What do you think about this practice? :: Sentinels of the Store

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Zeusberg 4 Apr, 2018 @ 1:45am

What do you think about this practice?

Here's another low-effort $1 game from previously unknown(Russian) developer with no other projects released before, nothing new in that per se:
https://steamhost.cn/app/793720/U_L_T_R_A___H_A_R_D_C_O_R_E/
Released in 25th Feb of 2018

Some achievements with alphabet for showcases, but not a lot, so not achievement spam game.

But what's this?
"Lots of unique items are dropping during your playtime
Note: Those items have no value in-game for now. It should be considered as an appreciation for playing our game :)"

They have random item drops which don't affect the game in any way and they have arbitrary high prices:
Item shop is called "Some Cool Stuff to Support the Game"

Items have tags: "Tradable, Marketable" but they're not on market(yet?): "There was an error getting listings for this item. Please try again later."
They have meme icons which probably makes them attractive for some people for showcasing on their profile.

And they have a workshop so people can propose other items for the game: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/workshop/browse/?appid=793720&browsesort=trend&section=mtxitems&browsefilter=trend&p=1

So what do you think about it? Is it gaming the system? Does it break any Valve's rules? What would Valve tell if they would notice this?

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Showing 1-4 of 4 comments

talgaby 4 Apr, 2018 @ 1:49am

What would Valve say? Most likely "thanks for the market transaction fees!".

Michel Baie 4 Apr, 2018 @ 2:33am

Originally posted by Ryuu:
But i wonder why no sneaky dev had tried this approach before? Why were we only talking about scamming Trading cards and achievement spam but not this? Is it such a novel approach or did it recently got easier to implement? I just don't understand why is there not a ton of scammy Steam inventory games already?

Actually, this has been (somewhat) done before, with Arcane Raise.
https://steamhost.cn/itemstore/603750/browse/?filter=All
I'm not sure they looted in game, tho.

As for why there's not that many example of inventory games...

- There's no bragging rights attached to that.
Those games are unknown (so it's not like you could show-off your premium stuff to everyone).
And your Steam profile won't gain anything from having those items either.

- The items are useless
So it's not like you would buy them in the first place anyway.
Heck, Battleblock Theater did the inventory thing too, and I'm not sure the results were that satifying (or we would have a similar system for Pit People).

- There's a seven days delay attached to transactions
So even as gambling tokens it's unwieldy.

Last edited by Michel Baie; 4 Apr, 2018 @ 2:35am

ak-ryuu 4 Apr, 2018 @ 2:51am

There have been a few games exploring the Inventory market for making money, like https://steamhost.cn/app/614910/monstercakes/ . Probably a couple others.

I have been wondering why more low-effort games don't yet do that, but I expect we'll see more of that soon enough ...