Amarok Dreams Demo

[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtransaction]Warning: In-Game Cash Shop[/url][/b] This game is infested with a toxic mobile app style cash shop. You will be prompted to and expected to give money/credit card details to the developers through this cash shop to buy in-game goods so you can play the game.[/quote] [quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b] "Amarok Dreams Demo" is one of literally thousands of creatively bankrupt asset flips/kitbashes infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere.[/quote] "Amarok Dreams Demo" is not a game in itself, instead it's a demo/advertisement for a basic asset flip, kitbashed out of a bunch of someone else's game assets all thrown in a blender. This is creatively bankrupt stuff, effectively plagiarism, and it's bad for everyone. If you consider "Amarok Dreams", the product this is advertising, but doesn't exist, it was just an incredibly lame first person horror jumpscare asset flip... even if it did exist, you wouldn't want to buy it. The developer directly stole the soundtrack of this game, a deliberate for-profit act of intellectual property theft and copyright infringement. In some cases, copyright infringement can carry penalties of up to $250,000 and up to 5 years in prison. It is wrong to steal the intellectual property of others. This game is fairly dated at 6 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. As an advertisement, this is only free in the same way that adverts on Youtube and banner ads in your browser are. This is a game demo that's been dumped on Steam to advertise another Steam store page in the hopes of raking in some cash. Just because advertisements are free, doesn't mean they're worth your time. In fact, this advert isn't free... WHY DOES AN ADVERTISEMENT NEED AN IN GAME CASH SHOP?????? This is disgusting. It's important to understand there's a formal process to create a demo/page for a game which hasn't been followed here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/demos While it might seem like an inocuous mistake, publishing demos and advertisements as if they are full games is misleading and in some ways harmful. This advertisement is taking up marketing space and visibility that would be better made available to a developer that's done the right thing and created a full game. Instead, that visibility is given over to a demo/advert that's been published incorrectly and is polluting the marketplace. It's unclear if this mistake was made through incompetence or a deliberate intent to mislead gamers. Often developers may choose to incorrectly publish demo/advertisements as separate games as a cheap way to bypass paying Valve for marketing presence on the Steam front page, which may seem clever to them, but it's harmful behaviour and it's not good for gamers. In terms of public reception, the "free" price tag didn't help. This peaked at a handful of users and then immediately cratered. With a peak count of less than 50 gamers (out of over 130 million gamers and over 40 million daily logons), it’s safe to say the PC gaming community has collectively decided to ignore this, probably because of the reasons supplied in this review. Advertisements and incorrectly published demos don't add +1 to your game collector count, they aren't full games. It's impossible for me to recommend this incorrectly published advertising spam to gamers, you deserve better than adverts.