Dippy & Chippy

[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b] Dippy & Chippy is an asset flip, or what Valve calls a "Fake Game". The students paid for/pirated someone else's example/template/tutorial game, changed the name/reskinned a couple of things with assets from the Unity Asset store, and submitted it to Valve (and presumably UCSC) as if it was their own game.[/quote] "Dippy & Chippy" is one of literally thousands of student projects infesting Steam. It's from UCSC in the USA. While student projects tend to be better quality than most "amateur" made games, we must still question what value such projects have for gamers. As with all student projects, this isn't really a fully fleshed out game, it's just the result of an academic exercise, and as such it has much more limited value as a game than a professionally developed game would have. But worse, this is an asset flip... did UCSC condone the unethical, plagiaristic act of "borrowing" stock assets and putting your own name on them? Or did the students think UCSC wouldn't notice them submitting someone else's work as their own game? Either is not okay, not ethically, and definitely not when publishing games on professional shop fronts like Steam. And yes, I checked the game credits. [b]The students did not credit the real creators, and are claiming someone else's assets as their own. This is academic fraud.[/b] Proof, as always, is needed, so you can see the character the students totally didn't create themselves is this [url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/humanoids/fantasy/two-headed-troll-240218?aid=1100lJ2z]Two Headed Troll Asset[/url] that was created by "Willpowaproject" (and not, as they would have you believe, the students). The backdrops and other entities are likewise from various asset store packs, I've seen them in other asset flips. Furthermore, educational institutions should not be using Steam as a dumping ground for homework assignments (especially if the students didn't even pass the course). Sure, it helps their marketing and helps the students feel good about themselves, but this is another case of a business putting themselves before the needs of gamers. Now, getting past that to talk about the "game" (that's what reviews are all about, ethics aside), this is garbage, it's a 2D top down action adventure minigame where the idea is two players are supposed to use one controller. The game graphics look better than you might expect, but that's just because it looks like some or all of them are "borrowed" from asset stores or wherever. Gamers can tell... and it comes across as insincere. There's also the old adage that those who lack the budget and talent to make their own game assets usually lack the budget and talent to do the rest of the job of game development properly, too. Insultingly, the developer insists that you should play this with a console peasant children's toy gamepad instead of KB+M. You cannot play this without a console peasant children's toy. Developers should try to be aware which platform they're designing games for. It's the responsibility of the developer to ensure the game runs well on the platform they're selling it on, with the primary peripherals that PC gamers use. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. It would be heinously unethical for students to try charge money for their homework assignments, so you don't have to pay any money for this. But you'd still have to spend your time downloading this, and "time is money", as they say. So much for the matter of pricing. It's definitely heinously unethical when students plagiarize the work of others. This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too. Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 2 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? Nope. This isn't worth downloading. While this didn't cost me any money up front, I still feel ripped off.