[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b]
喘息2 is a Digital Homicide style asset flip, or what Valve calls a "Fake Game". The "developer" paid for/pirated a few Unreal Marketplace assets, dumped them all in a blender, and submitted it to Valve as if they're real game developers.[/quote]
Two notable criteria for what makes an asset flip instead of legitimate use of stock assets are whether those assets comprise the majority of the game, and whether the "developer" properly credited the people who created most of the assets in the game. This game fails both of those tests. The "developers" here didn't credit any of the artists and real, actual game developers who created the assets here, so this is plagiarism, as well as cash grab shovelware.
In this case, the asset flipper took a random bunch of Unreal Marketplace assets and slapped them on a basic third person adventure game blueprint... it's well known when a developer isn't able to create their own quality assets, it turns out they can't do any of the other important parts of game development properly either, like level design, optimisation, bug fixing... etc etc. Definitely the case with this shady Chinese developer. It has no value or merit as a real game.
This kind of asset flipping isn't harmless. It makes it harder for gamers to find genuinely made games from ethical developers. It makes it harder for genuine indie developers, who put hard work into trying to make real games, to find an audience for their products. It gives indie developers a bad name.
喘息2 has no upfront cost (now) but the developer was trying to scam people out of money, trying to get paid for someone else's Unreal assets. This kind of thing is never okay. At the very least, it's plagiarism.
Just because something doesn't have a price tag doesn't mean it's valuable. This isn't worth downloading. While this won't cost you any money, you get what you pay for, and sometimes, even when the game is free, it's still not enough.
