Rogue Bots

[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b] Rogue Bots is a Digital Homicide style asset flip, or what Valve calls a "Fake Game". The "developer" paid for/pirated a few Unreal Marketplace packs, 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 some basic Unreal assets and dumped them onto the usual Unreal third person blueprint with a few stolen asset backgrounds/objects to cobble together some barely working proof of concept, which of course was quickly rushed onto Steam direct to gouge some cash out of gamers for other people's assets. It has no value or merit as a real game. 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. There's no option to change the resolution (beyond "low, medium, high", which is meaningless!) and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. 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. 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 game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH. 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 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for an asset flip! This comes across as an arrogant delusion of grandeur or an attempt to add a false veneer of legitimacy to what is otherwise shovelware garbage. There's no justification for this shovelware to carry an uneforceable EULA. 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. So, should you buy this asset flip? Is this better than any of the 100,000+ genuinely made games on Steam? Of course not! Rogue Bots has the cash grab price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam. [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b] Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]