This article originally ran under a different banner/website in November of 2019 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.
As I sit up here in my tiny, humid office, sipping my whiskey, I can only wonder how it got so bad. Ever since I, the Video Game Doomsayer, had taken this job as a private eye in this town, I have seen all sorts of back-alley deals and shady behavior. All committed by the big gaming companies running the show. Many of their spokespeople will claim that they aren’t the monstrous villain that we often portray them as. I’ll even admit that this town isn’t run by jokers, trickster gods, or mad titans. No, the companies in this town are mobsters. They will lie, cheat, steal and murder to grow their empire of rampant greed. All right in front of my very eyes. This year has shown this off more times than I can recall. Take a seat. Pour yourself a drink. As I recall some dirty deeds of the gaming industry.
Surely, most of you have heard about the gang wars between Epic and Valve. While Valve seems asleep at the wheel, Epic has been moving in to smother the dozy kingpin in their sleep. Epic claims it is all to get old man Valve to change its ways and give developers a better cut, but we know from the console wars, exclusives don’t work like that. Microsoft didn’t publish Halo to make Sony do better. It was obviously to sell Xbox’s. While I just accepted the gang war was just part of living in this town, it wasn’t until a young woman came knocking on my door, that I knew the gang war was getting ugly.
She came in with tears ruining her makeup. All she wanted was a Shenmue 3 Steam key. She had kick-started the game back in 2015 long before Epic’s rise to power, but recently Valve informed her she wasn’t getting a key for Shenmue 3. After chasing a few leads, I found that Epic went to developer Ys Net with a large sack of Fortnite money. They enticed them to ditch bringing the game to Steam to become an Epic Store exclusive even though they promised backers there would be a Steam release. After talking with some Valve gang members, I learned this wasn’t the first Kick Starter game to promise a Steam release, only to go back on that promise after Epic made them an offer. Both Phoenix Point and Outer Wilds promised a Steam release when they were initially seeking funding. Only for Epic to come in and alter the deal with a flash of their wallets.
I am not the one to get rowdy when a publisher decides to become Epic exclusive, I will agree that it is especially low for a Kick Starter game to promise a Steam release and then switch sides to Epic. Games sold on kick starter live and die on trust, and when you trade that trust for Fortnite money, I can’t blame backers for wanting a refund. Unfortunately, the developers of these Kick Starter games aren’t refunding unhappy backers; Epic is refunding them. Epic has vowed to refund any backer that is unhappy with a game they funded becoming Epic exclusive. On one hand, it is nice to see backers get refunds for a product they wouldn’t have funded. On the other hand, it feels more like Epic is throwing around their cash to keep people quiet. It certainly feels like Epic doesn’t want to make too much noise as they strangle old-man Valve in his bed. That’s unfortunately just business in this town.
As I walked home from the PC Gaming district, a young woman approached me balling her eyes out. To get her out of the rain, we ducked into a local pub. I got her a drink to calm her and asked her what was troubling her. She told me about her Assassin Creed Odyssey quest she had created. A feature was added to the game to allow players to create their own quests and missions. Having become tired of the grind to gain experience in Assassin Creed Odyssey, she created a mini gauntlet to allow players the chance to level up if they were skilled. She had worked tirelessly on this level, attempting to strike the right balance of fair yet challenging. She was really proud of it, and many players enjoyed it.
Ubisoft came knocking at her door on a weary night. The second she opened the door, goons flooded into her apartment. They seized the quest. They began to dose it in gasoline, only to have it burst into flames the second one of the thugs dropped a lit match. They told her to knock it off with the exploits, or she ends up at the bottom of the river. She was so confused. Poor girl didn’t understand why they called her quest an exploit. She just thought an exciting boss rush that granted players a large amount of experience was what Assassin Creed Odyssey needed.
I had to break it to her. The Ubisoft gang is notorious for making their sandboxes grindy, so they can sell you an experience boost for extra cash. They probably saw her quest as a free alternative to their revenue-generating methods. Naturally, they couldn’t have that, so they did what any thug would do: destroy the competition. I told her there was nothing I could do. Ubisoft owns Assassin Creed Odyssey. I offered her my condolences. Broken and defeated, she slunk out of the bar into the cold rain. Poor girl, all she wanted was to skip the grind.
As I was about to pay the tab, a shady figure slipped into the booth across from me. He grabbed my arm and asked for a few minutes of my time. Wanting to not cause any trouble, I sat back down. The figure said he was a representative from G2A; I immediately told him I wasn’t interested in any of his fraudulent game keys. I know of the damage G2A causes selling game keys obtained with stolen credit cards. It usually causes developers to lose money having to pay the chargeback. The snake-like rep reassured me the keys G2A sold are legitimate keys, just before telling me he needed my help.
The rep told me about how a couple of developers were being vocal about having people pirate their games rather than purchasing them from G2A. I told the rep I agreed with that statement causing him to shoot a dirty look across the table. Turns out he knew I had some connections to some of the media in town. He was hoping I could persuade them to publish this article he had written for them, proclaiming that selling fraudulent keys on G2A was impossible. What made the already tasteless deal even harder to sell, was they wanted the article to not be marked as sponsored or marked with associates to G2A. I chuckled at his offer, knowing every journalist I knew would scoff at me if I went to them. I told him that even though most gangs owned the press, nobody would be dumb enough to publish this puff piece. He stormed out in a huff leaving me to settle my tip with the bartender.
I wish I could say that there are some happy endings in this town. Sure, you might hear a story of Nintendo refunding a family whose kids emptied their bank accounts on FIFA loot boxes. Too bad those stories are drowned out by stories of mobile developers refusing to refund families in the same situation. This town is rotten down to the deep center. While I would like to say my efforts have been fruitful, I know I am only a small stone trying to stem an even bigger tide. The bad apples have infected the whole farm and guess who is paying for all the apples. We are. All we can do is sit as the enviable march towards the end carries on. Only whispering the end is nigh.