Frag Grounds

[b][quote]Warning: Highly Unethical Developer/Scammer[/quote][/b] The "developer" of this game entered a financial disagreement with a third party key seller. When such disagreements occur, the "developer" has two choices. 1. Resolve the issue with the third party (through debt collection or just taking them to court). 2. Behave like a three year old, throw a tantrum and revoke all the keys that paying customers have. One of these is a reasonable course of action that resolves the problem. The other is an immature, gamer hostile tantrum that only results in pissed off gamers and completely burning all industry and customer goodwill. In one single stroke, this developer scammed gamers out of keys they legitimately paid for and at the same time completely eviscerated their brand and their career in game development. Scammers and hacks that screw over gamers to this extent become famous, their actions hang like an albatross around their neck and this appaling, toxic action will always be associated with their name in the industry. [b]The damage they have done cannot be repaired and will haunt them for the rest of their very short career[/b]. This financial dispute happened THREE YEARS AGO. This isn't a new thing. The developer had ample time to correct their internal problem. They just deliberately chose to screw over gamers and to make sure people know. But let's face it, the developer has already been acting unethically. They sold keys to this game into game bundles knowing full well it wasn't complete, but wanted it to be sold and misrepresented as if it was a complete game. That's fraudulent and misleading - it's the action of a scammer. It's equally unethical for the developer to continue to try scamming gamers into buying the game when they abandoned it, but they did. The game itself is very clearly just a Digital Homicide style Unreal engine asset flip, dumped on Steam as a minimum viable product/cash grab, with no serious merit as a game for gamers. These are the actions of a completely and utterly morally bankrupt individual, scamming gamers out of money and then revoking access to the already defective game they made the unfortunate mistake of buying. The only thing that got fragged in Frag Grounds turned out to be the developers career. At least future gamers and employers can now be warned not to go anywhere near this toxic indiviual. As always gamers, stay safe out there and don't buy products from unethical developers, because you're putting your money at risk, as this debacle clearly illustrates. [b]Original review follows:[/b] Frag Grounds is an abandoned Early Access FPS arena shooter with a militaristic "tacti-cool" theme. There's a multiplayer mode (no players) and a wave survival shooter mode where you start in a building and dozens of completely identical AI come running at you for you to shoot. The developers abandoned the game less than a year after it launched to the sound of crickets. The last update for the game was in April 2021. The quality here is deplorably bad despite the venerable Unreal Engine backing the game. It looks like many of the game assets are just asset flips from the Unreal Asset Store. Despite being dead and abandoned, the developers are somewhat insultingly trying to scam gamers out of a whopping $18 USD for this asset flip nightmare. While this game is still in Early Access, the developers made the unethical decision to sell keys in bulk for this game to bundle retailers (DailyIndieGame), where they knew it would be sold in bundles as a complete game, in an apparently deliberate attempt to mislead gamers, just to harvest as much money as possible for a failed product. Very often this is used as an exit strategy by unethical developers attempting to recover sunken costs as part of completely abandoning a game, which seems to be the case here. As such, this game can safely be categorised as an asset flip/cash grab scam and should be avoided.