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

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials

Now, one of the main topics we discuss and have discussed on Sentinels of the Store for a few months has been about review manipulation. It's a big problem in my eyes, continued to be worsened by the fact bad actors are using new ways to fake reviews, whether that be through websites like Obzor, in which reviewers are paid to write undisclosed compensated reviews where the dealings are handled on fenced off sites and communities, or with the use of bot networks using AI generated reviews in high numbers. Well, we have an update to share about those as I just found out today that the FTC are now actually looking into these matters, much to what appears to be some concern from Steam, but we'll get into that in a moment. I want to spend some time quickly touching upon a new rule that came into affect by the FTC in October which may have helped instigate this initial interest they have shown.


Please do feel free to check the link at the top of this article for a full breakdown, but the highlights are:

• The FTC now have the ability to seek civil penalties against violators who sell or purchase fake reviews.
  
• The FTC chair stated "Fake reviews not only waste people’s time and money, but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors"
  
• The rule prohibits "Fake or False Consumer Reviews, Consumer Testimonials, and Celebrity Testimonials" - This is described as reviews that misrepresent that they are by someone who does not exist e.g. AI-generated fake reviews, people who did not have experience with the products or services (i.e. people who did not play the games) or that misrepresent the views of the person giving the reviews (this I believe refers more to when quotes get taken out of context from genuine reviews).
  
• The rule also prohibits "Buying Positive or Negative Reviews"
  
• Insider Reviews and Consumer Testimonials aren't allowed, unless these reviews clearly state the conflict of interest that is pertaining to their review.
  
• The ban of "Company-Controlled Review Websites" - so if a publisher launched a website pertaining to be an independent review organisation, but it in fact was giving reviews on their games without disclosure, this is a big no no.
  
• A very interesting part which I haven't seen discussed much, the rule also prohibits "Review Suppression" including "prohibits businesses from using unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations to prevent or remove a negative consumer review." Certainly something we've seen a lot of here as well.
  
• The misuse of fake social media indicators is also banned in the rule - this refers specifically to buying followers or views generated by a bot or making use of a hijacked social media account.

So, how do I think this will impact fake reviews on Steam? Well, funnily enough, I was writing this article in a tone of feeling like not much will be done in our circle, at least at the moment, however, in almost perfect timing, I got a message from a Steam user and a member of Sentinels of the Store by the name of John, so shout out to him for this information he's passed on to me.


So, for context, John made contact with me not too long ago, shortly after I wrote our article talking about Valkyrie Initiative back in September, because he was quite heavily invested in the game Caribbean Legend and its history, which will probably be an article for another day. John actually tried to make contact with Steam support in a 4 ticket exchange to try and get them to take some action on the game and its fake reviews. According to John, Steam support did not respond to any of these tickets. He then decided to take it up with the FTC, and surprisingly, John got a response.

Първоначално публикувано от FTC:

We have received your complaint regarding fake reviews on the Steam platform. For further consideration of this matter, we recommend that you contact Steam support and inform them that you have filed a complaint with the FTC. Please request from them a response regarding whether they consider the mentioned reviews to be fake or not and any other questions that may have raised your suspicions. Once you receive a response from Steam, please keep us informed of the outcome. This will assist us in further investigating your complaint.

Already, with that, that blew my mind, that the FTC have in fact now opened an investigation into some of the review manipulation tactics that we've been talking about for the majority of this year. However, what then concerned me, was the user shared what happened with Steam afterwards.

The user shared me this that they submitted to Steam support sharing that they had made a formal complaint to the FTC, asked the questions the FTC wanted the user to pass on and also aired some more personal questions about how much personal information of the users' was passed on to the developer and, according to John, Steam support didn't reply and closed the ticket. Note that the black lines of what I've redacted are just Ticket IDs which I've removed for I think obvious reasons so no one goes to troll Steam support and quotes these tickets.

John then also contextualised where the matter currently lies and what was ocuring in the lead up to me saying:

Първоначално публикувано от John:

Regarding the FTC, a lawyer helped me; in fact, we simply took all the tickets related to this issue and pointed out to the FTC that I received no response to any ticket, and the situation seems strange. We requested consultation on this matter, to which we were told what is written in the quoted ticket, after which they will assess the situation in more detail. Usually, the company cooperates and formally informs about the investigation, but something is definitely not right here. When I ask who is the responsible person for a complaint and do not receive any answer (this was in previous tickets), Steam simply ignores it, and we have to look for legal entities worldwide using open registers — this is very strange.

Specifically, we provided data for over 100 accounts (some of them are mentioned in the forum thread) that fall under the pattern of review + time + game set + lack of achievements. We also provided review data, including some statements from the developer; for example, Joruba casually wrote in response to one review: "Send me your bank card number in a private message, and I will refund you myself and give you some money for pizza," which is absolutely unacceptable. Additionally, we presented information regarding the GPL3 license for the software used.

John provided me with this image to back up the quote from Joruba offering to imburse reviewers off platform. John also showed me this review in which the developer is calling a negative review a "stupid shit"[archive.is].

And that is where we're at at the moment. I will be keeping an ear out for updates on this. It is pleasing to see that the FTC has taken an interest in the review manipulation that has been happening on Steam. Special thank you to John also for working with a lawyer, compiling information to send off to the FTC and relaying comms to me and to the FTC and Steam regarding developments.

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https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/3066970/Taxi_Goldmania/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/3067070/Beachgirl_Dreams/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/3067080/Jessica_Deliverson/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/3067330/Defense_of_the_Sodomites/

Special thank you to Steam user Sasoesegreto[ITA] for this initial find. If you have a story to submit that you either want us to cover, generally share findings or ask for support from other group members with regards to these kinds of matters, our forums are the place to go!

So a few months back, many of you may remember we talked about Obzor, a covert review manipulation website that was artificially inflating Steam games, giving positive reviews in exchange for real world money. Things have continued to trickle on in the background both in terms of Valve's investigation and some things we're carefully keeping an eye on, however, something I do want to talk about more today with regards to fake reviews is that a bot network has seemingly been uncovered by our very own Sasoesegreto on a few Steam games by, what appears to be on the surface, 4 different developers. More on that later.

Sasoesegreto did a greatly detailed and well cited write up on our forum, which I encourage you to give a read as I'll be more summarising some of the details rather than going fully in-depth as they do. They link to 80 accounts, all private, all entirely AI generated reviews, and were accounts that were exclusively writing positive and negative reviews for the exact same developers and games. I'm not going to link all of them here as it would be a super long article, but here are just the first 10 examples from the pool of 80 accounts:

• Shelton
  
• Gangster
  
• Kreker
  
• TTpocTa9I_Taka9l
  
• Владдоилжирафа
  
• ->жизньудалась
  
• >FISH<
  
• IgrokWicked
  
• CS__2017__
  
• [СаМаЯ]VREDna_Я

So, all of the accounts in question review the same games, in the same order, have roughly the same play time as each other, all have private profiles, and whose entire existence seems to be dedicated to reviewing games exclusively from these 4 developers:

• DarkEnergyStudio
  
• DeepRootsDevelop
  
• NAD Games
  
• ZaratustraGameDev

What was funny is that when Sasoesegreto made their post here initially, most if not all of the games from these developers went on to have a 100% positive rating, however, just in the last couple of days, there's been some negative reviews cropped up shown in some of the examples here (1) (2) (3), but these also appear to be bot generated and intentional. My theory is because if a game is just shy from perfect, they believe its less blatant and a further attempt to obfuscate some of the obvious manipulation going on with these games. Like we discussed in the Obzor article, some of the people doing these acts do like to throw in some red herrings whether that be throwing in 1 negative for every 10 positives or doing non-paid reviews in between the paid ones.

So, I'm looking at these 4 developers, and I'm thinking "there's too many commonalities here for these guys to be different people." You had similar header images, similar formatted descriptions, they all ran off gmail domains for their support contact page, all were Unity asset flips and all had the same people reviewing their games. However, you guys know me, I don't like to go off of circumstantial evidence and present it as the end all be all, so I decided to take a closer look at these games.

I went ahead and bought most of the games from these developers and had a dig around in the game files, and while for the most part there wasn't anything too noteworthy, I did stumble across something when looking specifically at Taxi Goldmania by ZaratustraGameDev and Beachgirl Dreams by NAD Games.

So in the game folders, there's this file called App.info. I touched upon this file in particular a couple of articles ago when discussing about Atomic Fabrik's return to Steam but for those that missed that, this file in particular has proven to be quite useful, as usually what this file houses is the "project name" for the game that it had in the Unity engine and also the Unity account that made the game. This was ultimately what cemented the connection that Atomic Fabrik had to those games we discussed a couple of weeks ago.

Now, interestingly, in the rest of the games, the account name was redacted, just being called "DefaultCompany" as exemplified here in Alcoholic Daddy's App Info file[imgur.com]. This was consistent across all the games...except for Taxi Goldmania and Beachgirl Dreams. This is where the rabbit hole begins!

When I went ahead and checked the App Info folders for Taxi Goldmania and Beachgirl Dreams[imgur.com], there were two very similar, but slightly different names listed:

• ImperiumGameCompany was listed in the App Info folder for Taxi Goldmania (which, side note, seemingly had the project working title of "Ticketless racer")
  
• ImperiumCompany was listed in the App Info folder for Beachgirl Dreams

Now, to many of you, you may not know who ImperiumCompany are, and even when me and SirViolentDeath[x.com] were giving these a look over, we couldn't quite put our finger on it, but the Imperium name did ring a bell for us. And I don't mean in the context of the Star Citizen developers, I mean more in terms of the independent realm of Steam.

After a hunt around the internet, and thanks to a post made by the Sturgeon's Law Steam group back in March of this year, it confirmed what we had suspected: ImperiumGame were among a list of shady developers that were banned from Steam back in March of this year.

But even with that, I'm thinking "Could this be just a coincidence?" "There's already the Star Citizen team using the same name, what if this might be the same thing where it's somebody different using the same name?" So I decided to go a step further.

I went to SteamDB[steamdb.info] to have a look at Imperium's old catalgoue, and already, I was seeing some commonalities between their games and the games that were up under those 4 different developer names, mainly the font and header images, but again, that's a minor piece of circumstantial evidence, I'm looking for the hook, line and sinker scoop. The main obstacles I faced here though was:

• 1. Imperium were banned from Steam, and the only games that remained on Steam were under new ownership, leaving most of their library unaccessible to me.
  
• 2. Most of their older library was made in GameMaker, which is harder on my lower-end programming and technical knowhow as to how to grab some metadata that I was looking for.

I went ahead and did purchase the remaining games that were on Steam in an attempt to see if there was anything I could pull from it, but as I suspected, I came out with nothing.

What I then did was I isolated the games in their catalogue down to just the games that were Unity games, as I theorised if I was able to either source a copy, or find somebody that had a copy of those games, they could go into said game's app info folder and we can see if the account name in there matched with what I'd found earlier.

I only found a total of 3 definite Unity games in their old catalogue: Parking Car[steamdb.info], Lazy Postman[steamdb.info], and Mad Bus[steamdb.info].

I took to social media[x.com] and put a request out and asked for anyone that had a copy or knew how to source one to please get in touch with me while I continued my desperate attempts to see if I could access the files in any other way.

Now, while I got no one contact me saying they owned the game, I did in fact get alerted by a user that they had found that Lazy Postman still had some keys available on some...unscrupulous sites. Ultimately, I decided "f*ck it" and I bit the bullet and purchased a key for Lazy Postman, I installed it, and low and behold, it confirmed my supicions[imgur.com] and Lazy Postman had the same account name listed in the App Info folder as Taxi Goldmania and gave me the smoking gun I was looking for.

So, this shows that there is indeed a large scale review manipulation happening with the use of either some form of bot network, or very carefully and maticulously managed 80+ profiles. It also shows that Imperium have somehow circumvented their ban and are actively distributing games again, reinforcing the fact that Steam developer bans now seem to be more just a revolving door with a failure of means testing to prevent developers from coming back. And it also shows, that Imperium are the ones that are behind these bots/accounts due to the accounts exclusively targeting their games.

It'll be especially interesting to see how instances like this develop after seeing the new rules put in[abcnews.go.com] by the FTC now saying that the sale or purchase of online reviews will now result in the FTC to seek civil penalties against those who knowingly violate it. While the use of bot networks may not quite fall into this, I feel it's extra important now more than ever to keep the pressure up on review manipulation signal boosting, as things do get done about them. And you never know, if the FTC adapt these rules in a continually evolving environment where AI is getting used a lot more, AI and bot reviews could be something they look at in the future.

I would please urge you all to share this, it highlights another layer to the deception of the Steam user review system, the abuse that it can go through, and also highlights the problem, like with our Atomic Fabrik article a couple weeks back, that banned developers that have shown a contempt for their customers before can still very quickly and easily come back and pedal their same tricks again.

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Special thanks to our Patrons Old_Navy_Twidget, GreyGore and Caff for their continued support! Please do join our Discord to find out how you can become a Patron today!

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Hey all! I hope you're doing well.

So I decided to do a little bit of a different kind of post today, partly inspired by a recent video from YouTuber BigfryTV entitled "This year has been weird... Let's talk about it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh4Rvvb7lrM

Now, there will be a regular Sentinels article going up tomorrow, but I decided I did just want to get some things off my chest, as after watching Bigfry's video, it brought up a few things that interested me and fascinated me, and even touched upon things that I have experienced myself within the work I do on here in particular.

So, the video as a whole is Bigfry talking about how he is having some constant frustrations come from certain areas and aspects when it comes to covering games in the manner that he does. He talks about how his content style focuses on development of shooters that interest him, and then cover the games once they're released, when most of the time, they're pretty disappointing compared to their hype.

However, the couple of points that he makes in his video which I decided "I want to highlight this and talk about this some more" because I've made some off-handed comments on Twitter, and maybe in the comments of some of the articles on here about these topics, but I've never really been given a lengthier means to discuss these, and that's in terms of an "audience disconnect".

Now, in a way, I actually feel an audience disconnect is quite natural to have, and I feel in our group's context, we're dealing with thousands of different people, different perspectives on "what should be talked about" "how harsh should we be on x,y or z" "this shouldn't be allowed vs. yes it should" I think in this group's context, some of those conversations are quite constructive and beneficial, in comparison to it being a YouTuber where the focus is on them as a person and the opinions that they hold. And I also think that it's important to note this group is more than just me. I might be steering the ship, but you guys are all the mechanisms, the gears, the first mates, the waiters in the dining area that help keep other operations running.

However, I do just want to talk about this disconnect and also address some elephants in the room, because I've had some blowback and some notable stances some people have with me in terms of managing bad behavious, my stance on Valve and a few other things. And I'd like to just use this article as a one off to address those in a bit more detail than what I've had in the past.

So, Bigfry discusses that his audience have had an inconsistent reaction to his critical videos, with him expressing frustration over things such as pay-to-win elements in games, where Bigfry cited if the game was cited as good or popular, such as in the case he highlights with Warframe, there was suddenly a lot more blowback from his commenters than compared to when he would talk about it in a bad game, where it was deemed as "okay" to hate on it.

As soon as I heard this, it drew me back to an article I wrote almost a year ago now, back in November 2023 about a game called Autumn's Bounty.

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/2614540/Autumns_Bounty/

Review manipulation has for the last few months dominated alot of both article topics, and our discussion forums off the back of our investigation into the website Obzor, but we cover more than just review manipulation. There are plenty of problems that plague Steam, review manipulation being one of them. I feel my stance on review manipulation has been quite clear where I don't feel its tolerable in any sense, however, what I noticed with my article on Autumn's Bounty in particular was I got a bit more blowback from it, both in the comments, but also when speaking with people about this article after the fact.

For those of you that missed it, the article on Autumn's Bounty talked about how the developer had some family/friends of their's review the game positively, but in those reviews they failed to disclose their personal relation with the game developer.

Now, I'm sure you can agree, there are a lot worse cases out there than this. However, like I mentioned earlier, we cover a wide variety of different issues on Steam. Part of my decision making as to what to cover and what not to can rely on a few things. I might sometimes ask myself the questions:

• Has anyone else talked about this?
  
• Does it highlight a problem that hasn't been talked about much before?
  
• Is it the same/similar to the last few articles I've published
  
• Is it important?

With those questions, I focus on firstly being distinctive and different and not just regurgitating what everyone else has been talking about. As I've mentioned in the past, the reason I don't talk much about the AAA sphere is because everyone else is already doing it. How many people are still covering/talking about Steam? Not many. We lost Totalbiscuit, Sterling quit covering Steam, Bigfry moved to almost exclusively shooters, Sid has an infrequent upload schedule, IAmPattyJack pretty much left YouTube, and the other YouTubers and content creators I watch don't really cover scams on Steam anymore. They make videos about shit games, which are good for a laugh, and there's nothing wrong with them, but in terms of the content I'm producing here, I want to feel like a difference is being made rather than it being a one-off piece of entertainment when I know that there are people that are or could be falling for some of these scams. I've always wanted to raise important problems that aren't getting talked about, such as Obzor. I thought it was great to see conversation still continuing now, Valve even responding to the findings and also a whole separate curator being set up just to track them. I thought that was fucking awesome, and one of the reasons I made the group in the first place. I also, though, don't want to be overly repetitive. I know that if people are just bombarded with the same thing over and over that they get tired of it, so I rarely, if ever, cover the same topic twice in a row, unless it's an update article where new information has come out. And ultimately the importance matters. If it's just some people having a political spat on Twitter, I don't care, I'm here for consumer protection, developer support, to call for fair, clear and consistent policy enforcement on Valve's part and to make sure there's transparency and accountability at every level.

So, how does this tie in with the Autumn's Bounty article? Well, I got some shit from people saying that I was being overly harsh on the developer, saying that they thought it was a kind gesture of the family/friends to post reviews, typically did the "there's so many other things you could talk about, why are you picking away at this one developer" amongst some other things. That was my instant jump to in terms of when Bigfry spoke about the audience disconnect, because I genuinely felt that suddenly, the policies I'd held myself to were turning against me with those comments, and even then, looking back, I stand by that article.

I stand by it because it gave me the right answer to each of my questions. I saw MMO Fallout covered the topic, but outside of them, no one else had spoken about it, I felt as a topic, it was a form of review manipulation, but one that I felt hadn't been spoken about in a good long while, and it was important because what was going on was literally going against FTC guidelines, as the reviewers failed to disclose their material connection to the product.

I still think, my tone in the article, I was much more softer and generous, as I put it down heavily towards just ignorance of the developer, so I wasn't harsh in my opinion, but I still did get flack for it. I gathered this was partly because the game itself was actually a good game, and this is where one of my main "things" for lack of a better term arises.

I feel maybe because of some of the historical context with this group is grounded within the "shit games on Steam" approach, but really, it's not been about a game being shit, at least ever since I opened this group. It's always been about morals and ethics. We can debate the quality of games all day long, but what I felt like would be more unifying would be to call out bad practices when they happen, regardless on how good or bad a game is, but I feel covering it in both those contexts would still bring some nuance to the discussion, showing it can happen to both sorts.

So then, I kind of had this doubt. "Do people just want to see me reinforce why they don't like shit asset flip games?" I thought. I've spoken with people that seem to only think things like theft, review manipulation etc. only asset flip titles take part in those, and that's far from the truth. Even our own Obzor expose can show you that much, as well as the Games with Paid Reviews curator. It's not just asset flips and the sort.

I'd prefer for it to be the case that morals and ethics are upheld in ALL instances, not just when a game is bad. Because then, you're looking at the game first and then judging the actions second, as if how good the game is justifies it using paid reviews, or stolen content. That shouldn't be the case, I think that's a backwards way of looking at it.

If I mistreat a game development team to get my game out in 6 months, even if the game was good, I would still expect shit for mistreating my workers. I would hate to live in a world where the ends justify the means. And I don't plan on allowing that to become the norm anytime soon.

And, I talk about Autumn's Bounty, but there are a number of occasions where this has happened before. I remember, more recently, just a couple of months ago, I did a series of articles talking about updates to Steam, to do with user reviews, store page descriptions, etc. Now, I made those articles, and in those I talk about some concerns some developers had with the changes, and I got blowback from some people saying that I should just be focussing on the consumer. Newsflash: indie developers are consumers too. They need to feel welcomed and not be facing a constant uphill battle either. There is a balance that needs to be found. We push for consumer rights, but, like we sayin in our group description, we also stand in solidarity with developers and offer them support where we can.

I also admit that my around 1.5 year absence didn't help. It was almost like a reset button was pressed. However, I am still working towards building everything back up, welcoming as many people in as I can. While at the same time pushing for both consumers and game developers as well as supporting Steam in rule enforcement, but also holding them to account.

But anyways, I hope this ramble at least made some sense. There will be a regular article up tomorrow, but I just got done watching Bigfry's video, it unlocked a memory that I wanted to talk about some more, particularly in the context for ethical consistency in game criticism and consumer advocacy.

Thanks for reading, take care, enjoy the rest of your days.

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Special thanks to our Patrons Stefan, Luke and Nin-Nin. If you want to become a Patron today, join our Discord and find out how there.

Follow me on X[x.com]
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https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/3203860/Sewing_Stuff/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/3204440/The_Cube_of_Love/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/3211510/Falling_Cube/

UPDATE - Credit to Steam user Shattered Mind who in our forums shared some more titles that they suspected to be associated to Atomic Fabrik. While I haven't been able to 100% verify them all, I have managed to confirm one of the games, Falling Cube, which has been released under the developer name Goritta Klaus does indeed belong to Atomic Fabrik, as the App Info folder includes the Martha B alias discussed here.

The Imgur album has been updated to show this extra connection.

Original article below.

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So, first of all, a massive thank you to Steam user Gelweo in our group who gave me the first indication of this happening. While it may not be the game(s) affected that they claimed, it set me off on the right tracks to prove what was initially a suspicion to be true. Long story short is that Atomic Fabrik, a notable shovelware developer who got banned from Steam a couple months ago and wrote a very colourful X post about our group blaming us heavily for his own self-conceived downfall has in fact returned to Steam after his ban.

Steam banned Atomic Fabrik because they violated a number of Steam Terms of Service rules, varying from review manipulation, failure to disclose AI generated content and just general intent to deceive consumers and resort to more unscrupulous and deceiving practices involving Jee Two Ayy to distribute their games. However, Atomic Fabrik appear to be circumventing their ban and are still actively distributing games onto Steam.

Now, the degree of this happening, I am unsure. As mentioned, Steam user Gelweo got me off on the right tracks with linking me to the game Fog Racing Circuit, which is an asset flip that follows quite a similar scheme to that of Atomic Fabrik, including the fact it's an asset flip, has an AI generated description, has AI generated artwork and also has review manipulation happening. However, there's yet enought to tie this game and it's developer Squadroni Cacciatori to Atomic Fabrik in a 100% manner for now. However, what I can share is there is enough evidence I feel to tie Atomic Fabrik to another Steam developer, Martha B.

Martha B, like Squadroni Cacciatori has AI generated artwork, a limited disclosure of this, and review manipulation to boot on their two titles.

What makes me so confident to say that Martha B is Atomic Fabrik you may ask? Well, I took a bullet for the sake of this group, Steam and also of investigative journalism on Steam and I bought the two games Martha B has made, and found that within the game files of Sewing Stuff and The Cube of Love, there was a file called "App.Info". And within this file, present in both games, you can find Atomic Fabrik's name listed hook line and center[imgur.com].

What is the purpose behind the App.Info file you may ask? Well, a while ago, me and the Sentinels moderator Occular Malice[x.com] were having a look into a similar query and we connected the developer association through this exact same way, the app.info folder. Basically, Occular, who is a game developer himself, explained to me, that the name listed within the App Info folder is the name of the user account who created the app. I.e. the account that the game that you're playing is bonded towards in the Unity engine.

Now, I know we've discussed previously in this group that Atomic Fabrik was notorious for selling his apps off to other people, however, in this case, the fact the developer names are empty besides from the games that have Atomic Fabrik listed in the files and that they surfaced after Atomic Fabrik was booted from Steam, leads me to believe this is simply Atomic Fabrik operating under a brand new account.

I will be writing to Valve about this, there are some other accounts that Atomic Fabrik is suspected to be operating under, however, I feel I have enough to at least compare notes with Valve about, but I don't wish to make any damming 100% accusations like with the Martha B account, so I'd rather send those off privately than risking both my reputation as providing accurate information, and also risking any repercussions for providing false information that I even have a 5% feeling it may be incorrect.

Please do share this and make people aware. We've been quite lucky to catch this quite early on, as Martha B only has 2 games listed on Steam at the moment. Scammers like Atomic Fabrik shouldn't be allowed a second chance in my view. They have shown a clear discontent to consumers and are clearly only involved in this for self gain. Information is power, so share this far and wide.

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Special thanks to our Patrons old_Navy_twidget, GreyGore and Caff. Your support is much appreciated. If you wish to become a Patron today, please do join our Discord server below to find out how.

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https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/25000/Overgrowth/

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/news/app/593110/view/4696781406111167991

On September 27th, Steam announced new changes to the Steam Subscriber Agreement, and I got some requests to go over what these changes are, why they came about and what impact it has on Steam users, so let's get into it.

For a little background, Steam have been in this dispute for the last few years (since April 2021 to be exact) with indie developer Wolfire Games. Wolfire Games for those who don't know are the creators of the popular Steam game Overgrowth, and they're also members of Sentinels of the Store, so hello Wolfire Games if you're reading this!

Wolfire Games filed an antitrust lawsuit against Steam which Wolfire Games talk about more in their blog post[blog.wolfire.com] from May 2021, alleging Valve of using its position to exploit publishers and consumers. They attack Valve's large cut of revenue they get per game sale of 30%. They also claimed that Valve was using Steam to create a monopoly on PC game distribution, and claimed Valve threatened to remove Wolfire Games' games from Steam if the developers charged lower prices on competing storefronts, even if these storefronts charged a different cut of sales revenue compared to Steam.

The original lawsuit was dismissed in November 2021, but Wolfire Games filed an amended complaint in May 2022, and this new amended complaint included allegations that Valve used its monopoly power to impose punitive restrictions on publishers.

If you're interested in the more ins and outs of the lawsuit, feel free to read up on that in these articles:

• Gabe Newell ordered to make in-person deposition for Valve v. Wolfire Games lawsuit[www.gamesindustry.biz]
  
• Wolfire Games founder: 'I had no choice' but to file Steam antitrust lawsuit against Valve[www.gamedeveloper.com]
  
• Judge brings dismissed Steam antitrust lawsuit back from the dead[arstechnica.com]

Well, this lawsuit just had a very interesting development, which has had consequential action that affects most Steam users if you live outside the UK or EU. While it's a noteworthy change, it isn't technically anything new, as if you want what's happened in a nutshell, basically users are having their subscriber agreements updated to the European terms, and here's why.

Essentially what Valve have done to their subscriber agreement is they have removed any mention of an arbitration agreement and class action waivers. For you non-legal people in the room such as me that had to look up what this was, an arbitration agreement is a clause in a contract which means that you agree to settle any disagreements out of court. A class action waiver is a clause that prevents one or both parties from filing a class action lawsuit against the other, effectively protecting companies from larger and more expensive lawsuits.

Well, in some recent filings in the lawsuit[x.com], Wolfire Games brought both of these clauses into question, arguing that they weren't enforeable. In the lawsuit, section 30 and 31 it's stated:

Първоначално публикувано от Lawsuit:

Consumers in the Wolfire action contested the enforceability of the arbitration provision but the Court ruled that the threshold issue of arbitration was delegated to, and needed to be resolved in, arbitration. The Court accordingly granted Valve's motion to compel arbitration.[...]

Plaintiffs to this class action complaint were not named plaintiffs in the Wolfire action. They retained seperate counsel and asserted individual claims in arbitration challenging the enforceability of Valve's arbitration provision. Each prevailed, obtaining rulings that the arbitration provision was unenforceable, either for lack of notice, or because it purports to preclude public injunctive relief in violation of the McGill rule (McGill v. Citibank, N.A., 393 P.3d 85, 90-92 (Cal.2017)), or both. The arbitrator thus granted each Plaintiff's motion to dismiss the arbitration.

The updated agreement now required all claims and disputes to proceed in court and not in arbitration. If you're living outside the UK and EU, the agreement now reads:

Първоначално публикувано от Steam Subscriber Agreement:

You and Valve agree that all disputes and claims between you and Valve (including any dispute or claim that arose before the existence of this or any prior agreement) shall be commenced and maintained exclusively in any state or federal court located in King County, Washington, having subject matter jurisdiction.

In terms of my take aways from this, I do have some mixed thoughts.

One one side, without the class action waiver, consumers have regained the ability to participate in class action lawsuits. These allow the banding together of consumers and it can be particularly beneficial in widespread issues, such as breaches of consumer rights, defective products and unfair practices. It also allows for more public accountability, arbitration often takes place behind closed doors and doesn't set a public precedent. And it overall does give more leverage to consumers when addressing grievances.

However, on the flip side of that, traditional court cases, can take years to resolve. Arbitration does tend to be faster and more efficient in settling disputes so this move does have that potential to delay resolutions being made.

But overall, I would say it's a positive thing, with some drawbacks admittedly, but I hope this has been a helpful breakdown of these changes as some of you did seem at least curious about what these changes were and why Valve out of all times decided now was the time to put this in. I did also read some other theories on PC gamer and Eurogamer why this was brought in, but I still do think the ongoing Wolfire Games lawsuit is the most likely reason behind this.

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