What do you think about the last Jim Sterling video?

This is an awful idea.

 

The refund experience at Steam is far easier than the refund experience at a local supermarket. With a local supermarket, you have to drive back to the supermarket, wait in line at customer service, and then discuss the problem with a staff member. At Steam, you can request a refund, select the reason for a refund, and your done. You can even get a refund through Steam if you simply don't think the game is fun. That is the most pro-consumer refund policy I have ever seen. Could you imagine movie theaters giving a full refund if you did not enjoy the movie?

 

It is unfortunately true that there are a few people who literally just troll discussions. However, there are a lot of honest people out there, too, and I would never want to completely shut down an entire discussion just to try to prevent a few trolls. The discussions section is an awesome way for gamers to connect with other gamers and with developers. When used properly, it is very helpful for the entire community.

 

The problem with refunds is this means someone already took the time to check out the game page, then buy the game, try the game and get a refund. And the end result is a negative experience. I mean the refund will do nothing to help with Unity's image. It probably helps with Steam's image (thankfully Steam saved me from another trash Unity game!)

It really is I think as people have mentioned the ease of use (well for people who find it easy in Unity which seems to be the majority). Because it is so quick n easy to throw together something that can be seen as a game it seems to attract a higher percentage of people who just want to throw something together and make money from it.

The real problem of course is all of these developers (maybe in large part beginners) knocking out basically anything somewhat resembling a game and then trying to get money for it. And I think this happens so much with Unity specifically probably because of the Asset Store combined with Unity's ease of use. And by ease of use I mean easy to just throw something very shoddy together with a minimal amount of effort. It's still a lot of work to make an actual real game... a good game. But these people aren't really making such things.

Heck many are even just trying to resell the assets themselves as games. To me it is just the obsession with money or more specifically the dream of making a lot of money with the most minimal amount of effort. And again Unity seems to attract a much higher percentage of these kind of people. Maybe just because they attract a higher percentage of Indie game devs in general but I think it goes beyond that like it actually gets more of these scammer/flipper/do anything to make a buck kind of people. Proof being look at what is out there.

I just spent a few minutes searching YouTube for various terms like Unity games suck, Unreal games suck, Gamemaker games suck, trash, junk, etc and guess which terms delivered up relevant results. It's not a case of the engine may get a bad image at some point unless something is done. It is a case where it already has it at least to a degree.

And then I searched for asset flippers and again one engine was heavily covered. And I found stuff like this...

This guy has an entire line of videos focused on these asset flips.

I don't know what the answer really is because the root cause of the problem to why this is happening I think is certainly because Unity makes it so easy to do it. Or the Asset Store makes it so easy. Or both. Either way the root source is still here. And this is why people are talking about it out there more and more pointing their fingers at Unity. I think that is an important thing to accept. They aren't making it up; for the most part they are simply talking about the reality. The majority of these junk games and asset flips are coming from one place.

I don't play mobile games but once I searched the store to see what I could find that was made in Unity and I found the craziest stuff such as a "game" that had a model you could rotate... that was it. Various roll-a-ball games that were the tutorial in various states of completeness and so forth. It might be cleaned up out there now... this was a couple years ago. So this has been going on for quite a while and what you are seeing now out there on the Internet was inevitable I think because it just never stopped and so many people have done it the odds of any one person bumping into such a game or a video talking about such a game increase each month (heck maybe each week or day) as these people continue to try to make money from no effort.

The only real answer seems to be make it harder. Either at the stores or the development. Stores can't do it because there are just so many people making games how could they possibly cover them all in any kind of timely manner? If you are fine with finally releasing your game and being on a waiting list of 3 years for them to review it then this would be an option. lol

 

Add Overcooked to the list:

https://twitter.com/overcookedgame/status/649572229219487744?lang=en

 

I think it is a decent idea. Steam community is the worst part of the service, and I think the store would've been better without it. So if someone nukes the community component completely,leaves simply reviews and prevents people from trolling each other by leaving comments on reviews and starting forum threads, that would be an improvement.

 

Yeah I still have to wait for designers to examine what I made and I ran out of improvements I could make to code without changing it so much the designers won't be able to reuse it.
So here. 200 years in mspaint.

 

This.

@ShilohGames my point is that even if the refund is a click of a button, you still invested enough for it to make you feel annoyed, by having downloaded and played it. There is also (arguably) the question of a feeling of guilt on the part of the buyer, who may not be sure if their refund is strictly justified even though it's allowed.

I think refunds are something that should be viewed as a clear-cut failure in any kind of business, and only used as a last layer of protection for the customer that you hope they would rarely if ever need to use.

I would argue that a business that promotes this kind of low-quality market propped up by a refund system is asking for trouble in terms of image problems which is exactly what Steam has done (although much of the image problem has been transferred to Unity for some reason). An analogous situation is the freelance website Fiverr, which almost always sides with customers in any kind of dispute (similar to a refund system), does very little in the way of vetting, and suffers a huge image problem as a back-alley market of swindlers/incompetents. At least they have some competition which allows people to simply avoid it if they don't like the way it's run.

 

You're thinking of competition to Steam, and for the sake of discussion I'll agree that there's little. I'm talking about competition among games, and I think we can agree that there's a huge and increasing amount of that.

Within that competition, a greater variation in quality level results in consumers being less confident of the quality of arbitrary purchases, and being willing to pay less for them as a result.

Basically, a few years ago your game had to be pretty darn good just to be on Steam. If you got there then it was a question of taste rather than a question of quality. Now anyone can get onto Steam, but... well, they've introduced a refund system for a reason.

 

So does Steam if you consider the user experience. Sure, there may exist tens of thousands of games to browse through, but how many is a person actually able to look at during a session?

People arguing that lack of storage limitations changes things are right. However, it doesn't remove the limiting factor, it just changes it - it's now a per-user limit (how many things can a user see in a session) as opposed to a per-store limit (how much stuff fits on the shelves).

That's a pretty dramatic change, and I think it's exactly what Steam are trying to solve. If a user is only going to see ~100 games when they look at the shop then lets make it the 100 games most relevant to them.

 

Well let me put it like this: IMO the developer is the cause of the issue, but it is not their responsibility to self-regulate. One does not expect an athlete who knows that they are probably not as good as their peers to abstain from the race for everyone's benefit. Rather it's the organizers of the competition who have to ensure that the competing athletes present are good enough to satisfy the spectators.

A healthy game market ecosystem, IMO, is comprised of developers who simply do what they do as best they can, and are filtered by the stores for quality. So any culpability or responsibility for an influx of poor games falls to the stores. If they don't do this job properly, they are simply setting up the environment for gamers to express their frustration by going after developers and/or Unity.

Also, I agree about visibility being equivalent to shelf space, if the customer has to pick through the rubble to find a good game they are hardly being served. I'll interested to know how Steam's search filtering is going to work out, but it's hard to see how it will not add a huge risk to the just-released period of a game's life cycle. Still, that might be just the incentive needed to make developers focus on community-building.

In the end I hope Steam doesn't just use this 'magic algorithm' as a soft landing for slowly opening the floodgates and relaxing any kind of supervision. I don't go much on Steam, but one of Sterling's videos he reckons it's worse to browse since the changes.

 

Then nobody would use the splash, because of the image problem.

No idea why we are even discussing this now.
The time to solve this was years ago when we spoke about it before. Bit late now. The image problem has already propagated. Just have to put up with it now, make a good game to the point where practically nobody cares, or invest in unity to remove the logo like almost everyone who makes a decent game seems to do.

Hilariously, I suspect having the unity logo associated with crappy games actually drives huge numbers of hobbyists towards unity, not away from it.

What kind of an idiot invests time and money on a game without checking out a video of the actual gameplay, including watching a bit of a lets play from an OUTSIDE source, checking the score, and reading both positive and negative reviews?
They should feel guilty.

Even most "good" games aren't worth my time. It needs to be what I'm looking for. It needs to be better than the alternatives. I DON'T buy games that look good almost all of the time, so who is buying games that don't even look good?

 

Jim?

 

What makes you think you'll find a 'let's play' of every game? What about when the game is starting off and has few reviews or none? I agree about the video, I think it's good sense to expect and watch a video of the game before buying it.

But let's face it, many developers don't know how to make a good video, or skip it completely. A game can look very good (hint: especially if it's an asset flip) and still be pretty lacking in gameplay value, with just enough content to make a reasonable 30 second video pitch. Maybe the developer ran out of time/money/motivation and just sort of cut off the game at some point. There are numerous ways for the game to be falsely advertised or defective in some way.

Anyway, I'm not familiar enough with Steam (though I've spent a good deal of time on Google Play) to know all the ins and outs of the gamer experience there with indie games, but my view is that if there's a situation where too many low-quality games are getting in, Steam should be finding themselves in a situation where they need to fix it to keep their customers, which I hardly expect will happen without competition. That's pretty much all I have to say.

 

I was thinking about this last night and first thought was one solution to this madness would be to impose a restriction on the building of desktop and mobile games. The other build types would always be available just desktop and mobile builds would be behind some kind of wall.

I know people hate walls... they don't want any obstacles. But that thinking leads to the exact situation discussed in this thread. This is what happens when anyone can build games and release them.

I don't know what kind of wall it could be though. The normal default is a paywall but clearly this is not a major issue for these folks. They seem to have no problem spending money. They buy assets. They pay the mobile and Steam marketplace fees. They may actually be willing to spend more money than a lot of Unity users. It almost seems more like a mindset of they don't care about spending money as long as it is super easy.

I think basically there is no action that will be taken because none will go without ticking off a large number of people. But I think in time there will be a solution because of this lack of taking action. Eventually it will get on the radar of government and regulation. And they will take it very seriously someone taking an asset and falsely selling it as a game. They have a way of magnifying problems to create regulations.

And in many ways this whole thing is kind of like the Wild West. With no checks & balances in place. Free market is fine but even those have rules. And here there basically seem to be none. And maybe this... finally... is why we see so many of these kind of people getting into game dev. Perhaps one of the very last wild west anything goes kind of environments.

 

Preventing people from building a desktop or mobile release of their games would kill Unity off completely. That would be one of the worst business decisions they could make.

Steam's refund system is a solid check and balance. It is one of the most pro-consumer refund systems of all time. Governments were grumbling about Steam before the refund system was put in place, but now Steam has a market leading refund system. If anything, governments will demand that other businesses follow Steam's lead on refunds.

If you really think this is such a big problem, try selling an asset flip on Steam right now and then run the numbers. Count the sales and the refunds, and then decide if it is really a big deal now. Steam's algorithms largely bury new, unknown games by default. Steam does not actively promote asset flips and low quality games, so those games won't sell much if anything. Even good games that are unknown will remain unknown by default. This is the opposite of a few years ago when every new game was guaranteed front page exposure regardless of quality.

 

Maybe it is all not a problem. I just personally doubt that. Sure it hasn't reached the critical mass stage yet where it is all over the news and nobody can miss it. But could that happen at any time? Would you honestly be surprised if you started seeing coverage of that kind of thing?

I wouldn't in the slightest. And one thing feeds on another. It is all still hidden away for the most part. But it is all slowly growing with the number of text and video posts. I guess I am not seeing where the things we've discussed in this thread have been resolved in any way the way you do (or seem to anyway).

Personally I really don't care. It is just an interesting discussion. Clearly people can see a problem unfolding... and wonder how and when it will be addressed. Well I shouldn't say I don't care. Because I would prefer the freedoms to remain and for this all to be more self-governed, self-regulated. I just think if that doesn't happen then eventually someone else will. And at that time it will be too late and the way it ends up will almost certainly not be the same democratization of game dev as we know today.

 

I don't see any reason for the mainstream media to cover news about bad games or asset flips on Steam at this point in time. If we still had the situation at Steam from three years ago, then maybe. But not with the ways things are now at Steam. Steam has an extremely pro-consumer refund system in place, and Steam requires all game store pages to include video and screenshots of actual gameplay content.

There is no problem currently unfolding. There was a huge problem three years ago, people spoke out about it, and then Steam made a ton of much needed improvements to the store to make it more consumer friendly. At this point in time (summer 2017), Steam is a very pro-consumer store.

 

Again it could be the case. I don't know what will happen or how others (who have the power to cover it on news or consider it for investigation) will interpret the evidence (i.e. articles, comments, videos).

A lot of it probably depends on how bored or slow things get for the news in other areas. A lot of it depends on the right (or wrong depending on your perspective) people finding out about it. There are currently YouTubers and others seemingly working hard to bring exposure to it.

I guess I just see things differently. It may not happen for years. It is possible it may never happen. Possibly. It may happen next week. All it takes is for a certain person to learn about it who is in the position to bring it into the mainstream. As for why would they do it? Because it is newsworthy. It is a crisis they can build up. Heck they can start the segment with scrolling clips showing dozens of YouTube videos and Steam game pages and comments. It seems to me like they already have plenty of material to work with. They just need to be aware of it. News loves things like this. Where there are "bad" things happening.

Again it is all just a possible outcome. Just one that has plenty of material for them to cover now. It is quite possible Jim wouldn't mind being interviewed for such a thing. I guess I will just say all of the pieces are there for it to happen at any time and leave it at that.

 

I don't think the current Steam situation is news worthy. Three years ago, it definitely was. But YouTubers like Jim Sterling rightfully demanded change, and they go that change. Now Steam is a very pro-consumer store.

 

I agree entirely. The point I was making is that when stores don't do this then it doesn't just result in increased competition, it also results in reduced customer confidence and as a result lower perceived value of being on the store in the first place.

As a concrete example, lets imagine that I want to buy a spanner. I'd be willing to pay a heck of a lot more at Bunnings than I would be willing to pay at, say, The Reject Shop, because where The Reject Shop selects stock based purely on price I know that Bunnings won't just chuck any ol' thing on their shelves. The thing is that for all I know both shops sell exactly the same spanners*, but I'd happily pay more at Bunnings for no reason other than confidence.

*Bunnings would have a bigger range, but for all I know the one or two spanners at The Reject Shop are included in that range.

 

Don't be too sure about that

But yeah, I agree with that. And again, I think that the lack of competition makes it less important for Steam to do anything to protect their brand image.

 

This game looks more entertaining to watch people then play the game myself.
Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator

 

It's a good point. The better a game is the more likely they won't show the Unity logo.
But it depends where Unity gets most its money from. AAA companies or amateurs.
If it wants to sell to amateurs then its a good strategy.

 

There's a spectrum between AAA and amateurs you know, I think it's somewhere in the middle

 

I bet the asset store makes alot of money on amatures, plus/pro license not so much

 

Question are there any bad Unreal games yet?

And if not why not?

 

Yes there are a few, but UE4 is much harder to deploy something useful with. Unity is proven easier to use, easier to deploy.

I know people get surprised when there's Blueprint, but Blueprint helps artists and already-competent developers do something. They don't help the common noob. The common noob cannot operate Blueprints but he can download a giant pack of pirated assets and cobble something together to anger Jim Sterling with.

So as crap will never end, we can expect Jim to keep putting up vids about it. Unity is guilty of the crime of actually living up to it's core mission of democratising game development. If that's an image problem, it's a good one to have in the long term.

 

What if...
Unity used their cloud system to allow all Unity games to be voted on and then when the Unity Logo pops up it appears with how people have voted on this game. Unity could even have a range of logos to reflect the rating or a dynamic logo, e.g. an outline that fills up to the level of votes.

 

Yes, "Mighty No 9" uses Unreal engine, Version 3 I believe.

Also, here you go:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/275060/Alone_in_the_Dark_Illumination/

Alone in the dark: Illumination. "Mostly negative" on steam, 19% on metacritic. Unreal 4.
There's also "Hatred"

 

It'll be a goldmine if people needed to pay to disable this feature. massive potential for abuse as well.

 

That's out? Is it actually bad as a game when setting the controversy aside?

 

I don't see how any of this is relevant.

There isn't an asset flipped game that has sold any decent amount. Almost nobody ever sees them in the store. The only way you hear about them is if you go looking for exactly that, or you watch bad youtubers who like to make videos to laugh at them. And what kind of idiot buys a game that has only 2 reviews, both negative?

Nobody is getting stung by asset flips or bad games. It's just a non-issue.

ARK: Survival Evolved. One of the worst games I've ever played. In some regulated future fantasy that game might not even be allowed on the store, yet 50k people are happily playing it right now.

 

ARK reached critical mass of users and income so therefore the ARK games will get better over time, or at least the developer will have decided to hire competent people. It's a success story that happens, and I think it's a fair dynamic if a little heavy on the luck side.

 

I don't know. Haven't played it, because it didn't look like something that would interest me. The same studio also later released a game called "IS defense" which doesn't even have a wikipedia page. The title might be using Unreal 4 as well.

The thing with bad unreal 4 projects is that they simply die without reaching completion, most of the time.

P.S. And yeah, ARK was widely criticized for having horrible performance.

 

ARK placed itself well, it filled a survival, creativity and multiplayer gap that a lot of games in the same space were doing very poorly at the time. It's also pretty easy to roll your own servers and play with some friends. Aside from the insanely bad performance it had early on it did a pretty good job of satisfying users.

It still has serious drawbacks today despite its success. It's also one of those neverending early access games - they even released DLC while still in EA with glaring gameplay problems still present.

It is a fun game, but I think these games in general produce a toxic community due to their gameplay nature. Rust is it's direct competition and is made with Unity and wildly successful in all the same ways as ARK. In my mind that basically proves the whole point - put in work, make a good game, and it doesn't really end up mattering what engine you use in the end.

Developers make good games, not engines.

 

Lawnmower Game was made with UE4. Jim Sterling already did a video about it.

 

Jim's a hypocrite. He hates on people making half-assed games, but isn't he just a half-assed critic? I've only watched a couple of his videos, but clearly he doesn't have anything very useful to say. An actual, professional critic isn't somebody who just makes superficial gripes about things nobody would otherwise know existed.

Obviously games like this were made for practice or fun. Maybe Jim just rags on stuff like this for entertainment value. I hope he doesn't take himself too seriously.

 

This seems to be his way. I've heard other people do the same. We have a radio personality named Angry Patrick who does it. He will latch on to anything and rant wild and angry just for comedy sake.

 

Wait - people thought he is a serious critic? Someone actually had that real thought?

 

I read Jim as a personality for entertainments sake and not much else but some people will take anything seriously.

 

Whoa.

 

I know.

I actually never heard of jim untill this thread but now watch him fairly regular though I'm sure it will wear old before long. I'm American and for some silly reason I find irate brittish people hilarious. The more pissed they get the harder I laugh even when they are legitimately angry. I would wind up loosing a fistfight if I ever went to a pub across the pond. Someone would say something a little angrily and I would giggle and before the snowball finished building he would be foaming at the mouth red faced uber mad and I would be curled in the fetal position laughing too hard to fight back.

 

Yup. 100% certain of it.

I mean, look at this thread.

 

Watch out though, he might be the donald trump for dissatisfied gamers ...

 

All these loser developers making tremendously bad games. We need a wall to keep them out!

 

Hi all. This last week has been a bit stressful on the forums and watching different youtube videos had me wanting to give my own 2 cents worth

 

Who's a hypocrite again?

So many ignorant people in this thread who know next to nothing about him but are blindly bashing him. How is that any better than what he does with unity?

The ad hominems don't legitimize your point. They only make it seem more invalid.

 

Now you understand why he's so irritating.

(To me at least. Clearly enough people enjoy his style.)

 

If that's what gamers at large actually do want, then someone has messed up tremendously at providing their constituents with what they need.