catpower1980: For 10.000$ per month (cf. his patreon) a lot of people would gladly act like an asshole. It's nearly the salary of some of our ministers (without the advantages though)

jefequeso: It's actually not too big a deal. He made a video about my game The Moon Sliver and didn't like it. I said he could have at least put a link to the game in his video description. You know, just as a common courtesy, in case a few out of his vitriol-laden viewers actually wanted to check it out. And he just fluffed me off. I believe his exact words were "Yeah. Didn't though."

Maybe "asshole" is a bit of a strong word, but it's a surprisingly sore spot for me. Yeah, it's all well and good to go on about "that's what comes from charging money for something" and "you need a thick skin to be a game developer," but at the end of the day, no matter how prepared you are it's incredibly disheartening for someone with that much power and clout to treat your hard work like a joke, and you like an inconsequential piece of garbage. And for thousands of that person's peons to all be trying to out-hyperbole each other about what sort of horrible diseases your game inflicted upon them. Especially since that most draining, frustrating part of being an indie developer is already trying to convince people that you're more than an inconsequential piece of garbage.

The store page is extremely clear about what the game is, precisely because I didn't want to deal with people who hate "walking simulators" purchasing it and hating it simply because they aren't in tune with the sort of experience it's supposed to provide. You know, live and let live.

jefequeso: Regarding criticism, though... I think it's also fair to point out that a lot of what people call "critique" is just mean-spirited and/or pointless. Someone writing a long, detailed explaination of why they didn't like your game? Good feedback, completely justified, should be treated with respect. Someone writing "your game sucks, you suck, go die in a fire?" That's not critique, or criticism. That's just being a jackass, and frankly, I don't think creators SHOULD have to put up with that. They do, and that's never going to change... but still.

jepsen1977: I searched for your game via Steam auto-search thingy but nothing came up

Novotnus: Remember it's Moon Sliver, not Moon Silver :)

Novotnus: Remember it's Moon Sliver, not Moon Silver :)

catpower1980: Funnily enough, while playing the game, I had to look up the meaning of "sliver" in a dictionnary because it's not a common English term for foreigners (thus that's why there is a confusion with "silver"). The only time I came up with that word was 20 years ago when the Sharon Stone's movie came up on video. Ah, those memories ^o^
https://youtu.be/imz_sdExOTE

gamesfreak64: aha now i understand, thanks for the reply, so popularity of a product is what counts and not the quality of a product.
so basically you could have a 'crappy' game with lets say 4 squares bouncing around, no graphics no animations, but as long as the game manages to get popular, then it is okay ?

okay its perfectly clear now, thanks again for the reply it has been very helpful, i voted it up.

jepsen1977: I searched for your game via Steam auto-search thingy but nothing came up and then I typed in the entire title and your game + your second one did came up. So I got your first game via Steam and your second one via IndieGala and I will look forward to playing them both - and no, I'm not gonna ask for a refund for a short game.

I really hate when people like Sterling abuse the power he has to bully small indie devs. Now don't get me wrong, a game you pay money for must be fit for purpose but price is also a factor and I am willing to overlook minor issues if a game is indie. It comes down to if the game has a "soul" or a creative vision that you as a gamer can sense. That's why most of us love Obsidian because even if they always make very flawed and buggy games it always feel like their games have a soul or strong creative vision that shines through all the bugs.

jamyskis: No, no and no. In no free market do you get brownie points or get cut some slack just for "trying". If I commissioned a translator to translate a text for me, and that translation was full of translation, spelling and grammar errors (and there are plenty of them), under no circumstances would I call it a "decent first effort" or cut him slack for "trying".

It's a simple fact: He. Charged. Money. It is a commercial product. It was a business transaction. If individuals choose to "go easy" on him because it was his first attempt, that's a matter of goodwill - what we call in Germany "Kulanz". But it is the good right of any customer to complain and raise awareness of generally shoddy workmanship.

I'm a translator. If I make the odd comprehension mistake, or miss out a word, then I would hope that the client will extend to me a little latitude for such minor missteps. But if I chucked a translation into Google Translate, ironed out a few of the obvious creases and sent it off as is, then I needn't wonder if the client refused to pay or filed a lawsuit.

jefequeso: Ok, look... charging money for something gives consumers the right to critique your product, and to purchase or not purchase it. Practically, it also means that you're opening yourself up to hostility. But it doesn't give them the right to treat you like a free punching bag, just because they don't like your product. You know the Steam community as well as I do. You KNOW this wasn't caused by a bunch of genuine negative critique or thoughtful feedback. This was caused by people being dicks, as people bafflingly tend to be toward developers they deem unworthy of basic human respect. And, big surprise, eventually the developer had a public meltdown. Does this excuse his behavior? No, it doesn't. But, if I may use a rather hyperbolized analogy, you can blame someone for walking down a dark alley alone, but the mugger that attacks them is probably a little bit at fault too.

Psyringe: I'm not sure why your text quoted mine, it does not seem to be related?

I explicitly said that the product was worth the money that people paid for it. So I'm not sure where your strong rejection of "brownie points for just trying" is coming from and why it appears to be addressed at me.

If you disagree, then feel free to point out why exactly the game would not be worth 9 cents (for the people who bought it from DIG), or a dollar.

DCT: Sadly it's not just the steam community that is like that but the internet in general. People like to think the anonymity of the net grants them license to be the kind of pricks they wish they can be in real life.

Psyringe: The people who "complained" about the game, paid between 9 cents and a dollar for it, depending on where they got it from. The game is worth that. Yes it's very bare-bones, yes it could have been slapped together on a weekend (though. given that it was the dev's first game, I don't think it was), but a dollar (or a fraction of that) for a weekend's worth of work is _very_ far from greedy. If you don't think so, then please give me your phone number, I would like to immediately hire you for all kinds of stuff.

DeathDiciple: I'm really getting sick of the whole gamers are evil, devs need special treatment thing. You're selling a product, they bought your product, they wrote a review about it. It could be useful, it could be stupid, whatever. If your target audience is not satisfied with a product it bought it has all the rights to complain.

And I don't know about the rest of the world, but where I'm from, muggers take money from you, they don't pay you. They're the one that sold a black box, claiming it's something it is not. It's fully within the right of a person that bought that black box to return it and bitch about it being bad. The whole slew of anti-customer practices in gaming made people believe they're above not just customer rights, but common sense as well.

If I apply for a IT job that's paid on completion and fail to deliver acceptable quality product, I don't get paid. If I fail to cover my work-hours or make progress in a company/team I work for I get fired. Noone pays me for trying. Likewise, if I act unprofessionally and throw tantrums around ruining the team I'll get kicked. They won't care about 'hurting my feelings'. And there's way more stress and pressure than a couple of Steam teen reviews can cause. Try spending years working on something, economic crisis hits, investors pull out, everything you worked for falls to pieces, back to point zero, tough luck.

Gaming dev entry barrier has became lower than ever, so we simply get people in that are completely incompetent and unprofessional, in both development aspect and behavior one. If someone is incapable of dealing with the pressure they can hire a PR. Supporting devs that act like this is just going to hurt the reputation of indies altogether.