's mentions, here are a few more:
Andreev Worlds as publisher
Defender Defender as publisher
Enoops as developer & Enoops as publisher
Gamesforgames as publisher
Helicopter games as publisher
HuoChaiRenRPG as publisher
KoloradoNS as publisher
Laush Dmitriy Sergeevich as developer & Laush Studio as publisher
Leonsy as publisher
Louie Inc as publisher
OPG EUPHORE as publisher
Phoenixxx Games as publisher
RoboTeh Lab as publisher
Scale Studio as publisher
Virturian games as publisher
KoloradoNS / RoboTeh Lab / Virturian games are alternative publisher names for kovalevviktor.
Leonsy is an alternative publisher name for galesoozka = Gales Corp, which also happens to publish games developed by other asset flippers from the list, like Enoops and ImperiumGame (could be just a collaboration between Gales Corp, Enoops, ImperiumGame and not the same persona behind all these - who knows).
Andreev Worlds, Defender Defender, Helicopter games, Scale Studio and OPG EUPHORE are alternative publisher names for Gamesforgames.
Publishing games under new names is a tactic that they often use, maybe to make it less easy to get fully banned.
There's also Ready To Play which might or might not have any connections with the ones mentioned above. Apart from "World of Bärn" they still have low prices, but it might be worth keeping an eye on them in case they decide to join the club.
Certainly part of the club, yet they didn't really start playing with the prices (apart form maybe their most recent releases Pirates Things, Winter Things, Desert Things, City Things, Mysterious Things are HotFoodGames. Their original name is ImperiumGame and they also publish games under an alternative name VeryHardMemeStudio.
For easy copy-pasting:
[Andreev Worlds as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=Andreev%20Worlds)
[Defender Defender as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=Defender%20Defender)
[Enoops as developer](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=23&operator=3&keyvalue=Enoops) & [Enoops as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=Enoops)
[Gamesforgames as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=Gamesforgames)
[Helicopter games as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=Helicopter%20games)
[HuoChaiRenRPG as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=HuoChaiRenRPG)
[KoloradoNS as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=KoloradoNS)
[Laush Dmitriy Sergeevich as developer](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=23&operator=3&keyvalue=Laush%20Dmitriy%20Sergeevich) & [Laush Studio as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=Laush%20Studio)
[Leonsy as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=Leonsy)
[Louie Inc as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=Louie%20Inc)
[OPG EUPHORE as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=OPG%20EUPHORE)
[Phoenixxx Games as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=Phoenixxx%20Games)
[RoboTeh Lab as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=RoboTeh%20Lab)
[Scale Studio as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=Scale%20Studio)
[Virturian games as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=Virturian%20games)
[HotFoodGames as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=HotFoodGames)
[ImperiumGame as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=ImperiumGame)
[VeryHardMemeStudio as publisher](https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&keyname=241&operator=3&keyvalue=VeryHardMemeStudio)Comment has been collapsed.
I'm surprised Gamesforgames is even a publisher, let alone work under few different names.
I thought they are only this shop with dirty cheap keys.
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I think DIG is also a publisher under many names and self-publishes Hentai (and) Puzzle games that "coincidentally" make up most of the games in their Adult-Bundles.
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They should have some system where you thumb down asset flips on Steam. And when something reaches 1k downvotes and have just few reviews it should be automatically de-listed. Steam is such junkyard now.
They decided to change how thumbnails can be designed, without award banners and other junk. Grats. Now they should stop to allow asset templates that were bought for 10 pounds and then re-sold in shop for 1 pound per copy.
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Thank you, Lilly. I took every fitting contribution and implemented it in the new community thread: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/OOWqe/steam-community-thread-scammyscummy-developerspublishers-your-help-needed
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I remembered, that Blender Games has a ton of Games, which are basically just a series of the same games, just with an increasing number on it.
I'd name it shovelware too, even when the prices arent that high.
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I'd definitely call it shovelware. They make copies of the same shit, and sell it to people who're after achievements, cards and a cheap +1 to their games library.
They also take advantage of folks who purchase rubbish game bundles for a dollar or less. This crap is all over DailyIndieGame.
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Another one for the pile that I forgot to mention here:
DGV-Games as publisher which is an alternate name for Enoops
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Thank you for your contributions!
I see them ;) I'm not too happy how this thread turned out so I'll be trying something else in the next days. This is why I am not updating the original posting anymore BUT your contributions will be carried over to the new thread.
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That Hede "publisher/developer" is so annoying. He comes out with dozens of "games" a year which obviously means he's not developing shit he's just flipping assets. I wish there was a way to hide all games by publisher or developer, here and on steam store.
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Many years I've seen you here making GA's and contributing heavily so the rest of us punters can have a great day. So it makes me happy to wish you a Happy Cake-Day. Hip Hooray!
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Thank you for your nice words! :) Yeah, it has been nine years already... Nine years!
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Very useful thread. Thanks for it :)
And happy Cake day.
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BandaiNamco and Ubisoft (old games) always like that, except that they aren't counted as shovelware I guess
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I'm trying to build a list of Developers/Publishers of Shovelware whose games have an overpriced base price and as such are always reduced by at least -75% to trick customers in buying these games due to their reduced price.
They are deliberately using the concept of FOMO (fear of missing out) because customers think "I HAVE to buy this since its discount is so huge, it will never be that cheap again and I will miss the deal if I don't buy at once".
If you find more developers/publishers who follow suit, please feel free to add them. Thank you.
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