Eight Random Bad Things in or Around the Video Games Industry

Welcome to eight random bad things in or around the video game industry, this is just a quick look at eight random things that are bad, annoying, frustrating, down right stupid or just down right insulting to anyone with half a brain. This is just eight random things there are many more bad applies and issues that the video games industry has.

Valve have a long history of developing some of the best video games ever made, with the likes of the Left 4 Dead games, Team Fortress, Portal and of course the Half Life series. The company has largely moved away from video game development in recent years with the company focussing on their Steam client and digital store.

Steam is considered by some for saving the PC gaming industry, while some find that the sheer size of the Steam store stifles competition. In addition the physical copies for PC games are now next to existence, for those who prefer to own the physical copy of the game.

The major issue however with Valve and Steam is the actual state of the store front in recent years. The influx of asset flipping developers, and those that simply upload premade game assets, the multiple releases that were just the UnitZ starter kit being one of the most notable of these.

The UnitZ starter kit was designed to be a base for a developer to build it further and make their own mark on the base asset, and not what the many scummy so called game developers did instead and put up an asset as a full game and charging money for it.

The various UnitZ clones were released on Steam via Steam Greenlight, a system where developers are able to put up information on their game as well as trailers and early builds or beta version. There was a $100 fee to get your game on Greenlight, once the game was added to Greenlight users would be able to vote for the game they liked, the more votes a game received the more likely the game would be green lit.

At first the number of games being green lit was fairly small with developers critical of the lack of games being green lit. in 2013 Valve stated that they recognised that its role in Greenlight was perceived as a bottleneck, something the company was planning to eliminate in the future through an open marketplace infrastructure.

Which translate as we are going to let thousands of games on the Steam store with little or no oversight. The recently implemented Steam Direct does not seem to be much better with plenty of tripe getting onto the Steam Store.

The ESRB are the organisation created by the games industry to regulate the age ratings for video games, you will have likely seen the ESRB rating on the front of a game you have purchased. These ranging from Everyone to Teen and up to Adult Only 18+.

The ESRB however is not really an organisation to be relied up or trusted as it is a self regulatory body for the games industry, which means the games industry regulates itself, something that never works. This is demonstrated well by the ESRB’s recent approach to the Loot Box and microtransaction debacle.

The ESRB’s approach to the loot and microtransaction farce is to slap another label on the cover starting weather or not the game has loot boxes or in game purchases. Something that is completely pointless as the vast majority of games released have some form of DLC.

What makes this worse is those companies and games that do DLC and additional content right, a company like CD Projekt Red and The Witcher 3 a game that proves DLC and additional content can be done right, will be lumped in with the likes of EA, Ubisoft, Activision and Konami and their money grabbing ways.

Digital Homicide are next up, ah Digital Homicide, the video game developer that will be remembered as the halfwit losers who through it would be a good idea to sue Jim Sterling for $10 million dollars, a figure which would eventually rise to $15 million dollars, with the Romine’s claiming that Sterling had inflicted assault, libel, and slander.

Digital Homicide also known as Imminent Uprising and ECC Games and probably several more names were a video game developers (I had to stop for about 15 minutes hear due to laughing so much). Owned by the halfwit pair of Robert and James Romine who took their stupidity one step further when trying to sue 100 steam users for $18 million dollars for personal injury due to the users leaving negative comments.

Thankfully on this one occasion Steam actually got off their arses and did something, with Steam removing all of Digital Homicides games from the platform. Soon after both the Jim Sterling lawsuit and the Steam users lawsuit were dropped as of late 2016 Digital Homicide are not more, and may the Romine’s never set foot in the games industry ever again.

Digital Homicide were a plague on the games industry, for the less than two years that they were in the industry. They released around 22 games, all being buggy asset flips, there most well known games are The Slaughtering Grounds and Temper Tantrum, but that being said they were all as bad as each other

EA who should also be known as Extreme Arseholes are well known for being regarded as one of the worst companies in the world, with EA being awarded the The Consumerist award for the Worst Company in America in not only 2012 but 2013 as well. And thus becoming the only company to earn the award twice, with EA seeing off Bank of America on both occasions.

Since their worst company awards they have continued to pile on the crap, the most recent of which is the closure of yet another studio in Visceral Games (You will be remembered) and of course the Star Wars Battlefront II lootstorm, and EA making the game a pay to win model and as a result pissing off a heck of a lot of people.

Some good that came out of this pile of crap was the truth that the AAA games industry does not need microtransactions in order to make money, as admitted by EA themselves to shareholders, with EA saying Battlefront II will meet financial expectations even without loot boxes.

While I don’t like naming individual people, there are exception especially if they are complete and utter morons, take the Romine’s above, and in the case of EA that exception is Blake Jorgensen who’s response to the microtransactions in Battlefront II not being cosmetic only was.

So if you did a bunch of cosmetic things, you might start to violate the canon. Darth Vader in white probably doesn't make sense, versus in black. Not to mention you probably don't want Darth Vader in pink. No offense to pink, but I don't think that's right in the canon, which firmly put him in the moron category.

While we are on with EA lets have a minutes silence for the game studios that have been slaughtered by the Video game industry equivalent of a serial killer, so everyone remember them because EA sure as hell don’t care about them.

Bullfrog Productions, Westwood Studios (rest in peace Command & Conquer), Pandemic Studios (Currently turning in its grave after Star Wars Battlefront II, Maxis, Origin Systems, Playfish, Visceral Games and countless other studios.

Any company or individual who abused the DMCA system to take down criticism of their game or games, this is a major issue on platforms like Youtube. For those who abuse the system and especially those who abuse the system multiple times, then strong legal measures should be enforced more strictly, especially since the DMCA legislation has criminal provisions, maybe some very large fines are in order for DMCA abusers maybe even prison for some of the more extreme and blatant abuses of the system to help deter and future DMCA abusers.

Panzer Gaming Studios which brought the world the woeful survival horror game Time Ramesside (A New Reckoning) and the equally dismal X-17 a first and third person shooter according to the steam description although none of the screenshots or preview video show any kind of third person gameplay.

This last and most recent game developed by Panzer Gaming Studios which entered early access back in March of 2016 and remains so to this day, with no updates on the game coming since April of 2016. This is not a bad thing however and hopefully this will be the end of Panzer and the owner Jason the kickstart failure Welge.

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Lying developers otherwise known as the Molyneux infection mostly occurs at one of the major press conferences that occur throughout the year. For example the uproar over the first Watch Dogs game and the massive downgrade in visuals.

The Molyneux infection can afflict any developer at any time, it is a disease that is indiscriminate in who it infects, one such victim of this moronic disease was of course Randy Pitchford and his hyping up of the impending release of Aliens Colonia Marines a game that would turn out to be a pile of garbage that even rats would throw up at the sight of.

Another one that falls into this category is of course No Man’s Sky the vast array of features that were said to be in the game in various interviews by Hello Games boss Sean Murray. While not all blame can be lumped on Sean Murray as the massive amount of hyping of the game was simply too much, with so many expecting the game to be a video game industry altering release as a result the final product could never live up to all of the hype and expectations.

All of the morons that start whining about violence in video games turning people into killers., mostly looking at parents who can’t follow a simple age rating system, don’t pay any attention to what their kids are doing and would rather police everybody else’s enjoyment instead. And don’t’ forget out overpaid and quite often overweight politicians that know fuck all about anything, probably not even how to wipe their own arses. Oh and don’t forget the parasitic leeches that latch on to the various tragedy's that scum like Jack Thompson latch on to.