[quote][b]Warning: Dead/Scam Game[/b]
The developers for this game removed almost all content and multiplayer functions from this game. They persist in selling the game in a deliberately broken state as an intentional scam.[/quote]
The allegation that any game is a scam is very serious, but in this case warranted. Please read on to see why this is a scam.
"Legends of Callasia" is an old mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs trying to cash in on abandoned app store stuff. The mobile app was a deckbuilding card game that featured multiplayer and single player modes, but the developer, from the onset, set out to mislead gamers through a number of dishonest and predatory practices.
The developer deliberately and misleadingly advertised the game as completely free. This was a lie, as the developers only offered a free demo. The full features and content for the game were locked behind a $10 USD paywall.
The developer also locked all the content and the multiplayer features behind a sinsister data harvesting back end server system. This is not okay even at the best of times.
The developer then switched off all those servers, so the full game content and features are unavailable, leaving just the demo.
The developer persists in trying to sell this for $10 USD [i]as a multiplayer game[/i] despite having deliberately disabled all the features and most of the content in the game.
This is not "accidental", it's deliberate. They know their sales page does not mention the game is broken on purpose. They know the advertising is an outright lie. Hell, they're even discounting this from time to time. [i]They know they are scamming gamers.[/i]
Let's say you still want to buy it after all that shocking and disgusting unethical behaviour from this shady mobile developer.
From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
The developers didn't design the mobile app for modern gaming PCs, as such the display resolution caps out at 1080p, a very low resolution that became mainstream back in 2006 and became obsolete when 4K entered the mainstream in 2014. The mobile app simply won't look right on modern gaming displays due to this failure on the part of the developers.
It's apparent that little to no testing for the mobile app was done, at least on modern gaming PCs. In fullscreen, the mobile app doesn't display properly, with the game area drawn only up in the top left corner of the screen. This is caused by the developer not bothering to ensure the mobile app works on resolutions over 1080p, with very high resolution monitors that use DPI scaling for the OS UI. Because the mobile app area is not drawn correctly, it doesn't map to the mouse pointer properly, so the mobile app itself simply cannot be played. Gamers shouldn't be forced to accept defective products just because developers don't bother with basic testing on PC.
Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone.
It's impossible to recommend such a technically deficient game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones and play games that might as well be mobile apps.
These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
"Legends of Callasia" didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the mobile app, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the mobile app didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is "Try it all!", for trying more than one game mode, trivial to get, but less than 26 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the mobile app. Hardly a success story, even the people who own this mobile app weren't interested in it.
Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this mobile app was with players reveals a surprise... there's a modest spike in player counts for the mobile app. But this only happened once, around the same time that trading cards were applied to the mobile app... so this is just card idlers getting their cards and moving on. A closer look at the numbers shows the mobile app just has a couple of players every week running up the mobile app and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many mobile apps like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards.
This is harmful to Steam and to gamers, not just because it's a direct and intentional attempt to scam people, but because it takes a share of the marketing space and visibility away from other games. It's polluting Steam and making it harder for gamers to find genuine games and for genuine indie developers who put months or years into making proper games find an audience.
The developer is deliberately and unethically trying to scam gamers into paying them the scam price of $10 USD for a mobile app they know is abandoned, dead and unplayable. Don't give it to them.
