[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b]
MadGuns is a Digital Homicide style asset flip, or what Valve calls a "Fake Game". The "developer" paid for/pirated a few Unity asset store assets, dumped them all in a blender, and submitted it to Valve as if they're real game developers.[/quote]
[quote][b]Warning: Microtransaction Infested Game[/b]
This game is infested with a mobile app like cash shop for unlocking in-game currency and features. Whether these are purely cosmetic or they alter your gaming experience significantly, this gamer gouging practice is unethical and insulting to gamers, especially when applied to such a low quality shovelware game. Gamers should be cautious and consider avoiding this game for that reason alone.[/quote]
[quote][b]Warning: Dead PVP Game[/b]
This game has no meaningful single player content, and no playable PvP servers. There is no functioning PvP population, it's a dead game, and cannot be played as intended.[/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 bunch of Synty assets and slapped the lazily on a first person arena shooter blueprint from the Unity asset store. It's incomplete, but bizarrely the developer had all the time in the world to build a toxic, cancerous P2W cash shop and transaction system into the game... truly the worst kind of scams, an asset flip, combined with the worst kind of scam, P2W mobile app cash shops. It has no value or merit as a real game.
Novalink have a known history of trying to scam people into paying them money for someone else's work, through this account or through closely linked/alt accounts. One example of Novalink doing this is [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2157650]Dead City[/url], which is really the "[url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/urban/polygon-apocalypse-low-poly-3d-art-by-synty-154193]POLYGON Apocalypse - Low Poly 3D Art[/url]" asset, written by the actual developers, Synty Games.
Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
The focus of the game is pure PvP, there's no single player content. The developer gambled that other players would be an acceptable substitute for adding storytelling, level design etc to the game. The vast majority of PvP-only games fail because they don't "go viral", and without players, or single player content to add a lasting value to the game, the game dies. Developers must learn that other players are not an acceptable substitute for adding content to a game.
The game was abandoned roughly 1 week after launch and hasn't been updated in 4 years and 6 months. It blew past the developers commitment to complete the game without any notification or admission of failure from the developer. The game will never be completed.
The mismatched game assets are fairly mediocre/low quality, it's a wonder why they couldn't be bothered "borrowing" higher quality assets for this asset flip. This is a lot like going on a shoplifting spree but only stealing the cut price store brand goods. Regardless, the poor quality assets alone should be enough to deter gamers from bothering with this.
The game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the 1990s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the game, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 110,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
Unethically, the developers have left this on the Steam store in a dead, abandoned and unplayable state (because there's no players and no meaningful single player content). It's the responsibility of the developer to maintain their product, ensure it runs on all modern PCs, or if they determine there's defects and the game doesn't work, or the population dies, they should remove it from sale instead of misleadingly trying to scam gamers into buying knowingly dead/unplayable products.
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.
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.
There's so much wrong with this it's hard to keep track.. P2W mechanics, stolen assets, a history of asset flipping from a known Russian scammer... just avoid this completely.
