Erentis, l'académie de magie

[quote][b][URL=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware]Spyware Warning![/URL][/b]This game acts as spyware and performs personal data gathering and transmission. There's no immediate apparent way to opt out. This is completely unethical and reprehensible. Gamers must be aware of the dangers of installing this harmful software and should avoid this completely.[/quote] "Erentis, l'académie de magie" is a really badly made, failed French "mmorpg". When you see that a games graphics have been done with MS-Paint, you know you're gonna have a bad time. This features really godawful, lazy MS-Paint "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks bad because of that decision, and that's a major deterrent to gamers. This looks worse than pixelcrap... hard to believe, but it's true. This is "free" enough, 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. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 3 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. [quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says: [quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote] This is shocking. The developer baked spyware into their game and uses it to stalk specific gamers. This is beyond creepy... it's downright sinister. Why is the developer spying on and stalking gamers? This is absolutely disgusting. The developer thinks that by revealing the fact that he's stalking me, he knows this is the only account and only format I played this spyware riddled trojan horse in. The developer is wrong. And it's also irrelevant. In an attempt to discredit the facts and validity of my review the developer seems to think that the game must be played for several hours before determining any objective facts about it. Apparently, before deciding a carton of rancid milk has gone sour, the developer thinks we must drink the whole carton before we're allowed to tell anyone the milk has gone off. What rubbish. [b]Playing a bad game for longer will not make the graphics better, cause the code to change, controls to become better, or fix any bugs or other defects in it.[/b] So why insist the game needs to be played longer? This is simply psychological denial on the part of the developer. If they can attack the review, they can pretend their game doesn't suffer from the defects this review highlights. This is outright delusion, unfortunately. [b]It does not take very long for the defects in this game to become apparent. Playing the game for longer will not change them.[/b] I have amended my review to highlight the dangers of installing this spyware in an attempt to save other gamers from the disgusting stalking displayed by the developer here.