Greetings, Stopgame readers. I’m new here and I will be glad if you support my first article on this site. I decided that you don’t have a better place for it than the “Reviewers’ Blog”. Video version with more detailed explanations at the end of the text.
Just recently I came across the domestic game Highly Likely, which reminded me of my favorite series of quest games “Petka”. Without hesitation, I went to Steam and found out that: “This product is not available in your region.“This is some kind of nonsense,” I thought, but through a YouTube friend I managed to get the key intended for the review. And then there’s a misfire, the key cannot be activated in your region. By hook or by crook, I decided to find out with the game developer why the game is not available in Ukraine, because the flavor of the game is clearly Ukrainian. And I received a response in personal messages from Steam: “No comment”. And to the rest of the questions – about the team, finances (which we will talk about later) – I received only sarcastic answers about fabulous earnings and millions online.
I was outraged by this behavior of the “face of the project” and I decided to study the information about the game better. What came of it – further point by point.
1. Trolling on political grounds
The game is positioned as “2D Adventure in surrealism format, about a funny and slightly naive character named Mikola, who is trying his best to save his farm.“At the same time, the author deftly uses political cliches, showing the hero as a Cossack in red trousers with the skills of stealing oil from the nearest pipe and with a love of strong drinks. All this is seasoned with mockery of words, as, for example, in GG it is not “zhinka” (wife in Ukrainian), but “zhynka”, and the hero’s name is not “Mykola” (the Ukrainian version of the name Nikolai), but “Mikola”. Agree, it’s funny. I won’t go too deep into the political context. Those interested can study the comments here, where a representative of Highly Likely wanted to get into the Indie Jam without studying the rules. Probably, the developer believes that it is appropriate to promote himself in the name of a competition for aspiring game makers, where, according to the participation criteria, he cannot apply. And before making statements that the game is not related to politics, but is based on surrealism, the developer should first become familiar with the signs of this cultural movement, for example here.
And this is not the first case of trolling. For some reason the game maker decided to butt heads with the administration of the Ukraine group, for which he was successfully banned there.
After which the developer “thanked” this Steam group in his post. It looks like the resentment of a child whose toy was taken away from him in the sandbox. But let’s move on to more serious things.
2. Ban games on Ukrainian Steam
https://kaiser-slots.co.uk/games/ />A representative of the game on various platforms has repeatedly said that their game is banned from Ukrainian Steam.
As you can see, at first the author directly said that the game was banned, and after the release he stopped commenting on what was happening. The official website in both Russian and English proudly states that the game is banned in Ukraine.
Even more, this was also proudly written about on the official Twitter on January 7, even before the game’s release on January 23, but the post was erased. But the cache saved it, look:
I wondered – what’s going on, who’s not saying what?. I think it’s clear to a child who banned the game for purchase. Let’s go to the game’s page in the SteamDB database, where it is written that on December 9, the creator of the game himself blocked the game in Ukraine.
You will think: “Probably the players will fall for such a PR move.”?”. I dare to disappoint you and will further show you what results this led to.
3. Feminists, speak up!
You thought that was all? If only… Our brave developer even managed to “fight” with feminists. The short story is this: “purely by chance” team member Ivan decided to write official appeals to several feminist organizations regarding the presence of disadvantaged female characters in the game. Like, to prevent future problems after the game’s release. And no one from the development team stopped him. This is all described in more detail in the project blog.
Most likely, such an initiative humanistic step by Ivan is nothing more than an action planned within the team, since the same Highly Likely member on Reddit still shamelessly promotes the game there. But this did not produce any effect, as representatives of Mikola Games themselves write about in their blog. I found only one entry about this incident on the not very popular English-language gaming site “One Angry Gamer,” where the author of the column correctly noted: “Game creators should focus on the target audience. There’s no point in asking reviews from people who won’t buy the game.”Which I completely agree with. And now let’s move on to the culmination of the Marlezon ballet.
4. Advertising is the choice of suckers. Cheating and freeloaders – the choice of the masters
How to best promote an indie game? Maybe advertise to a target audience or send the game to famous YouTubers for review? Or maybe ask the gaming media (not always free, of course) to tell their users about the game? “Of course not, only suckers do that.”!” – thought the Highly Likely team. It’s better to give away more than 150 copies of the game on the giveaway site and hold a drawing for 105 Steam gift cards with a total value of 190 thousand. rub., info here, which after the drawing turned into 106 gift cards worth 136,500 rubles., calculations here (do not close this link, it will be useful to us). And then the developer was caught in a lie. Moreover, some of the gifts were received by interested parties (yes, random works like that), which will be discussed further.
How many players, in your opinion, who received the game or money as a gift, wrote a review of it?? Maybe 5%, or at worst 1%? The answer about 1% would be close to the truth, all that remains is to remove the percent sign. 1 person, Karl! We managed to get only one positive review after such manipulations. I’m ashamed to even count how much it will be as a percentage.
And now the culmination of the action: the game designer was caught cheating game reviews on Steam. Yes, in such a way that more than 90% of reviews at the time of writing were purchased or written by interested parties. How will I prove it? Yes easily.
I previously came across a topic on writing reviews on the well-known site Youhack and decided to look there again, just in case. In this topic, the author suggests withdrawing your wallet balance from Steam without losses (average losses when withdrawing funds from a Steam wallet are 20-30%), writing a positive review. Just on January 23 (the release date of the game on Steam), a forum user writes (the spelling, punctuation and style of the author are preserved): “RECRUITING FOR A NEW, HYIP PROJECT. WRITE TO CONTACT US. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A BALANCE, BUT WE HAVE ALREADY WORKED WITH YOU, STILL WRITE.”
There, if you register, in a hidden message we find the Steam profile of the author of the post, whose friends include the game developer. I attach all screenshots: