https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/2230980/Caribbean_Legend/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/687800/Heads_Will_Roll_Reforged/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/2709300/After_War_Town/

Hey hey! Long time no speak! Very sorry for the lack of posts in the last couple of weeks, I've been very inundated with work, but I've finally found some time today to report on some findings I've been wanting to discuss for a little while now.

Today I wanted to revisit our old buddy Atomic Fabrik, and specifically, I'm actually wanting to do a callback to a point I raised in a previous article where I responded to Atomic Fabrik's post talking about his Steam ban. For those of you unfamiliar or new, a little background first though. Atomic Fabrik was a Steam developer/publisher that pushed out a lot of shovelware titles, but who also partook in review manipulation, deceptive marketting such as using entirely AI generated images on store pages without any gameplay, and also having a tendancy to try and remove his name from titles to prevent association and conceal how many games he was posting to Steam.

So, on August 16th we posted an article responding to some of the points of Atomic Fabrik's post regarding his ban, mainly because he talks about this group a lot in his since deleted X post, but also because there was a lot misinformation that failed to set the record straight. Now, usually when it comes to banned developers, I let them be and move on, they're not on Steam so they're not really contributing to the problems on Steam that we try and address anymore, however, since that article, I've been delving a bit deeper into some other apps that some users reported to me on our forums that they cited were still owned by Atomic Fabrik but were still on the store despite his ban. Now, I was aware of some apps that were still up on Steam by Atomic Fabrik and I even talked about those in the article on August 16th, however the forum quickly collated a lengthy list of games that were still on Steam and it was in the 50's. Granted this was out of a game count that was nearing the 300's, but it did make me question how Valve missed so many. Some of the users cited the developer associations had been removed, some were under different names citing changes in SteamDB log entries, but even then, Valve have access to a lot more information such as banking information that they use when issuing out bans. So what happened with this?

That's what I sought to try and figure out, and the results have offered some answers to at least the initial questions, but have further fueled some confusion and raised more questions from at least the close circle of people, including myself, that have been looking into this.


I'd like to now segue a bit and discuss something that I have been aware of happening on Steam for some time, but I've never had an appropriate time to discuss it publicly, and that's with regards to app acquisitions. An app acquisition is effectively a buyout of games on Steam, transferring the ownership of a Steam app and the Steamworks access to the game from one developer partner to another. And this is surprisingly more common than you think, as this actively goes on in these asset flipping circles, and it seems to be what was at least part of Atomic Fabrik's business model where they sold on some of their apps that they originally owned. It's such a common practice, Steam even have an entry in their Steamworks documentation about transferring applications. So before you ask, no, it's not against Steam TOS to transfer app ownership.

The complicated part about app acquisitions is it makes differentiating when a developer is just renaming themselves for the sake of disassociating themselves from their games or messing with Steam tools etc. vs. a developer genuinely buying a game out very difficult.

However, I am quite confident in saying that in particular with the previously cited 50 or so apps of Atomic Fabrik that these, while they originally were developed by Atomic Fabrik, have since been sold off to other developer partners. Allow me to showcase my rationale for this.


So, with that prior knowledge now conveyed, as I was sending this list to Valve, I did decide to disclose that I am aware that just because a developer's name has changed in SteamDB logs doesn't necessarily equate to the developer has changed their alias, but it could mean that another Steamworks partner has bought the game off the developer off-site or in a private deal.

I then got a response from Valve, and they reiterated this and confirmed that this is very much something that happens. While they didn't confirm nor deny that this was what had been happening in the instance of Atomic Fabrik, they reiterated that it was a correct assurance that just because there had been a name change, it didn't mean the developer was trying to hide their involvement in the title.

Following this email exchange, there was a small ban wave[x.com] that happened, and included was seven of the games that I had sent over to Steam, indicating to me that these apps had been manually reviewed by Valve and they had come to the conclusion that enough Atomic Fabrik ties remained. However, the other 53 remained untouched and available for sale.

Now, to me, my take aways from that were:

• Valve confirmed that app acquisitions and transfers do happen
  
• Valve didn't ignore the list I sent and did still decide to ban a handful of those titles.
  
• It was a conscious decision not to ban those 53 titles - as previously established with Valve cherry picking just the seven specifically. This was neither "these have escaped the net" nor was it negligence on Valve's part.

Just the fact that app acquisitions as a topic was rebounded back to me from the Steam representative, while not fully confirming, I feel heavily implies that this is what's been happening, and that Atomic Fabrik was selling his games off to other developers on Steam in some private deals. And there is further information I've found on some of the Steam pages I got linked which seems to confirm that to me, Atomic Fabrik had been doing dealings with Steam publishers Conglomerate 5, and the publisher who will be the main subject for the remainder of our article: Valkyrie Initiative


Just using the Steam titles at the top of this article, I'm going to take you through a paper trail that I followed with After War Town. After War Town currently only lists publisher Former glory studio, but this was their sole game on Steam.

Navigating to After War Town's discussion forums and to the events and announcements tab, you can see there's only one news post there promoting a game called Skelethrone: The Chronicles of Ericona.

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/2139840/Skelethrone_The_Chronicles_of_Ericona/

This is a game published by Valkyrie Intiaitve. Now, a lot of users on our forums have noticed this on a few apps but were unsure why this was happening. Unfortunately, Steam removed the author names on News and announcement posts a few updates ago. However, the workaround is if you visit the discussion in particular, you can hit the reply button and quoting the user's text reveals the news post was written by a Steam user known as "coffeemean"

Who is coffeemean you may ask? A quick visit to their Steam profile shows Valkyrie Initiative listed as their primary group. Granted, they don't appear to have any admin privileges there, but they are the ones posting game promos in news feeds not just on some older Atomic Fabrik titles, but also on Valkyrie Initiative games, or well "valkyrieinitiative" games.

Now, you can only post news announcements if you have Steamworks access, and then with that, I think we get a much clearer picture as to what has happened here, and it appears that Atomic Fabrik, before they were banned made a deal with Valkyrie Initiative for them to acquire some of Atomic Fabrik's apps, and that the reason those 30 or so apps weren't banned is because Atomic Fabrik is no longer the owner (I have discounted 20 as we have found they may be with somebody unassociated with Valkyrie Initiative, but that's a story for another time), but are instead owned by Valkyrie Initiative, even though this ownership is not appropriately disclosed on the store page.

But it doesn't stop there, this was the start of the rabbit hole. What if I were to tell you, even though Valkyrie Initiative, according to their store page, only supposedly owning 31 games, were in fact in ownership of almost 400 games?

It's not just Atomic Fabrik titles that Valkyrie Initiative have been buying out, but they also seem to have acquired the entirety of the Conglomerate 5 publisher's catalogue, as well as all bar 4 of the Terro Lunka catalogue.

Again, without changing the names on Steam. This is only shown by news announcements posted by the Valkyrie Initiative representative promoting Valkyrie Inititative games, and you can find these on literally all of the nearly 200 Conglomerate 5 titles, and the vast majority of Terro Lunka games.

The Conglomerate 5 publisher account has not had a new game release since September 2023, with their last release being Journey to Alien Worlds. Do you want to know when Valkyrie Initiative titles started to be cross promoted on Conglomerate 5 games? October 2023, one month after their last game release.

With Tero Lunkka, this appears to be very recent, having just occurred last month. What's important to note and also very key to showing you this is very much indeed an app acquisition is if we compare Terro Lunka's game developer homepage against the search query for their developer name.

You can see that on the homepage, it only lists 4 games, but on the query, it lists 106. Why's there such a wide difference? Well, in the aforementioned Steamworks documentation listing, in the FAQ section, it reads:

Originally posted by Steamworks:

Q. What happens to a game appearing on a Developer or Publisher Homepage when it's been transferred (aka Creator Home pages )?
A. When a transfer is initiated for an appID, the appID will automatically be removed from all Developer or Publisher Homepages that it is currently listed on. Once the transfer is complete, the appID can be listed on the new Developer/Publisher Homepage.

So...Steam automatically remove games from the developer homepages when an app transfer has occurred, but the new homepages need to be assigned manually, which clearly hasn't been done. If you visit the 4 games on Tero Lunkka's homepage, none of them have any ads for Valkyrie Initiative. The only ones that do, are the ones that aren't listed on the homepage. In other words, the one that have been acquired.

Now, in addition, I will also say I received a tip off from a user back in May this year, who claimed to be an insider of Valkyrie Initiative, and they said they weren't able to share all the details, but they stated that Valkyrie Initiative had a scheme at the time to profit off of fake games without tarnishing their brand reputation or flooding their library with bad games. At the time I first received that, I couldn't quite work out what the user was referring to, but with me bearing that in mind and then discovering this just this month, it further fuels the suspicions of this scheme, and adds yet another layer.

Please do, share this article. It's important that this gets known. Valkyrie Initiative are acquiring apps and chosen not to list themselves as the owners, for what appears to be the motivation of to further monetise their scheme while not tarnishing their company's reputation and the seemingly "good" games they list on their main homepage. They are also actively manipulating reviews and deceiving the consumer, as showcased by the Games with Paid Reviews curator. This practice needs to be called out and exposed to the wider community, this publisher is in ownership of almost 400 apps and is only disclosing their involvement with around 30, and review manipulation is shown to be a consistency across all of their titles. Consumers need to know who they're buying games off, and Valkyrie Initiative are showing outright contempt for this.

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https://steamproxy.net/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/4578559379959234051

First of all, apologies that this may be a little shorter than usual. I have a lot of work this week but I still wanted to get an article up this week anyway, so here we are!

Two weeks ago, we spoke about some planned changes Steam were implementing with regards to the store page written descriptions. You can find the article we did on that here. In short, the announcement was mostly welcomed, with one exception, and that was the announcement Steam made in that they were going to stop allowing developers to promote their other titles on store page announcements and in the game description amongst other areas. Basically if you were an indie developer and you had 3 games and you wanted to maybe promote an upcoming release in your description or in the announcements to try and push more traffic to it, this was going to do a number on you. Many indie developers reported that those tactics generate a large volume of traffic and as a result, were very concerned to hear that this change was coming in.

Fast forward August 29th (I'm a bit late to this too!) and Steam appears to have listened to those criticisms, as they made a new announcement on Steamworks entitled "New options for featuring related content on your store page". In it, they address that they heard and understood the criticism coming mainly from developers with regards to announcement and description promotion. Steam however said they weren't going to walk back on it as they wanted to find a good balance for users being able to find relevant information about the games they were viewing without being bombarded with other games, while still allowing developers freedom to promote their games. Steam have addressed this by rolling out a couple of new additions to store pages.

First of all, they're adding a panel to the store page which directly promotes games from the developer, as exemplified here. This area does not feature the DLC from developers, however, that brings us on to the second change that Steam announced.

Second of all, they are now also rolling out an option for developers to feature their DLC to make it clearer to players what the newest DLC release is, or those that are on a sale.

Overall, the response to this change seems very positive. While the first new widget isn't as prevalent as it gets pushed to between the description and the reviews, developers have still seemingly all welcomed the change. Users have also welcomed this change as well and many people in our Discord were even saying that it's one of the best changes that Steam's ever done. And it all came from taking on feedback from the community and listening, so hats off to Steam from me.

Do let me know what you think of this change in the comments. Again, apologies for the short length, but I am strapped for time this week and I just wanted to get something up quick and this was a very convenient topic and a good means to highlight Steam listening to feedback.

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https://steamproxy.net/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/4354502761472444570

Today I wanted to talk about Steam’s new changes to Steam user reviews. This is kind of a part two to my previous article talking about the changes coming to Steam’s store page descriptions as both were announced on the same day.

So, what’s happening to Steam user reviews? Well, on August 14th, Steam released a blog post entitled ‘Update to User Reviews: New Helpfulness System’. Now, again, I’m not going to sit here and just read the blog post out verbatim, but in short, they’re going to be making changes to how Steam sorts user reviews. At the moment, Steam has a helpfulness rating algorithm when it comes to user reviews where it looks at a variety of things. These include how recent the review is, how many users upvoted the review and what the aggregated rating of the game page is. If it’s say 90%, it’ll default show you the 9 most helpful positive reviews and the 1 most helpful negative review, if it’s at 40% it’ll show you 4 positive, 6 negative, you get the idea.

However, unsurprisingly, users don’t just use Steam user reviews to review games. They use it to share memes, jokes, ascii art, and not only that, but those reviews get upvoted and marked as helpful by other users. Steam have decided to act on this and to try and make user reviews more helpful, saying that while those reviews are fine on paper and fun, it doesn’t help new players make an informed purchasing decision.

Steam says that the way they’ll be targeting these reviews is by prioritizing what they call ‘informative reviews’ and an informative review is classed as a review that isn’t just one word, or a meme, or posting ascii art, or isn’t trying to do one of those meme things, like Crikey Cameron . See, I’m in on memes ! Those types of reviews will get filtered behind the informative reviews. How do they detect this? Well, they mention in the FAQ it’s a myriad of different things such as machine learning algorithms, user reports and some manual checks by Steam moderators.

Now I know what a lot of you are thinking, you’re sat there crying yourself to sleep thinking “where can I get my ascii art fix now?” Well don’t worry, because Steam say that if you do want to see those more ‘unhelpful’ types of reviews there is going to be a feature to include them when you’re browsing them.

They do make mention though that those types of reviews will still be taken into account in the aggregated rating of a game, so it’s not like if a review gets marked as a meme review, then that review gets taken out of the equation when Steam calculates a game’s rating, so, to any dodgy developers thinking they can start flagging negative reviews as meme reviews, you’re not going to have much luck there.

Some of you make also be thinking ‘if these reviews aren’t helpful, why aren’t they just deleting them instead, might they quantify as spam in some cases?’ Well Steam also address that, saying that they’ve found players like to express an opinion about the game, but don’t have the words to describe the experience, or aren’t interested in writing, so just the sheer fact they’ve recommended or not recommended a game Steam say is valuable data for them.

So, similar with the Store page description announcement, I went ahead and made a poll, asking both my community and the wider Steam community what their thoughts were on these new changes. The poll showed me that, out of the almost 100 people that responded, 62% thought that it was a positive change, 31% either were unsure, didn’t know or were indifferent, and only 7% thought that it was a negative change.

Those that seem more critical of the system seem to claim that, once this was implemented, apparently it prioritized rising positive reviews more than negative reviews, however other users have rebuked this, so there doesn’t seem to be any clear evidence that this is the case. It seems that the same system I mentioned earlier where it displays 6 positive and 4 negatives for a 60% game still applies.

Personally, I like this change, and I like that users ultimately are given the choice of which system they want to choose, or if they want to hop around and compare, Steam gives them the choice. So, if you’re still wanting to get your fix of Ascii art or memes, then you can still go to the Steam user reviews no bother. If you were sick of those reviews though, then you do now have the option of filtering those out.

The only thing I will say, addressing the elephant of the room with regards to your Obzor esque reviews, while I have been given assurances Steam are still actively investigating games that partake in this kind of review manipulation as shown with the Atomic Fabrik ban, I do suspect that this change will allow for the fake reviews we discussed in our Obzor article to start rising to the top and being more prevalent. So please do keep a watchful eye out, and I'll once again remind you to join the Games With Paid Reviews group and follow their curator. There will be an update in the few weeks where I'll talk more about some developments with the Obzor cases.

What do you guys think, do you think this is a good change? A bad change? Do you not care, please do let me know!

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https://steamproxy.net/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/4201376568915048836

Been a long while since I've done one of these hasn't it? Partly because of my lengthy hiatus of 2022/23 but also partly because there hasn't been too many major changes that have happened on the Steam Store. Well that changed last week as the Steam Team had not one, but two major changes they were bringing about. We're only going to talk about the one for this week, and that is changes to Steam store page descriptions.

I've broken this down into three sections. Firstly I'll describe what these changes are. Then, I'll go into what the wider community response has been to this change and then I'll let you know what my thoughts are.


Steam opened their announcement with the following:

Originally posted by Steam:

Our primary goal with store pages is for developers to be able to provide information about their game in ways that help players make educated purchasing decisions. Recently, we've noticed a trend that makes that experience a bit challenging, with some developers using the space to present information or links that (though often creative) distract from learning about the game itself.

We want players to be able to learn about your game! And so, to make for a more positive experience on Steam (for devs AND players), we're introducing new rules beginning in September.

So the generalised overview is basically Steam have noticed some at times irrelevant information and contents that unnecessarily clog game descriptions and that act as somewhat of a barrier for users to learning about games. What exactly are Steam talking about? Well, they break these down as:

• The presence of links to other websites (including social media websites)
  
• Images that resemble and mimic Steam store UIs and/or buttons (such as gifs that mimic a mouse clicking on the "add to your wishlist button")
  
• Images, links and widgets that are promoting other Steam games

The announcement basically says that, starting in September, none of these features will be allowed in the following areas of a game's store page:

• The "About The Game" section
  
• The "Short Description" section
  
• Any "special Announcement" sections
  
• The "Awards" section

Steam then go on to talk about why they're choosing to implement these rules now. Amongst the reasoning, there are some quite obvious ones such as with regards to no linking to external websites/social media being because there is a designated field for this on the game's store page's side bar, and including these in the game description just clutters an area that's meant to be describing a game. They write:

Originally posted by Steam:

We didn't like the trend of store pages linking prominently off to other store pages.
We have been seeing more and more store pages that are effectively advertisements for OTHER store pages on Steam. This meant that on some game pages in the Steam store, you would find lists of 2, 3, or even 8 other games before you even got to read the description of the game you were looking at. We don't think that's great for customers trying to learn about a game on Steam and so we wanted to update the rules to prohibit games from using the written description area for linking to other games on Steam. However, there is one particular interesting use case of this cross linking that we wanted to continue supporting, which is the 'prologue' scenario.

Conintuing on Steam's talk specifically about "Prologue" games:

Originally posted by Steam:

We saw game developers releasing 'prologue' games on Steam, which was fine except that they were confusing for players.
We've seen developers doing novel things on Steam to help build an audience though a separate app that most call a 'prologue'. In these examples, developers are buying a secondary appID and releasing it as a stand-alone free game to promote the upcoming release of their full premium game. This has been fine with us, but we've seen a few ways that it causes confusion for players and unnecessarily requires devs to pay a second app fee. With a few changes to how demos work, we can replicate the positive benefits of a separate 'prologue' while also creating a tighter connection between the two entities so that customers are clear on how to learn more about the full game and to wishlist the correct thing. The changes already made to demos should make it unnecessary for developers to purchase a separate appID to use for prologues, and can instead use the demo appID that is already associated with their game.

That's 2 out of the 3 points with regards to these changes, and it does appear to mainly be in response to the Prologue games we've seen surface.

Even as of the time of writing, so far in August, there have been 20 Prologue apps released on Steam, and looking back to July around another 27 Prologue apps were released. So it's at a rate where there's roughly one prologue app releasing on Steam/2 days which isn't a large amount, but it'd certainly be enough for avid Steam browsers to start to notice the trend.

Originally posted by Steam:

We have had an outstanding list of improvements that we've wanted to make for demos since they have become a key part of events such as Next Fest.
When we consider the kinds of things that developers have been attempting to accomplish with 'prologue' apps, and with the feedback we've gathered from players and developers about how demos behave on Steam, we ended up with quite a list of improvements we could make to demos that would make a lot of things better for all parties. So, we shipped those updates last month and it seems like everyone is pretty happy with the results (of course we're paying attention to the feedback we're seeing and will be continuing to refine how things work).

Steam close out the announcement with an FAQ. I'm not going to go over all of it here, but rather just a couple of major takeaways for me, those being:

Originally posted by Steam:

Q. Does this mean that "Prologues" are officially banned?
A. We're not banning your ability to name a product as "Prologue" but you'll find that demos have become a much better path for building an audience and directing players to your full game.

Originally posted by Steam:

Q. How do I get visibility for the other games I make?
A. There are a couple options for helping players find other games you make.
You can create bundles of related games, which will appear on the store page for each included game. See Steam Bundles Documentation for more info.
You can set up a franchise page with all the games that take place in the same creative universe. A franchise will appear above your purchase options. See Franchise Documentation for more info.
You can set up a developer or publisher page with all the games made by the same entity. See Developer/Publisher Homepage Documentation for more info.

The reception to this announcement is interesting to me, as it seems that your regular Steam user sees this as a big positive, however some developer responses are mixed with some applauding the move, others reacting with concern and frustration.

To gauge some general feedback, I made a poll on X this week asking what people's responses were to the announcement with me sharing this poll across X, Steam, Discord, Steamworks and Steamgifts. The results found:

• 55.2% of respondents saw the announcement as a positive thing
  
• 25.4% were neutral or indiferent
  
• 19.4% either saw it as a negative thing, or were at the very least concerned about the potential impacts of the announcement

Now, I didn't just want to leave the feedback as some stats and numbers, but I asked peope to respond on their desired social media to elaborate their thoughts further, and I got around 100 responses (some acknowledging they didn't fill in the poll due to an X boycott hence why responses are higher than the voting tally of 67) so this is only going to be some of my personal highlight responses which I feel sum up the general thoughts and feedback people have on this news.

In Support of:

Originally posted by Yamaraus:

I'm for the description and demo changes. I use Steam a lot to find aggregated review thoughts and descriptions of games, and the descriptions have gotten kind of ridiculous.

Originally posted by Matwyn:

The prologues got so annoying. More then 90% (personal estimate) are just demos but you can´t filter them out as such. They just clutter the upcomming and new release games lists. I do not need someone asking me if i am sure the game interstest me multiple times! which this basically does.

Originally posted by PsyKo:

main reason devs said they do that [prologues] was how shitty demos were on Steam. Valve changed demos lately, so there's chance such Prologues will disappear.

Originally posted by Fluffster:

Everything they mention seems like a positive change to me. I wasn't personally confused by prologues but I guess they hit a point where Support was being flooded with "why can't I play the whole game I got for free??" tickets and decided to make the change and I love demos so I'm all for it.

Generally speaking a little formatting is always a good thing on a site with so much information and so many pages to read. It makes it easier to find what you're looking for. As long as it doesn't come at the cost of freedom of expression and this doesn't seem to be too restrictive imo

Originally posted by LunarPriestess:

Oo finally free to play tab will not be full of demos

Mixed/Unsure opinions

There were also some people with mixed thoughts on the subject matter as well:

Originally posted by Adelion:

I mean most of this sounds reasonable and simple enough. Personally, I haven't been on store pages where i noticed this to be an issue. But I don't buy that much to begin with.

The only argument that irritates me is that Steam/Valve claims that developers link to several other store pages first which makes finding information for the actual game more tedious. However, their suggestion is to do bundles and franchise packs instead ...... which has the exact same issue. They are standing at the top of the store page and just push down actual game info.

So, if Steam wants an improvement in that regard, they should make the store page with an in-build tab system. The default is game info and then they can add a second tab "Additional Content" and/or "Bundles". Sure, this might mean that the user will not notice bundle/franchise discounts on first look but I would assume the prior interest of most users is the game information.

Originally posted by Myrsan:

Not against it personally, but I get the criticism by indie devs.
The other games section should be limited, but not be removed completely.
A better solution against the scrolling would have been to add a "More" link at the end of the short description which would take you directly to the long description.
The native social media links are pretty small and boring, even people who are using Steam a lot forgot about them. I'm not a fan of social media, but I get how much new devs rely on it (especially Discord). Thus Valve should offer a better presentation style.
Demos instead of prologue/demo mixture? Gratifying.

Originally posted by AmanoTC:

Sounds reasonable and the new rules are fine with me. They won't impact me or change anything for me at all.

Steam developer YaekoGames sent in a particularly lengthy response which broke it down into looking at it from 2 perspectives. I won't be including the full response but here are some notable sections:

Originally posted by YaekoGames:

My perspective as Customer:

A good change since it forces store pages "to get to the point", which is: informing me about the game I just clicked on.[...]

Games could have bundles, then an Early Access Box, a Demo and additional links added to the store page, announcements, in addition to decorative images, which makes things "not enjoyable" to work through. (Of course, that is a "worst case example", it didnt happen regularly.)

And, I mean, stuff like "dont fake steams buttons" is a no-brainer to forbid, since players Trust steam. (and we all know the shady things that some people tried to pull off on steam.)

My perspective as Creator of Stuff:

Links on the store page were never allowed to begin with, and even something like the Creative Common License at the very end of the store page made the Store Page Review fail.[...]

some relied on the "cross advertising" between un/related games to make their money, but I think: If you rely on that, why are you relying on it?

Any half decent game will sell enough without doing this, or just by using the (legit) tools that Steam already provides.

I also think, that "some doing this" puts pressure on others to also do this, otherwise they will fall behind in terms of visibility.

This "change" (enforcing of existing rules) is one of the cases where Valve stepped in because people "overdid it". Happened a few times in the past, where things got limited (keys, trading cards etc.) because some actors decided that everything valve provides needs to be abused.

Steam developer GraphXGames also with a mixed response to the announcement saying:

Originally posted by GraphXGames:

I can understand banning links that lead outside of Steam or even to other dev's games on Steam, but banning links to own games on Steam is just madness.

The Negatives

A lot of the negative arguments against the announcement was coming from developers who were frustrated that they were now more limited in how they could advertise their games.

Originally posted by YottaTobi:

I think a widget pointing to the next game at the end of the about section is vital for many of us.

GE-0 from the Steam developer and publisher MY.GAMES made also quite a lengthy post that had mixed thoughts but made some quite compelling points arguing against, not that Steam were trying to be tighter on prologues and tidying up Store page descriptions, but disliked how they were going about doing it, stating:

Originally posted by GE-0:

i disagree with the way they're trying to fix this: especially the overall strictness of those changes and the lack of decent alternatives. Dev/pub/franchise pages + bundles aren’t a good enough alternative. Seems more ways to customize the store page is needed, something like showcases for devs, like users have on their profile pages.
Also i'm still waiting for them to clarify some bits: from one side it sounds like all links are prohibited now, but from another it reads as you can still use in-Steam (not external) links if they’re pointing at something related to THIS game. For example still allowing links to announcements[...]and DLCs of that same game would be reasonable, and i think should be technically possible to implement. Then at least i could shove all those extra socials in an announcement and link the announcement on the store page for example. So it's an extra click for the user but less clutter on the store page.

Summary

So in general it seems that there is praise for Valve's intention of wanting to tidy up descriptions, praise for wanting to clean up the prologue games and wanting to migrate them to be demos rather than a standalone app, and both developers and users have cited that the way Steam's means of promoting demos has drastically improved enough that they feel it's in a good state to be able to do this. The reaction to links in the description, and the means of promoting unrelated apps on store pages does seem to have gone down a little worse, especially with developers.


So in general I feel that the majority of these changes particularly the intentions Steam has behind them are good, positive and proactive, with some caveats.

I have seen frustration over prologue apps from users as they were effectively game demos that were getting marketed as games, which I feel Steam was right to point out that this was causing confusion with users. While Steam have said they aren't banning these games, they are now advising developers against this practice which I think is certainly a start and we'll see over the next few months how this change has impacted the releases of those kinds of games.

However, Yaeko points out, if this change is preventing developers from linking to necessary licenses, because it's classed as an off-site link, then that I feel needs to be addressed. These agreements in most cases are compulsory for developers to disclose somewhere, and the description was, I feel, obviously the most appropriate place to paste this. Yaeko even suggests putting a tab in for those where the EULA is often displayed, which I feel is an appropriate suggestion.

The concern raised on promotion of developers' other games I am more mixed on. While on one hand, I can see why Steam would see that as clutter, especially in cases where I've seen these games be linked in announcements that get displayed even before you get to the description. However, Steam's suggested alternatives to this, while on paper I think are good, in execution, I think you and I both know the pages they suggest the developers link those games to instead will get far less traffic than the store pages. I feel why a lot of developers are concerned about this is because while it is clutter, it has worked for a lot of them. There's even been cases where I've been browsing a game and found other games I've purchased because the developer has linked them on their announcement tab, which the perceptive of you will note this is one of the areas Steam are clamping down on cross-promotion on. I think that would be an area I'd say "come on, cut some slack Steam." I do frequently read the announcements that come up on my Steam library, and see announcements of developers of games I've played promoting their next game and checked it out from there. I don't use the developer page because my emails are cluttered enough anyway, so I don't get notified properly when a developer I follow releases a new game. Not only that, but the announcements are visually more appealing and are more eye catching than a plain generic email written by Steam.

Overall, I think this is a good change, with some improvements I would like to see. I think the desire and actions to decrease the amount of prologue games and to try and encourage developers to releases them as demos are good. I think most of the measures to reduce store page clutter (Steam UI buttons in particular) are good. I think in most cases, stopping links being posted to the description is good. However, I'd suggest adding an area where developers can post their additional necessary legal licenses that aren't an EULA should be needed. And plus, the means Steam offer as substitutes, I do agree with the developers that they by no way generate the same results of effective marketing, but I suspect Steam are aware of this and are just choosing to bite that bullet. And I'm actually okay with games being promoted in announcement tabs, what do y'all think?

Comment below and let me know what you think of Steam's latest changes. Are they good, are they bad, do you not care? Do you think we'll see a decrease of Prologue titles? Do you think developers should be allowed to promote their newer released games on their older store pages?

Next week, I'll be doing an article talking about the second bit of news from Steam regarding changes to user reviews. I'll be posting in the comments of this article here as I'll be collecting more input on this change both in a poll and for more detailed thoughts as I have done for this one, so keep an eye out for that!

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Thanks goes to our patrons, in particular for this article, our brand new patron GREYGORE! Thank you very much GreyGore for becoming a Sentinel on Patreon. Extra special thanks go to old_Navy_twidget & Caff for still being awesome and backing us. If you want to support us on Patreon, head on over to our Discord for the link, Steam doesn't allow us to promote it on here, much like game developers soon won't be allowed to cross-promote their games.

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https://x.com/atomicfabrik/status/1824349264064995660 (Post was deleted on August 20th, please refer to the archive made here: https://archive.is/k86F0 )

https://steamproxy.net/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/discussions/0/6929437211298063222/

NOTE: I apologise for the length of this article. I have provided a TL; DR here as I go over a lot of points that Cristian raises that aren't all that important, and I want to make sure focus is still given to some topics that get buried quite a lot both here and in his initial X post.

• Cristian starts off insulting me and the group.
  
• Cristian shares a conspiracy that we receive funding from competitors, and that our game developer admin and moderator are only in their positions to crush competition on Steam - despite the fact one not having any games on Steam and one having only worked in a contractual capacity on other games and having none of his own on Steam. And also, despite the fact they are in it for the same moral and ethical reasoning I and others are involved.
  
• Cristian literally claims to know absolutely everything about Steam but shows a lack of awareness of rule changes in circa. 2018, and misinterprets other rules throughout the post.
  
• Cristian uses a lot of strawman argument attempts, using unrelated argument points to falsely claim different arguments are being made.
  
• Cristian falsely claims Steam keys are capped at 5,000. Your requests go unchecked up to 5,000 but Steam start manually reviewing requests that exceed this number...wonder why he didn't want to go over 5,000?
  
• Cristian claims that we'll see greater traffic and get more views because of this, when me and Cristian are internet nobodies and neither of us will benefit off the other.
  
• Cristian presents a strawman argument regarding the MasterChef game of his. He claims that AI images are allowed on Steam where the issue was instead regarding the fact he had AI images with 0 gameplay screenshots, another Steam rule he either conveniently ignores or isn't aware of.
  
• Claims it's Valve's fault his games were priced so high, while ignoring the point that he chose to price these high to qualify them for Jee Two Ayy bundles.
  
• Cristian argues that asset flips are allowed on Steam, when no one was ever trying to say they weren't: another strawman argument point. These issues were raised on ethical standards, not on a legality or rule-based scenario.
  
• Cristian claims my cited 59 (he cites 58 as I updated the count only after his post) games of his remaining on Steam is inaccurate as they sold a lot of apps off to publishers, however I knowingly deducted games that were known to have been sold off to publishers like Conglomerate 5.
  
• Cristian admits to faking reviews but tries to argue that other developers do it too.... which to him means it's okay.
  
• Cristian goes on a large tangent about why people pay VAT on shopping after they already paid tax on earnings...I feel he just brings these points up to intentionally confuse people to distract from the genuine points.
  
• Claims he got no message from Steam that his games were banned - despite him openly admitting he was partaking in activity that was against rules. You knew yourself Cristian you were violating rules for years, you don't need Steam to tell you that.
  
• He makes a genuine point about how it’s unfair how inconsistent review manipulation is enforced - which I 100% agree with him on.
  
• He makes a vague warning at the end saying I need to be watchful as the group gets bigger in case someone doesn't just stop at just a message on the internet(?)
  
• He ends the post off saying a percentage of their Steam sales ended up going to children's health charities - good if this is the case, I suggest he take up philanthropy in his new career path.

This morning, Atomic Fabrik, AKA Cristian Manolachi posted on X and our forums a response to a few people, but notably it's a response to Steam with regards to his ban and to this group and me. I thought it'd be fun to break down what is in my opinion a terrible response, go over this, what Atomic Fabrik calls, a "clarification message" and talk about some of its contents.

Originally posted by Atomic Fabrik:

The first thing that comes to mind when you see a group of just 3,000 people over 7 years who only criticize the same individuals is that this group was created and funded by competitors, and the moderators of this group do this for financial compensation. Mature people who have a normal life usually don’t have free time, being busy with their jobs, family life, children, etc.

I find it amazing that this is his opening point. In full fairness to Cristian, there are some points that are better than others in this, but he opens with just a terrible, near childish attempt of an insult. Criticise the same individuals? I mean, sure, some familiar faces crop up, but go all the way back to our articles in 2017 and you'll see we've talked about a myriad of different developers. Even with Cristian here, I've only ever wrote 2 articles about him. 3 including this one.

His accusation the group was created and funded by competitors is very laughable, saying the moderators do it for financial compensation.

Let me talk about our funding/finances over the years:

• We had no revenue streams for the group until July 2019 when we joined the Humble Bundle Partner Program
  
• Across 5 years, our Humble Bundle affiliate has generated $623.69 (funny number)
  
• We have a Patreon that we launched in September 2023, however no payouts have been made due to us not meeting the threshold for Patreon's partner payout service Payoneer, in which you need to have made $50 before a payout can be made.
  
• Our Patreon generates $4/month
  
• Across the Patreon's lifetime of nearly 1 year, it has generated $44.91, all of which is still in holding until we reach $50
  
• My administrator and moderators are not paid for the work that they do.
  
• All funds I have generated from Sentinels I have in an account for any further developmental projects we want to do, so far these funds have only gone towards the purchase of a domain to a hopeful Sentinels website, and to our charity fundraising campaigns.

So, across the 7.5 years that this group has been around, it's generated in total $668.60, which translates to roughly $89.15/year or $7.42/month. Even discarding that this funding is being used for reinvestment and charity work and not leisure activities, I think it's safe to say I'm not bathing in money, and neither are my moderators.

His claim that we're competitors I believe is stemming from the fact that my administrator Ratchet and moderator Occular Malice are game developers, and that Cristian believes that their involvement with the group is solely to destroy competition. First off, I'd advise Cristian not to flatter yourself and think that your games are on a par with these guys' work, I personally would never consider you competition to their games. Second, Ratchet does not head up his own development company. He is a programmer and doesn't profit off direct game sales. The only games that he is the sole developer of aren't available on Steam, but instead on Itch[ratchet3789.itch.io]. Thirdly, Occular Malice is in a similar boat, he hosts no games on Steam, all of his library is isolated to his own website[simstools.com]. Your performance on Steam Cristian holds nothing to these guys. These guys are on my mod team because they're friends of mine, I trust them, and they share the same values as me where developers shouldn't be partaking in the same practices that people like you have revelled in.

To cap it off as well, the argument I've heard thrown around time and time again, saying "mature normal people don't have free time, are busy with jobs, family life and children to bother with a Steam group. You mustn't have a life, lol!" Well believe it or not, I juggle those as well (not the children part yet though.) So much so that these matters were the reasoning behind me taking leave from the group for almost a year in 2022/23. This is my hobby, it's a hobby that I find rewarding, and the funny fact is I've made it so it doesn't actually take up a lot of my time so that it does work around my other responsibilities. The 3,000+ members here have also made our coverage easier, as it never has to be one person researching into a topic, and people can chime in as and where they can. This isn't down to one person having a lot of time on their hands, it's a collective effort from individuals driven by a desire to uphold morals, values and ethics all having pockets of time that they can contribute.

Originally posted by AtomicFabrik:

3,000 people out of over 100 million players is nothing, meaning the contribution of this group is negligible.

Reading this, I'm reminded of a quote from Margaret Mead, an American cultural anthropologist. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Just pretend that Margaret said "Steam" instead of "the world" back in the 1960s.

Originally posted by Atomic Fabrik:

There are also tens of thousands of games on Steam, and these 250 games that were deleted are also insignificant.

The guy is making it sound like the life achievement of the group is to get every game taken down from Steam. He's measuring the supposed "success" of the group in a numerical sense of how many games get booted from Steam. That's never been the point. If I lived in the most idealistic world, I would love to see in every situation where I've covered scenarios like theft, review manipulation, whatever, the developer goes "oh shit, sorry, I didn't know this wasn't allowed" remove the infringing content, game doesn't get banned, customers have the option of getting the game if they want, game developers make money, everybody's happy. I get nothing for games getting removed off Steam. I got nothing for when you got your games removed. What matters more in the instance with you is you've been made an example of and been shown as a reminder of what happens when people break the rules and get carried away in their own little get rich quick scheme.

Originally posted by Atomic Fabrik:

Let’s say you have a well-paid job, a happy family, and after work, you have nothing else to do, so you create this group instead of focusing on more important matters (family life, career, health, investments, etc.). Let’s assume it’s a “volunteer” thing, and you’ll say that in one way or another, we need to distance ourselves from developers/companies of this kind because, in your view, they tarnish the store’s image, create scams/spam/etc., and in the end, your effort paid off by deleting 250 games and giving this group a bit more visibility (which is a very good marketing trick).

Shit, sorry guys, instead of doing this group I should have been out exercising, finding a 4th job on top of my other 3, banging my girlfriend and looking at the stock market.

Like wtf is the point of this? All your worst arguments are at the beginning and book end of your post. All your more genuine arguments are buried in a vacuous sea of meandering points, misinformation and conspiracies.

And let me just make one thing clear. I am not responsible for you being banned. Sentinels of the Store is not responsible for you being banned. Fireb0rn, BaityBait and any of the other YouTuber that made videos about you are not responsible for you being banned. This is a key issue when it comes to banned developers, they look outwards. They look at who can take blame instead of looking at what has been the commonality in the steps that have led to them getting to where they are today: themselves. None of us made you Cristian, spam Steam with over 250 games. None of us made you place your games into Jee Two Ayy bundles. None of us made you buy fake reviews. You did all of that yourself. Just own up to it, accept it, and understand the only person responsible for your downfall is yourself.

Really if you think about it, if you didn't take part in any of this activity in the first place, none of our coverage would exist. If no developers ever did any of the stupid shit we talk about, then this group would cease to exist. If you don't want our coverage to continue, then check in with yourself first, and simply put, don't give us a reason to talk about you.

Originally posted by AtomicFabrik:

The question is, what changed after deleting 250 games out of tens of thousands? In reality, you didn’t change anything at all. There are thousands of games from my competitors/foreign developers that have bought reviews, “break the rules,” are sold on G2A, and so on—the business continues exactly as it did before.

Again, we don't need to retread on old ground where we've already discussed his measuring means of getting all games removed from Steam. If you're also aware of any developers writing fake reviews, buying reviews, breaking the rules, or partaking in G2A scams, I would greatly advise you to make a discussion thread here and/or send an email. It'd be a great redemption arc for you if you assist with sorting through other developers partaking in actions similar. Ata Berdiyev did this for a short while after he got booted on Steam sending me details on other Steam scams, and the fact that you've put this offer on the table is very reassuring. I look forward to your future whistleblowing.

Originally posted by AtomicFabrik:

Speaking of rules, you say we’re breaking the rules. Which rules, the ones that Steam itself implemented? Why did Steam remove Greenlight and in 2017 put in place Steam Direct where, for $100, you can publish absolutely anything you want? Have you ever wondered? Why did Epic Games start with a limited number of games/with a very careful selection of games, and this year, they are transforming into exactly the same business model as Steam, where you pay $100, and the game is greenlit in the store? Why? Because it’s much more profitable for them, and this business model hasn’t changed since 2017...and we are just following the rules, that’s all.

This is a lengthy strawman argument. Atomic Fabrik is trying to imply here that the games' poor quality was the reason for removal. The rules Atomic Fabrik has violated are printed in black and white, you can't artificially inflate the reviews of your game, your screenshots must only contain gameplay which Atomic Fabrik violated with their more recent blunder of swapping out all of their gameplay screenshots on Masterchef out to AI generated pictures[steamdb.info], which might I add conveniently happened just 1 day before the ban. None of these are rules regarding the games' quality. In addition, the Steam "publish anything you want with Steam Direct" idea he talks about as having been unchanged since 2017 was also walked back following the near releases of games like Active Shooter[www.bbc.co.uk] and Rape Day[www.bbc.co.uk] and there was then a massive asterisk next to that supposed "anything". You can read more about this following their change in stance via a blog post in June 2018, and a second in March 2019. But you know, Cristian would know of this post's existence, since he knows everything about Steam.

https://steamproxy.net/games/593110/announcements/detail/1666776116200553082

https://steamproxy.net/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240304050758

Originally posted by Atomic Fabrik:

Also, around 2018, Steam limited the number of keys requested, from unlimited to about 50,000, and then, if I remember correctly, about two years later, they limited it to 5,000 keys per game. So, when you accuse us of selling through bundles/G2A/etc., we are just following the platform’s rules.

I think Atomic Fabrik is trying to claim here that due to Steam limiting features on their platform to developers further, that this led to them facilitating a culture which led to Atomic Fabrik going to those websites. If this is the argument, then this can be rebutted by the fact that Steam put those limits on key generations as a direct means to combat scam developers[gameworldobserver.com].

Originally posted by Steam:

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

And may I also point out that Steam don't just stop you from generating more than 5,000 keys, their rules say that they will review further generations on a case by case basis, which is effectively an inspection to ensure that these keys are being used for genuine means. Unfortunately, this is yet another lie aimed to deceive readers of this post. The only reason you would be limited to 5,000 keys would be if you were doing business with people that you shouldn't be doing business with, or if Steam have reasons to be suspicious. Or maybe Cristian just took this number as his cap as he didn't want Steam to get suspicious of him, and as such, never wanted to exceed 5,000 for fears Steam would catch on to what he was using the keys for. Valve needing to manually review his request may very well could have generated suspicion. At best, this is just a lack of knowledge on Cristian's part, however, he boldly stated earlier in the post that after 10+ years he knows "absolutely everything about it (Steam)" so with that bold claim we'll have to assume malice with the intent to deceive with that piece of inaccurate information.

Originally posted by Atomic Fabrik:

anyway, thanks to you, I need to find a job xD, but somehow you should still thank me, @SteamSentinels , because based on this message, you’ll get traffic/views.)

You're a nobody. You have 1,000 followers on Twitter. You're not internet famous, I'm a nobody too, we're all nobodies. You and I are only known to people that are already members of this group, or the Spanish YouTube community. We aren't talking about you for the sake of piggy backing off your world-renowned internet success. If you go out on the street right now and ask random strangers if they know me and/or you, they're going to stare at you and ask what an "Atomic Mellow" is. Nobody knows who we are, and nobody gives a shit, it's a tough pill to swallow, but we both better take it quick.

Originally posted by Atomic Fabrik:

Let’s get back to some other accusations: AI-generated images. There’s a recently implemented rule allowing us to use AI for logos, as long as we indicate it in some form on Steamworks.

Another strawman argument!

We never at any point said you couldn't have AI generated images. What we have said, as we've reiterated, is you can't just have exclusively AI generated images with no gameplay screenshots, as emphasised in the Steamworks documentation that you clearly know inside and out with your 10 years Steam experience.

Originally posted by AtomicFabrik:

Games priced at $50/100/200$. The question for the whole group: Do we, Atomic Fabrik, approve these prices? No, we follow the rules, and someone at Steam approves them, that’s all. So far, we have followed the rules and worked in tandem with the platform.

Another strawman argument.

Atomic Fabrik is indicating that there's some sort of rule that Steam has with regards to pricing of games, that Atomic is claiming we're accusing him of violating. This is also not the case. The price point of his games has also been an annoyance, but also been linked to the Jee Two Ayy bundle scheme to place them into platinum bundles to deceive users they are getting high priced and highly rated (where the review manipulation comes into the scheme) games, where its shovelware titles being manipulated through Steam's tools to appear in those bundles. Having a high-priced game isn't against the rules, he's right, but baring the reasoning behind the pricing of the games in mind, the reasoning is heavily frowned upon and is also deceptive.

At this point, you may have noticed Atomic Fabrik talking a lot about "the rules." Relying on the rules to not tell him he can't do something. However, as has already been shown, there are some cases where he says "the rules don't say I can't do this" when they in fact do, or he's using it as his best line of defence with morals, ethics, and consumer trust being discarded. This is a heavy disconnect that is apparent throughout his post.

Originally posted by Atomic Fabrik:

You also accused us of asset flips. Is there a rule that prohibits this? No. Why is it allowed and overlooked? Go back to 2017, and you’ll find the answer. If this was a problem, do you think it wouldn’t have been approved for release by the Steam team? By the way, we collaborated with many developers from whom we bought Unity source codes, which we later sold to other companies. So, many of the games are ours.

He's right on this. His games were asset flips. Yes, asset flips are allowed on Steam. I don't have an issue with this. I don't think there should be a no asset flips rule, as I feel something like that is hard to define, difficult to enforce, and makes no sense. Let developers use assets, let the customer make the decision themselves on if they want to buy it or not. If developers are sticking to Steam's rules, which our friend Cristian here fails to do, I hold no issue with this.

Originally posted by Atomic Fabrik:

Another point, you say that 58 of our games haven’t been banned yet. We have operated as both a developer and publisher. There are games where certain companies asked us to handle promotion/marketing. The others are games where we were privately contacted to sell the rights to these games, so even if they were ours, they now belong to other publishers who have absolutely no connection with us and legally purchased them

I'd be curious to see if Atomic Fabrik looked over the games I alleged were still his that were on Steam. Are games such as these not yours anymore and sold off when they still list only your name and no one else?

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1531720/Need_for_Drive__Open_World_Multiplayer_Racing/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1568180/USA_Truck_Simulator/

I was fully aware several Atomic Fabrik titles were sold off to other publishers, which is why I intentionally didn't include any games on the curated list from the likes of Conglomerate 5. App sales to other publishers were not included in the count, and 59 games were still returned as still being owned under Atomic Fabrik.

Originally posted by Atomic Fabrik:

Regarding reviews, we are not the first or last—many games do this, a very large percentage, and I know what I’m talking about—things that the platform knows but stricter rules aren’t implemented to stop it. Why? I won’t say everything :)

Yes, this is correct, there are a many cases of review manipulation, and I even agree with Cristian here that Valve's enforcement on review manipulation is not consistent, nor strong enough, and seems to conveniently lessen the enforcement on games that make money. Valve are very quick and happy to boot shovelware titles for partaking in review manipulation, but aren't so quick when it's titles that are generating substantial money, or released in Steam China, in which the review manipulation just gets flagged as off topic review activity. I think there does need to be fairer enforcement and more consistency, and I have previously and will continue to try and push this matter.

Originally posted by Atomic Fabrik:

And even if I repeat myself, there was much talk online about random keys. We followed the rules exactly, and if you find it strange or had other expectations, ask your own STATE where you live, which is the biggest scammer. Why do you tolerate that from your salary, you pay taxes, then with the salary you receive after taxes (about 60%), you go to the store and buy products with taxed money, for which you pay taxes again (VAT, etc.), and the store owner pays taxes on money that has been taxed twice...Why don’t you revolt? Because you know you won’t change anything.

He really loves strawman arguments and tangents doesn't he? It just comes so out of left field. What does me paying tax on my groceries have to do with you selling Steam keys in Jee Two Ayy bundles?

Originally posted by Atomic Fabrik:

I’ve never been the type to respond to criticism or make a big fuss on the internet, but when you work with such a serious/prestigious platform for 10 years, and we’ve adapted to the rules, how fair is it to wake up one morning with no message from them, no warning, and simply have your work/effort and time erased without even a reply?

Let's be real Cristian, you stopped caring about what you released years ago. I'm even willing to believe you when you say that you started out putting effort in your games, because even in your earlier work there's a quality difference. You know that you stopped caring about the games you were releasing, you even show this in your post where you only ask for the games you made up to 2020 to be reinstated, you're not proud, nor are you happy about the games you've churned out the last 4 years. For the last 4 years, you've only cared about gaming the system, stretching the rules, maximising profitability and you didn't care what happened to your reputation along the way. That's why you haven't responded until now, because up till this point, everything people like me, Fireb0rn, Sentinels members and others have been saying, while critical of you never affected your bottom line. Now, your games are gone from Steam and that's been the only instigation to you churning out this response. Only now do you care and only now are you rolling back on what you've done these past 4 years, because if you spoke about the criticisms earlier, it would do nothing more but fan the flames and you'd be drawing more attention to it, which you didn't want to do, because you knew it would just attract more attention to you, which you didn't want because you knew you were in the wrong. It's the same reason why you didn't want to exceed the 5,000 key threshold, you didn't want Steam to see what you were doing. I would have more respect for this post, if there was some self-reflection, and admittance, but the words, the timing, what you talk about, reeks that you know, and you have always known that what you've been doing has been against Steam rules. You knew addressing this earlier would risk your games getting banned. Now that they have, you've got nothing to lose. In your instance, Steam didn't need to give you warning, you've known for years you've been partaking in practice that would get you banned, and I've shown here and in other pieces what you've been doing violates the rules that you claim you're so familiar with.

Originally posted by Atomic Fabrik:

And as for our games, did we force anyone to buy them? Everyone makes that decision independently—if you want it, buy it; if not, move on.

The fifth strawman argument. Please do find me a post where someone claims they were forced to buy them, or a user alleging people are forced to buy them. What I will say is people got deceived into buying them, the sheer fact that you used AI images not reflective of the game with no gameplay trailers in one instance I'd chalk up to deception, and the fact you participated in dodgy Jee Two Ayy dealings meant that users didn't know what they were getting.

Originally posted by Atomic Fabrik:

P.S. A good piece of advice for this group. The first day was perhaps a bit chaotic because nothing was clear. We don’t think we’ll continue in this field of games because it’s become like politics—when you’re small, you don’t get attention, and you don’t bother anyone; it’s only when you start growing that you become an enemy because you know too much, and the best thing is to be pushed aside, just like here. We will continue in other businesses we’re already involved in, where we have extensive experience, and with the knowledge we have, we can do many great things. The advice I wanted to give: this group or others that will appear will continue to criticize publishers/games, be careful not to come across someone too big...Such people don’t stop at just a message on the internet...

Might be a good time to mention that Atomic Fabrik is also on the Epic Games Store[store.epicgames.com], so something tells me you'll be alright, Epic Games like to pick up Steam's reject developers, and something tells me you'll still be continuing in game development.

Again, though Cristian, let's be real, me and you are nobodies. You're no big fish and neither am I. We're in our own little internet corner. Let's drop the ego.

And that's not even touching on the disturbing physical violence allusion at the end.

Originally posted by Atomic Fabrik:

Until now, a certain percentage was directed to charity (mostly children with health problems). Perhaps Steam will reconsider this public message, and as we’ve requested, we would like access to games from 2016-2022 to be restored, or at least until 2020, and as we specified in the message to Steam, to have access to keys closed. There wouldn’t be many, as those games have nothing to do with the ones that were banned now, and they are games we worked on, with the revenue from Steam being 100% directed to charity.

The revenue from Steam? What revenue from Steam? Your whole scheme was generated through Jee Two Ayy revenue. Who bought your games on Steam while they were priced at $200? I'm sure in that sense all 0 sales through Steam did go through charity.

Jokes aside, if you did donate money to charity, that's great, I don't want to take that away from you. A piece of advice from myself though since you so kindly offered some to me, if you care about charity so much, and you're looking for a new job, philanthropy may be in your best interest next. In fact, I'd prefer you did philanthropy over helping me identify fake reviews on other games. Or you could do both if you like, help me first and then go on and give out $10,000 to the homeless or something.

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And that's the end, I do apologise that was quite a lengthy read, I hope you're still breathing, I hope that you got something, anything from this, and I'll be back next time with hopefully a shorter article.

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