[Quote][b][URL=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware]Spyware Warning![/URL][/b]
This software acts as spyware and performs personal data gathering and transmission. This is completely unethical and reprehensible. Gamers must be aware of the dangers of installing this harmful software and should avoid this completely.[/Quote]
Cyber Story is not a game. Games contain meaningful gamelike interaction and game loops, which are absent in this software.
Instead of being a game, Cyber Story is a software application that provides basic training scenarios for school teachers and administrators in dealing with cyberbullying scenarios. And as always, while the topic is an important one, it's also important that software is published correctly.
There's also the important aspect of when it's useful for gamers for software to be published on Steam, and this software isn't intended for gamers. So why is it here? It's intended for schools... and here's a thing, if I'm an I/T admin for a school, and I haven't firewalled off Steam, I would expect to be fired pretty quickly. How on earth is anyone in a properly administered school supposed to get this software if Steam is (correctly) blocked from access for both students and staff?
Also, you know, this isn't even particularly well made software, and a bad tool does a bad job.
And wow, the spying. The sheer irony of software intended to combat online abuse [i]being used for online abuse and spying[/i] is incredible.
Sure, the developers make the completely false claim that nothing "sensitive" is harvested, but that's BS. IP addresses and other information that they collect can 100% be combined with other data about you as part of profiling actions. The developers will make the claim "but we're nice and we don't!". You should not trust them; If they were trustworthy, [i]they would not have trojaned this software with spyware in the first place.[/i] Judge them by their actions (embedding spyware "telemetry" in the product), not their easily disproven words.
Back to the main problem, this isn't a game.
For those unfamiliar with what actually makes something a game, a "game loop" describes the interaction and feedback a gamer has when playing a game. Tetris, for example, has a game loop where a random block appears, the gamer interacts with the block to position it, and then the game decides if that finishes a row or not, increases the players score if any rows were completed, then gives the gamer another block to position. Counter-Strike has a game loop where a player seeks another player, tests their skill against that player by shooting them or being shot, the computer rewards the player if they win, and then if the player survives, they repeat that loop. There's no loop here, no true interactive feedback. It simply is not a game, it cannot be "played".
This has misleadingly been launched in the "Games" section of Steam instead of the "Software" section. This is a common mistake for developers who are new to Steam, or don't understand the difference between games and software which isn't a game. It seems this software published incorrectly as a game is simply lack of experience/knowledge of the correct process.
Here's a link for the process to publish non-game software on Steam:
[url=https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithPublishing?issueid=925]Steam Developer Help With Software Publishing[/url]
It's unfortunate this process was not known about/followed, resulting in a software application being published in the wrong place.
Publishing things which aren't games on Steam in the Games section as games is misleading to gamers and somewhat harmful, because it pollutes the Steam marketplace and takes away visibility and market exposure for genuine game developers who do the right thing and make games for gamers.
There are no gameplay loops in this software, no "gameplay", no meaningful game like interaction. It's a software application and as such has no merits as a video game for gamers. Because of this, I cannot recommend this non-game software as a game to gamers.
