Think of it like "Catdog" but instead of a cat and a dog.........well.....you get the picture.

That would make it a cattledog:-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkadtxlCRU4

*signed*

Snif, I expected more drama and tension from this story :(

By the week-end, everybody will have forgotten it. It's just a case of mishandling a bad customer. Best way to go with it, would have to refund the guy so he can shove his 30$ in his ass. But steam doesn't do refunds (though maybe if the devs do a special request).

I remember when Windforge came out, the game would just crash after the lenghty tutorial on the first "island" for a lot of people. But since, the game has been improved a lot and it's still maybe my 2014 GOTY. BTW, gog should do a new review system to hide those "first week reviews" on new games after a while as they're unuseful for both consumers and developers.

All I know is, that reviewer is in their right, specially if they were censored/banned from the forums for asking for an explaination or apology.

It is clear the game has many bugs, and it is clear they left EA to 'completed' game only for the x-mas sale.
I would consider this proof something unscrupulous.


They person, .... creating more drama by saying "i'm being harassed" is also in the wrong.
When you censor stuff in your own forum, then you have zero right to cry/complain that person turns around and makes a post in a different forum.

Censorship is one of the worse things in the world, and it will only continue to get worse and worse....
why the hell does our government focus on copyright crap, when we should be focusing on food/energy/housing/job/health/etc. related problems.


However, judging by steams view point, that being: "we don't care what people release on our platform (read between the lines: because it makes us more money)", nothing is going to be done about it.
ZERO quality control on steams part. Like selling raw chicken to customers, or soup with 'there is a fly in my soup' bug joke :P

I know that as a (pro-regional pricing too...) dev you are somewhat biased,
but have you actually read what has been censored?

When what the reviewer wrote is true, he isn't just a customer, but a tester who knew of the long list of bugs as well as the company releasing it as finished in an alpha state to be able to make it into the sales period.
I don't see anything unjustified in his posts and think what he wrote is rather important because it mentions a current trend in practice.
Of course it gets censored by Steam and devs if it costs sales, but this only shows, that honesty and quality control are long gone and it really is all about money and nothing more.
Has there been any justification from the devs or Steam or only censoring of unpleasant truths?

Yeah, I've read the review that's why I'm sad there are no cursed words and various death threats in it :o)

Also, I wouldn't call him a "tester" as he bought the game in early access/kickstarter as a customer. A true " QA tester" would be one of those who gets properly credited in the game and gets paid by the firm like they did in the good old days ^o^. But hey that's just playing on words, next paragraph otherwise it will end up as dictionnary thread... ;)

It's a pity we don't have screenshots of the steam topics where the user was involved, I feel like we're missing one piece of the puzzle :o)

BTW, "censorship" is a big word in this case, I just see one staff member who got upset and pushed the wrong button in rage ^o^ But hey, I keep what I said about the 30$ he insists on because if it was a brick-n-mortar shop, it's usual practice to kick off customers with whom you have an argument (for good or bad reasons).

And about EA, it's the laws of offer&demand, the old "QA testing" system was better but since people are impatient (and a bit naive) I don't see why Valve would change its politics (Hi DayZ standalone....). It reminds me that in the case of "Air Control", the dev was a 20-year old boy with no real established business, so how could Valve care about game technical quality if they don't even check on their business partners?

EDIT: it reminds me that one of the best case was when GOG edited a customer review for Defender's Quest but hey Lars Doucet rocks in the customers care department :o)
http://www.gog.com/game/defenders_quest

While I applauded Kickstarter at first, I'm doubtful I will back another game on it. One of the reasons is this right here. These companies seem to be letting just about anyone deal with the public... and that takes a certain skill along with thick skin. This is not the first person who was unable to deal with negativity towards their "baby". Originally I thought I could only back known devs, but even they let the wrong people out to deal with very important PR issues about their product.

Here is my take as a customer. I'm not got going to be censored by a dev. If you can't handle free press and freedom of speech, don't release a game to the public. Period. No exceptions. Will the entitlement generation never grow up?

Make a good game and people will play it and talk good about it. Ignore the trolls. Fix things provided as constructive criticism. Seems simple to me. Raging about negativity has so many problems, I'm not going to detail it all out... but the short version is, well, it sounds like maybe the dev in question isn't so sure about how great their game really is.

and this is why I don't buy this kind of shite. :D

Perhaps, but if they don't have screenshots or any evidence, they should keep their mouths shut about it as they're potentially liable for a defamation suit. Because that's what they're doing. Now maybe it's accurate and maybe it isn't, but without any actual evidence, they would lose the suit. Especially if they were deleting it.

i dunno, if you read the review in question, its not hard to see its a troll piece.. not much of a review in there at all. There isnt a single line in there describing the game, or getting specific about what is or isnt wrong with it.... just a bloated rant about how this person thinks theyr owed an apology. Theyv kept up actual negative reviews that cite reasons why they dont like the game. But this isnt a review.. its some kind of demand letter. It even opens with the classic troll lines of "heres why im qualified to love this genre and game, now this game is garbage, dont buy it, i dont have to tell you why"

I've noticed PR is very difficult for many KS projects. I think one of the main reasons is, that the project leads are mostly just enthustiastic designers, coders and artists. Then, after they get the money they realise that they need to communicate, and in some cases even the bad stuff as well as the good, so how you say things becomes very important.

The best KS projects are those that have dedicated PR people right from the bat. The communication between the team and the nackers runs through one person, who knows how to handle different situatons and can bring the issues the backers have to the ears of the devs so, that everyone knows the issue and how it will be handeled. Sadly these projects are far and between and even those projects that do it in exmaplery manner at first (like Broken Age) run out of steam at some point and the communication towards backers lessens.

The worst teams just update with poorly worded updates and do it in very uneven fashion, or in worst cases not at all.

There has been no actual censorship here. What happened was that a review got flagged by a moderator, because is received a suspiciously high amount of upvotes (enough to make it the top review) in a short time after the user had bragged about how easy it is to make a ton of alt accounts and said that "it's on now".

http://i.imgur.com/l0XxiVX.png

I'd say that ...