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Sentinels of the Store StoreSents
STEAM GROUP
Sentinels of the Store StoreSents
126
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January 17, 2017
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ABOUT Sentinels of the Store

It's Time for Real Change

The Sentinels of the Store is a group founded on the core values of transparency, fairness, and consumer protection. Our journey began when we saw the urgent need to address the growing concerns within the Steam ecosystem. Together, we formed the Sentinels of the Store to champion the rights of both consumers and developers, ensuring that everyone in our community is treated with the respect and fairness they deserve.

What We Stand For

We are unwavering in our mission to protect consumers from malpractice and deceit. Our commitment to transparency ensures that you can trust the games you purchase and the developers you support.

We believe in fostering a healthy environment where developers can thrive without fear of exploitation or unfair treatment. By advocating for fair enforcement of policies, we ensure that all developers, big or small, have an equal opportunity to succeed.

We take a firm stance against those who seek to undermine the integrity of the Steam platform. We actively work to identify and expose bad actors, ensuring that they face the consequences of their actions.

Consistency and fairness are at the heart of our approach. We strive to assist Valve in the enforcement of Steam's policies, making sure that rules are applied equally to all, without favoritism or bias.

Our Vision

We envision a Steam community where:

  • Consumers are protected and informed.
  • Developers are respected and supported.
  • Policies are clear, fair, and consistently enforced.
  • Transparency and accountability are the norms, not the exceptions.

We believe that real change is possible, but it requires the collective effort and support of each member of our community.

Together, we can build a better Steam community for all. Stand with us, and let’s make real change happen.

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E-mail: mellowonline1@gmail.com

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RECENT ANNOUNCEMENTS
A Nearly 100 Review Bot Network Uncovered...And It's Operated by a Banned Steam Developer
So, all of the accounts in question review the same games, in the same order, have roughly the same play time as each other, all have private profiles, and whose entire existence seems to be dedicated to reviewing games exclusively from these 4 developers:


What was funny is that when Sasoesegreto made their post here initially, most if not all of the games from these developers went on to have a 100% positive rating, however, just in the last couple of days, there's been some negative reviews cropped up shown in some of the examples here (1) (2) (3), but these also appear to be bot generated and intentional. My theory is because if a game is just shy from perfect, they believe its less blatant and a further attempt to obfuscate some of the obvious manipulation going on with these games. Like we discussed in the Obzor article, some of the people doing these acts do like to throw in some red herrings whether that be throwing in 1 negative for every 10 positives or doing non-paid reviews in between the paid ones.

So, I'm looking at these 4 developers, and I'm thinking "there's too many commonalities here for these guys to be different people." You had similar header images, similar formatted descriptions, they all ran off gmail domains for their support contact page, all were Unity asset flips and all had the same people reviewing their games. However, you guys know me, I don't like to go off of circumstantial evidence and present it as the end all be all, so I decided to take a closer look at these games.

I went ahead and bought most of the games from these developers and had a dig around in the game files, and while for the most part there wasn't anything too noteworthy, I did stumble across something when looking specifically at Taxi Goldmania by ZaratustraGameDev and Beachgirl Dreams by NAD Games.

So in the game folders, there's this file called App.info. I touched upon this file in particular a couple of articles ago when discussing about Atomic Fabrik's return to Steam but for those that missed that, this file in particular has proven to be quite useful, as usually what this file houses is the "project name" for the game that it had in the Unity engine and also the Unity account that made the game. This was ultimately what cemented the connection that Atomic Fabrik had to those games we discussed a couple of weeks ago.

Now, interestingly, in the rest of the games, the account name was redacted, just being called "DefaultCompany" as exemplified here in Alcoholic Daddy's App Info file[imgur.com]. This was consistent across all the games...except for Taxi Goldmania and Beachgirl Dreams. This is where the rabbit hole begins!

When I went ahead and checked the App Info folders for Taxi Goldmania and Beachgirl Dreams[imgur.com], there were two very similar, but slightly different names listed:

  • ImperiumGameCompany was listed in the App Info folder for Taxi Goldmania (which, side note, seemingly had the project working title of "Ticketless racer")
  • ImperiumCompany was listed in the App Info folder for Beachgirl Dreams

Now, to many of you, you may not know who ImperiumCompany are, and even when me and SirViolentDeath[x.com] were giving these a look over, we couldn't quite put our finger on it, but the Imperium name did ring a bell for us. And I don't mean in the context of the Star Citizen developers, I mean more in terms of the independent realm of Steam.

After a hunt around the internet, and thanks to a post made by the Sturgeon's Law Steam group back in March of this year, it confirmed what we had suspected: ImperiumGame were among a list of shady developers that were banned from Steam back in March of this year.

But even with that, I'm thinking "Could this be just a coincidence?" "There's already the Star Citizen team using the same name, what if this might be the same thing where it's somebody different using the same name?" So I decided to go a step further.

I went to SteamDB[steamdb.info] to have a look at Imperium's old catalgoue, and already, I was seeing some commonalities between their games and the games that were up under those 4 different developer names, mainly the font and header images, but again, that's a minor piece of circumstantial evidence, I'm looking for the hook, line and sinker scoop. The main obstacles I faced here though was:

  • 1. Imperium were banned from Steam, and the only games that remained on Steam were under new ownership, leaving most of their library unaccessible to me.
  • 2. Most of their older library was made in GameMaker, which is harder on my lower-end programming and technical knowhow as to how to grab some metadata that I was looking for.

I went ahead and did purchase the remaining games that were on Steam in an attempt to see if there was anything I could pull from it, but as I suspected, I came out with nothing.

What I then did was I isolated the games in their catalogue down to just the games that were Unity games, as I theorised if I was able to either source a copy, or find somebody that had a copy of those games, they could go into said game's app info folder and we can see if the account name in there matched with what I'd found earlier.

I only found a total of 3 definite Unity games in their old catalogue: Parking Car[steamdb.info], Lazy Postman[steamdb.info], and Mad Bus[steamdb.info].

I took to social media[x.com] and put a request out and asked for anyone that had a copy or knew how to source one to please get in touch with me while I continued my desperate attempts to see if I could access the files in any other way.

Now, while I got no one contact me saying they owned the game, I did in fact get alerted by a user that they had found that Lazy Postman still had some keys available on some...unscrupulous sites. Ultimately, I decided "f*ck it" and I bit the bullet and purchased a key for Lazy Postman, I installed it, and low and behold, it confirmed my supicions[imgur.com] and Lazy Postman had the same account name listed in the App Info folder as Taxi Goldmania and gave me the smoking gun I was looking for.

So, this shows that there is indeed a large scale review manipulation happening with the use of either some form of bot network, or very carefully and maticulously managed 80+ profiles. It also shows that Imperium have somehow circumvented their ban and are actively distributing games again, reinforcing the fact that Steam developer bans now seem to be more just a revolving door with a failure of means testing to prevent developers from coming back. And it also shows, that Imperium are the ones that are behind these bots/accounts due to the accounts exclusively targeting their games.

It'll be especially interesting to see how instances like this develop after seeing the new rules put in[abcnews.go.com] by the FTC now saying that the sale or purchase of online reviews will now result in the FTC to seek civil penalties against those who knowingly violate it. While the use of bot networks may not quite fall into this, I feel it's extra important now more than ever to keep the pressure up on review manipulation signal boosting, as things do get done about them. And you never know, if the FTC adapt these rules in a continually evolving environment where AI is getting used a lot more, AI and bot reviews could be something they look at in the future.

I would please urge you all to share this, it highlights another layer to the deception of the Steam user review system, the abuse that it can go through, and also highlights the problem, like with our Atomic Fabrik article a couple weeks back, that banned developers that have shown a contempt for their customers before can still very quickly and easily come back and pedal their same tricks again.

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Special thanks to our Patrons Old_Navy_Twidget, GreyGore and Caff for their continued support! Please do join our Discord to find out how you can become a Patron today!

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Let's Just Have A Quick Chat
  • Has anyone else talked about this?
  • Does it highlight a problem that hasn't been talked about much before?
  • Is it the same/similar to the last few articles I've published
  • Is it important?

With those questions, I focus on firstly being distinctive and different and not just regurgitating what everyone else has been talking about. As I've mentioned in the past, the reason I don't talk much about the AAA sphere is because everyone else is already doing it. How many people are still covering/talking about Steam? Not many. We lost Totalbiscuit, Sterling quit covering Steam, Bigfry moved to almost exclusively shooters, Sid has an infrequent upload schedule, IAmPattyJack pretty much left YouTube, and the other YouTubers and content creators I watch don't really cover scams on Steam anymore. They make videos about shit games, which are good for a laugh, and there's nothing wrong with them, but in terms of the content I'm producing here, I want to feel like a difference is being made rather than it being a one-off piece of entertainment when I know that there are people that are or could be falling for some of these scams. I've always wanted to raise important problems that aren't getting talked about, such as Obzor. I thought it was great to see conversation still continuing now, Valve even responding to the findings and also a whole separate curator being set up just to track them. I thought that was fucking awesome, and one of the reasons I made the group in the first place. I also, though, don't want to be overly repetitive. I know that if people are just bombarded with the same thing over and over that they get tired of it, so I rarely, if ever, cover the same topic twice in a row, unless it's an update article where new information has come out. And ultimately the importance matters. If it's just some people having a political spat on Twitter, I don't care, I'm here for consumer protection, developer support, to call for fair, clear and consistent policy enforcement on Valve's part and to make sure there's transparency and accountability at every level.

So, how does this tie in with the Autumn's Bounty article? Well, I got some shit from people saying that I was being overly harsh on the developer, saying that they thought it was a kind gesture of the family/friends to post reviews, typically did the "there's so many other things you could talk about, why are you picking away at this one developer" amongst some other things. That was my instant jump to in terms of when Bigfry spoke about the audience disconnect, because I genuinely felt that suddenly, the policies I'd held myself to were turning against me with those comments, and even then, looking back, I stand by that article.

I stand by it because it gave me the right answer to each of my questions. I saw MMO Fallout covered the topic, but outside of them, no one else had spoken about it, I felt as a topic, it was a form of review manipulation, but one that I felt hadn't been spoken about in a good long while, and it was important because what was going on was literally going against FTC guidelines, as the reviewers failed to disclose their material connection to the product.

I still think, my tone in the article, I was much more softer and generous, as I put it down heavily towards just ignorance of the developer, so I wasn't harsh in my opinion, but I still did get flack for it. I gathered this was partly because the game itself was actually a good game, and this is where one of my main "things" for lack of a better term arises.

I feel maybe because of some of the historical context with this group is grounded within the "shit games on Steam" approach, but really, it's not been about a game being shit, at least ever since I opened this group. It's always been about morals and ethics. We can debate the quality of games all day long, but what I felt like would be more unifying would be to call out bad practices when they happen, regardless on how good or bad a game is, but I feel covering it in both those contexts would still bring some nuance to the discussion, showing it can happen to both sorts.

So then, I kind of had this doubt. "Do people just want to see me reinforce why they don't like shit asset flip games?" I thought. I've spoken with people that seem to only think things like theft, review manipulation etc. only asset flip titles take part in those, and that's far from the truth. Even our own Obzor expose can show you that much, as well as the Games with Paid Reviews curator. It's not just asset flips and the sort.

I'd prefer for it to be the case that morals and ethics are upheld in ALL instances, not just when a game is bad. Because then, you're looking at the game first and then judging the actions second, as if how good the game is justifies it using paid reviews, or stolen content. That shouldn't be the case, I think that's a backwards way of looking at it.

If I mistreat a game development team to get my game out in 6 months, even if the game was good, I would still expect shit for mistreating my workers. I would hate to live in a world where the ends justify the means. And I don't plan on allowing that to become the norm anytime soon.

And, I talk about Autumn's Bounty, but there are a number of occasions where this has happened before. I remember, more recently, just a couple of months ago, I did a series of articles talking about updates to Steam, to do with user reviews, store page descriptions, etc. Now, I made those articles, and in those I talk about some concerns some developers had with the changes, and I got blowback from some people saying that I should just be focussing on the consumer. Newsflash: indie developers are consumers too. They need to feel welcomed and not be facing a constant uphill battle either. There is a balance that needs to be found. We push for consumer rights, but, like we sayin in our group description, we also stand in solidarity with developers and offer them support where we can.

I also admit that my around 1.5 year absence didn't help. It was almost like a reset button was pressed. However, I am still working towards building everything back up, welcoming as many people in as I can. While at the same time pushing for both consumers and game developers as well as supporting Steam in rule enforcement, but also holding them to account.

But anyways, I hope this ramble at least made some sense. There will be a regular article up tomorrow, but I just got done watching Bigfry's video, it unlocked a memory that I wanted to talk about some more, particularly in the context for ethical consistency in game criticism and consumer advocacy.

Thanks for reading, take care, enjoy the rest of your days.

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Special thanks to our Patrons Stefan, Luke and Nin-Nin. If you want to become a Patron today, join our Discord and find out how there.

Follow me on X[x.com]
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STEAM CURATOR
Sentinels of the Store reviews
"Games by developers that have received coverage on our group, as well as identified asset flips and titles tied to anti-consumer/deceptive practices."
Here are a few recent reviews by Sentinels of the Store
1,473 Comments
Wandering Mania Oct 28 @ 1:41am 
Not to mention those just trying to advise others; While the 'criminal element' tries to fight back by attempting to silence the advisors.
Like what happened with Kabrutus. And yes, SBI I would call part of the 'criminal element'.

I mean it is criminal what they and other DEI "consultants" are doing to the games industry. But that's another story.
Obey the Fist! Oct 28 @ 12:48am 
Unfortunately when you do the right thing and it impacts those who seek to abuse, scam and otherwise harm the gaming industry for their own profit, it involves making enemies in low places.
Mellow_Online1 Oct 28 @ 12:18am 
SCAM EMAIL NOTE:

I've been made aware that some hackers have been sending out spam emails that purport to include links to pages of ours, but are in fact sending you to websites that scrape your data.

Please be cautious when clicking on links from unverified senders. One of the examples I was sent looks like this.

Our only official pages are on Steam, X, Discord and Facebook, we're not actively using any other apps, websites or services.

Our official channels can be found in the group description.

https://x.com/MellowOnline1/status/1850798224287703123?t=F_laivA6PPiFNI0x3Oahfg&s=19
Wandering Mania Oct 25 @ 11:26pm 
Obey the Fist!,
Well, you sure have a "high opinion" of people you don't even know.

I think I'm just gonna stop here, before you put your foot in your mouth to a greater degree.
Have a good Morning/Day/Evening/Night (whichever the case may be for you).
Obey the Fist! Oct 25 @ 11:21pm 
Read the actual ruling. None of what you say is compatible with the actual FTC ruling.

The video you quote isn't from the FTC. It's from a guy who obviously didn't even understand the ruling himself, somehow thinking that fake reviews are "bots", which simply isn't true.
Wandering Mania Oct 25 @ 11:18pm 
Obey the Fist!,
"a portion of a website" Could also be interpreted as the page that those misleading reviews are on.

My interpretation differs from yours, but it's far from "making things up" as you claim.
But that video mentioned an entire website that could be taken down because of this ruling. Simply due to the amount of 'celebrity AI deep fakes' and 'botted reviews' that where used in order to scam people.

Also Smugass Braixen-Chan:
I didn't ignore what you said. I replied to you twice. Just because I don't directly mention your name, if your the last one to post; You can assume that it is you who I am talking to, unless otherwise specified.
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