Steam Has A BIG Problem, But This Dev Fought BACK!

Time for a tale of glorious justice on Steam, where a developer managed to catch out the scammers.

00:00 Intro
00:35 The Story - Scamming The Scammers
10:04 The Platform - Valve Finally Paid Attention

[Cowcatgames]

Hey, thanks for the video! I dedicated 6 years of my life making BROK. It had a great launch even before all this happened, and I'm happy to report their action had the total opposite effect that they intended, resulting in even more attention to the game :p

[SolantisA]

To be fair, as someone who is planning on releasing the first build of his game... I haven't even considered the steam curators as eligible candidates for free keys 😂 I almost forgot that it's actually a thing that still being used by anyone... Like, who's even looking at those when you can find a reviewer on YT...

[Thanatosthunder]

When a scammer gets scammed back they got what was coming to them

[rayout]

Many of the problems can already be fixed or reduced by simply distributing expiring keys.
There is no reason that a press/promo/review key should last forever and you can already do that -.-

[ashfordthunder]

This game is fantastic by the way, one the best point n click I have played. The detective aspect is great, multiple ending, and quite lengthy for an indie, 13-15 hours for a single playthrough. Heavily recommend.

[karuzozweihander]

The scammer thought he could scam a dev

But the dev outscammed the scammer's outscamming?

[casedistorted]

As a curator on Steam I didn’t even know you could request keys from game devs. Sadly think I’ve legit reviewed a few thousand games now.. too bad I had a larger comment about this but it kept getting deleted by their auto moderation settings on YouTube. There are a few of us who use the system legitimately but it is a very tedious process because valve won’t update steam to be more user-friendly

[warhammerguy]

Cynical Brit still being the top curator is kinda bittersweet.
We miss you TB :, (

[Rikaishi]

As a person who has an interest in a niche genre it is extremely helpful to have a curator who tracks all of the games which fall in to that niche and quickly describes exactly how each game treats that subject. Without curators like these, getting this specific information you want about new games would otherwise require hours of research or just not be accessible, and a lot of relevant games would simply slip by unnoticed. I would have wasted a lot of time and money on games that delivered a bad experience and been unable to support devs creating the content I want to see.

Shoutout to the Hella Yuri admin. You rock!

[draigaur]

When TB past, I stopped using curators on steam, I go by player reviews, and I usually try to do a mix of recommended and not, to see if it’s my type of thing.

[Sinebeast]

TB still the #1 curator got a big bittersweet chuckle from me.
It's a good a thing he doesn't have to see what the gaming industry is becoming. He would have gone apeshit.

[lapislarka]

This pretty well nailed explaining the fishiness I felt when first encountering Steam Curators. I looked for close to an entire day and couldn't find a single negative review. I wrote off all curators that day that I did not know externally to Steam or could not be traced somehow.

It seems like a shame when they could actually be kind of useful and entertaining. Imagine your favorite reviewer has a curator page you can check right on Steam or you see their pop ups on the store pages.

[Shadednecros]

Wouldn't it be possible to Valve to introduce a curator key system where the keys only unlock a game for a limited time? Would give actual curators ample time to get play the game and get their review ready.

[edwardtan]

And when the algo picks up the very first reviews you see "Hey Hey People"

[TheKinren]

My favorite curator is Commander Shepherd on Steam. He recommends every game.

[anonony]

Rip the cynical Brit the only curator that I actually found useful

[Samurai-Inferno]

Just went to buy the game to help this guy out.

[LegacyArkGames]

I just hope the bad apples don't ruin those of us who do rely upon keys from developers in return for giving publicity. My channel tends to showcase games I think are accessible for disabled gamers much like myself, but being disabled, I'd never be able to keep the library full. Every game gets reviewed, but I give each their fair time, which means there's a queue. That's just how I've worked, but I have a great relationship with many developers and even went around to eventually working with the accessibility divisions for XBox and Ubisoft. Note that I'm not a Steam Curator, but just my two cents for whatever it's worth. We're not all thieves, important to remember.

[cptncutleg]

I propose a system to have a "Curator Account" which could be granted a key for a game for a limited time period (say, 2 weeks) which would allow the person to play with no limits, but once that time is up would force the curator to write a comprehensive review before allowing them to apply for another key.
The curator account would be seperated from the main store and could only hold one game at a time.

[WillHuizenga]

I know skillup has been working on trying to revive the curator section. Hope this helps.