Originally posted by Madnesis:

Reviews manipulation:

Yes, this is Whale Rock Games, a known asset flipper. The "game" itself is a basic "Digital Homicide" style asset flip, a minimum viable product meant to carry fake reviews to mislead and scam gamers through game bundles and anyone hapless enough to fall for the fake reviews and buy the product, to defraud a few Steam gamers out of some roubles.

Whale Rock are very specific in paying for around 100 fake reviews for each of their many asset flips, and "Swords Fantasy" is a pretty typical example of that. It's also interesting that the fake reviews for that asset flip arrived in waves of 5-10 fake reviews at a time, some very recent, others many years old.

Yes, RewindApp is one of the first asset flippers I came across and he's been at it for years. Not a very nice person, either.

Sentinels did an article on him:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store/announcements/detail/1706233347225003492

Well worth the read about this scumbag.

He was laying low for the last year or so, then he came back with a "banana" like clicker scam, and more asset flips.

Great outcome! I'm guessing a DMCA takedown request went through?

Look at all those asset flips

This is not authoritative, but I've captured 11 asset flips of Hammer 2 and 13 asset flips of UnitZ/Unet Battlegrounds.

So I guess UnitZ is in front, for now.

Good catch, these are not accounts associated with Obzor/Mipped, looks like the guy just faked his own reviews.

Which is still illegal.

https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/federal-register-notices/16-cfr-part-465-trade-regulation-rule-use-consumer-reviews-testimonials-final-rule

I ran this through my fake review checker... there's ~100 reviews, all starting exactly 20 days after launch, all arrived within about 48 hours. The reviews are all from Obzor/Mipped.

This is exactly the same MO and same price points as Whale Rock. There's no smoking gun that links the developer accounts that I can see, but if I was a betting man, I'd bet it's another shell account.

Here's another one that meets the same MO, ~100 fake reviews, price hikes.

https://steamhost.cn/app/3764420/Turnfall/

"I Can't Believe It's Not Whale Rock"

The problem is perhaps not about community bans themselves, while some developers certainly are toxic, a lot of gamers are far from angels, too, and those bans prevent toxic gamers from crapping up the place. That always remains a problem that needs a solution.

I think the most obvious solution would be for Valve to spend a few dollars out of the billions they make every year moderating forums instead of letting gamer-hostile, completely biased and partial developers manage their own forums.

They're saving a few bucks but allowing toxic developers to inflict harm on gamers.

Valve are legally obliged to comply with any DMCA takedown request so we should expect to see this infringing game disappear soon.

Please do be careful about posting in discussion threads associated with games from toxic developers... they own the moderation for those threads and will gleefully ban people, which in turn can trigger an automatic Steam community ban. It's not worth letting these guys damage your own Steam presence.

Developers should not be allowed to moderate their own discussion forums... while this saves Valve a few dollars out of the billions they have, it's rife for abuse from bad acting developers hostile to the community.

Please reach out to the students in case you haven't already, they can place a DMCA takedown request and Valve will remove the offending game.