Protoball

[quote][b]Note: Dead PvP game[/b] This game contains no meaningful single player content. There are no available servers and no player population. This game cannot be played as intended.[/quote] [quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtransaction]Warning: In-Game Cash Shop[/url][/b] This game is infested with a toxic mobile app style cash shop. You will be prompted to and expected to give money/credit card details to the developers through this cash shop to buy in-game goods so you can play the game.[/quote] This dead PvP game is deep in development hell... it was abandoned for some years after 2021, and just got a very minor update intended to improve the experience for NOBODY because this game has no players. It's a basic PVP sports game combining elements of soccer and volleyball, badly. So, "Protoball" is a dead PvP game. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time! [i]Almost every PvP exclusive game on Steam fails.[/i] Only a tiny proportion of them "go viral". This game failed for many of the same reasons those others fail. The chief of which is the developer thinking that their game will "go viral" without actually creating any reason for it do so. Competition amongst PvP centric games is extreme, and there's only a finite player base to appeal to. This game failed to reach any kind of critical mass and died as a result. Let's go into some of the reasons this particular game failed to appeal to gamers, despite the zero up front cost. First and foremost, there's no meaningful single player content. The developer gambled that other players would be an acceptable substitute for adding storytelling, level design etc to the Game. They lost that bet. Without a huge community of 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 is deep in development hell and swept past the developers commitment to deliver the completed game in a timely manner. There's no reason to believe this will ever be finished. Despite not being able to finish the game, the developers apparently had all the time in the world to build that fully functional cash shop, and financial transaction back-end system into the game. That shows the developers primary goal was just to set out to gouge cash from Steam gamers just like mobile devs do with mobile peasants. The graphics aren't great, very poor quality assets, zero optimisation and zero polish.. That's understandably a turn off for a lot of gamers, and it's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost. Gaming is a primarily visual medium, and if developers want to succeed, they must understand that it's not an area for compromise. You deserve better than compromises. As mentioned, this isn't really free as the game is infested with mobile app store like microtransactions. This is a consumer hostile model that we don't need to see on PC. It's deceptively priced to gouge gamers, and that's a reason in itself to avoid this. Even after that, this still isn't really free as the game is infested with mobile app store like microtransactions. This is a consumer hostile model that we don't need to see on PC. It's deceptively priced to gouge gamers, and that's a reason in itself to avoid this. Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at just a dozen or so concurrent players, and now there's basically nobody playing it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it. 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] The developer, unable to handle the truth, went crying to Valve and reported this fully factual review when it didn't meet his distorted view of the world. Valve rejected the developers hostile and toxic attempt to silence valid information about this godawful failed microtransaction infested product. The developer acknowledges he did not supply enough resources to make the game properly and only had two people working on it... it requires hundreds of people to make a successful, high quality, professionally developed game. It's insulting to gamers when developers do the job badly, either on purpose or through inadequacy. Disasters like Protoball are the inevitable result. Inadequacy on the part of developers is never a problem gamers should have to put up with. The developer complains that I am wrong when I say the game can't be played [b]but then goes on to prove I am correct by admitting there's no servers.[/b] What a complete and utter joke. The developer makes the rather serious claim that my review is inaccurate/contains information which isn't factually evident. But this simply isn't true... the facts of my review can easily be verified with just a glance at this godawfully crap product. The developer tells an outright LIE about the monetisation... the Steam store and SteamDB both have flagged this game as a microtransaction infested crapheap. Why would the developer mark his game on the Steam store as having in-app purchases then lie directly about the indication he made? Clearly the developer knows nothing about his own game, or is just seeking to lie to gamers and mislead people. Either is totally unacceptable. So they make up these false accusations of inaccuracy to soothe their ego. Anything but facing up to the truth. But why is this intellectual dishonesty good for gamers? It isn't. Finally, the developer of this train wreck [b]demands[/b] that my review instruct them on how to make video games, because they obviously don't know, looking at this dismal failure of this product. There is no obligation for reviews to be constructive. Reviews are not written to teach developers how to make games. They should know this before they release products on Steam. If they don't, why does this have to be a problem for gamers? [b]Video game reviews are to inform gamers on their decisions around which games to buy, download, or spend their time playing.[/b] Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this failed and abandoned game to anyone. Edit: The developer, incapable of handling his own failure, libelously attacks this reviewer as a "troll", his last resort after crying to Valve to try silence me failed. The claim about me being a troll is utterly untrue, and my review, as upheld by Valve, is 100% the truth. Gamers, you can see the developers lies and attacks, how they ran to Valve to try cancel factual and honest reviews, and you can see the SteamDB facts for yourself. This game is a dead failure from an incompetent, arrogant and hostile developer.