Originally posted by Obey the Fist!:

I see what you're saying. As I forge on being the person who's played and reviewed more games than anyone else on the planet, I'll walk a middle road.

I'll continue to warn gamers if a product is from an unethical developer, but at the same time review that game on its merits (such as they may be).

That aside, I don't really buy their story. Who exactly is approaching an asset flipper and offering to buy their asset flip from them? Can we even be sure this is not Cristian Manolachi wearing a different hat and a fake moustache?

Yes, as reasonable people we should take them by their word, but they've already proven themselves to be unethical, with lies, fake reviews, and the obvious plagiarism than asset flipping represents. All of this is harmful to gamers, genuine developers and the industry as a whole.

How far exactly should we be extending the benefit of the doubt when it comes to these tainted products?

It is in fact a business that people within those circles do, I've seen this happen on Miped where apps get exchanged between pools of "developers" or "publishers" Motivations can vary. Some sell lower end games that have acquired trading cards with the intention of someone buying the app to then hopefully profit longer term of card sales. Some it may be a safe means of violating rules, passing the apps off and then those apps are preserved from bans in AF's case. Others it could be publishers wanting to expand their portfolio by just throwing money at the game, to give a false impression to other developers that they poach. Others it may be rationale and motivations we don't know about yet.

The way I approach a lot of these things is that unless what they say can't be unproven, we're forced to take them at their word, even like when Atomic Fabrik claimed he donated games to charity, while I doubt he did, as why wouldn't you make that a selling point, contact the Charity Games curator etc. I can't definitively prove that he didn't do that, so I have to take him at his word. The real risk is being wrong, misinforming people, and defaming others, which is a high ground those opposing us would take. So I exercise benefit of the doubt wherever possible. Unless everything is water tight and up to my standards, I don't report on it. And in cases where I am proven wrong on a point, it's best to retract, apologise and move on.

Originally posted by Obey the Fist!:

Devil's advocate here... if a trashware game/asset flip changes hands, does that suddenly make it a valuable proposition for a potential customer?

Rightfully, we focus on unethical actions by unethical "developers", but I don't think we can lose sight of the reason we do this.

The game itself is valueless, it's from a scammer... and if it changes hands, that doesn't matter in terms of what we need to tell gamers about it.

Sure, the game changed hands, but what person is doing business with someone who is a known scammer? Does this suddenly make the game "ethical" or in any way acceptable as a product for gamers to buy? Is the person who "buys" the rights to these asset flips somehow better than the asset flipper who originally published them?

I agree to an extent, however, it's not about the game's quality to me. It's about the people behind them, and while yes, I am of the suspicion that people that do/have done dealings with Atomic Fabrik may not have clean hands, but if the best we have at the moment is "they bought Atomic Fabrik games" there's not really much to say about them unless something more comes out.

Hi all!

I'm running a poll on Twitter/X about what people's thoughts are on Steam's newly announced changes to store page descriptions.

You can read the blog post here: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/4201376568915048836

Feel free to let me know your thoughts on the changes both here and in the Tweet/Post's replies as well! I'll be doing an article this week talking about them.

https://x.com/MellowOnline1/status/1825524324771745882

I'll be covering the planned changes to user reviews as well next week!

Originally posted by Mellow_Online1:

Originally posted by Gelweo:

This one is still on the catalog :

https://steamhost.cn/app/948350/Royal_Booty_Quest/
https://steamdb.info/app/948350/history/

Thanks Gelweo!

Looks like no transition occurred for the title since Atomic Fabrik's listing, so I've tagged this on our curator and added it to the relevant list!

Thanks again!

Evidence to this:

There was a news post made by a user who is one of the admins to Conglomerate 5's Steam group:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/app/948350/eventcomments/4509878102693369774/
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/profiles/76561199179005185
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/groups/Conglomerate5

Interesting however that the game being promoted is by Valkyrie Initiative and the user is writing it as if they are part of the team behind the title... But that'd be a different discussion to be had at another time.

Originally posted by Mellow_Online1:

Originally posted by Gelweo:

This one is still on the catalog :

https://steamhost.cn/app/948350/Royal_Booty_Quest/
https://steamdb.info/app/948350/history/

Thanks Gelweo!

Looks like no transition occurred for the title since Atomic Fabrik's listing, so I've tagged this on our curator and added it to the relevant list!

Thanks again!

Apologies, I've retracted the curator, as I found the game was in fact bought off Atomic Fabrik by what seems to be Conglomerate 5, so they are the ones who actively are not listing developer names on the app.

Originally posted by Gelweo:

This one is still on the catalog :

https://steamhost.cn/app/948350/Royal_Booty_Quest/
https://steamdb.info/app/948350/history/

Thanks Gelweo!

Looks like no transition occurred for the title since Atomic Fabrik's listing, so I've tagged this on our curator and added it to the relevant list!

Thanks again!

Please find our response here: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/announcements/detail/6524113244463489181

I've done more digging, and while Scott is not the developer, he is involved with the title, and he announced the title back in June.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/news/five-laps-at-freddy-s-karting-game-savaged-following-trailer-leak/ar-BB1r5soC

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/29616769/fnaf-fortnite-collaboration-five-nights-at-freddys/

https://www.pockettactics.com/new-fnaf-game

Originally posted by williamcaw:

https://steamhost.cn/app/3078140/Five_Laps_at_Freddys/

developers page in old mode
https://steamhost.cn/search/?publisher=Clickteam

it steams like a lot of developers that do a lot of shoveling have old mode accounts

If I recall correctly, Scott Cawthon is fine with these games existing as long as they're free and aren't sold commercially. I can't seem to find anything on the page to indicate anything on pricing when the game is released however.

New Sentinels of the Store article: Valve Acknowledge Obzor - Here are the Next Steps

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/announcements/detail/6740283029043478241