STUG

[quote][b]Warning: Third Party Account[/b] This game requires you to create a third party "STUG" account... there's no valid reason for this in a PC game when SteamWorks is available. This is often done to harvest private data and profile you, with potential sale and transmission of your private data to third parties. The developers will probably argue that you can trust them, but if they were trustworthy they wouldn't demand you create a third party account. This represents a considerable risk to gamers due to the privacy and security implications of developers that wish to bypass Steam and harvest user data. Remember, sometimes if the product is free, YOU are the product.[/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 with nasty P2W elements. 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 is basically a browser/Flash game with a nasty cash shop embedded in it... there's no players, it's just a laughably simple top down arena shooter with a cartoony tank theme and a cash shop. The winner of each round (when this did have a tiny number of players) was determined by exploits and whoever spends the most money in the nasty cash shop. Disgusting, isn't it? Bonus points for the toxic community. So, "STUG" 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] Developers often assume just because they published their game, it's going to "go viral". I'm guessing this is a case of the developers making this game in complete isolation without even bothering to look at what other PvP games on Steam already offer. There's fierce competition in the PvP game arena... and I'm not referring to players fighting other players. There's thousands of PvP-only games but only a tiny handful of them are successful enough to attract and keep a wide player base. This game failed to compete and didn't get enough people to stay active. Despite being free, it did not have what it takes, it's as simple as that. This game lacks any meaningful solo content. The developer tried to use other players as a substitute for real work like level design and story, gambling that just because their game exists, it's going to magically pull the entire player base of Counter-Strike 2 over to this failure instead. They lost that unwise gamble. A game with no players and no solo content is a dead game. Developers need to stop relying on players as a substitute for real content, just because they feel creating genuine narrative, level design and so on is "too hard". The game features really lacklustre 2D visuals (does the developer not know 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid-1990s?). Gamers don't spend thousands of dollars on gaming rigs and the latest 3D graphics cards to play 2D games. Even mobile phones and game consoles can do 3D graphics now. There's no excuse. Let's talk about price and the value this represents for us gamers. This game is infested with mobile app store like P2W 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. You can always judge a game by how popular it is with the general public. Steam has over 130 million unique gamers, and over 40 million unique logons every day from dedicated PC gamers. But this only ever had a peak player count of a dozen or so people... that's very poor public reception. Gamers rejected this, most likely due to the reasons I supply in this review. All other issues aside (any of which would disqualify this from being worth your time), this is a game that relies on other players for it to be viable, and because there's not enough players, it's not viable. I can't recommend anyone downloads this, it's basically dead.