Strange practices by PlayWay

[PinkPony]

I've got no evidence besides what I've seen, but I've seen some strange things going on with PlayWay's games. This publisher seems to sell mostly "simulator" games, and despite the few I've personally tried looking and feeling VERY similar (let's say, Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 and Rover Mechanic Simulator), they are almost all allegedly made by different developers. I dare to suspect that this is so if any of their VERY indie games fall below a passing grade, they can blame it on that 'developer' and not use that name again. Or maybe they just allow anyone to develop a simulator under their name

But that's not all, because I've also seen a LOT of fake reviews (one-word reviews from accounts with no other games), even on games that are actually well received by real people. I also get the sense with a few of these games, that they could have easily been part of the same game, but were cut into pieces to spread the income, such as Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 and Truck Mechanic Simulator 2015, released within a month of one another.

I'm not suggesting this is all evidence of wrongdoing per-se, but this publisher and its developers behave very strangely. I wish I had taken screenshots before, because I'm finding it hard to see the fake reviews now, but at the time (days ago) it was a whole column of them.

https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/playway
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=PlayWay%20S.A.
^ This link doesn't work correctly when clicked. Paste in browser for a fuller list.

[Mellow_Online1]

I have seen PlayWay come up quite a few times. There's definitely something off about them that I haven't been able to pinpoint.

There was a time they consistently crammed up the upcoming releases and in some cases never released the games they listed.

[PinkPony]

Originally posted by Mellow_Online1:

There was a time they consistently crammed up the upcoming releases and in some cases never released the games they listed.

They've got at least twice as many "coming soon" titles in the steam search as their published ones :s And again, at least 50% "simulator"s, and half again "prologue"s (AKA demos). And that's not to mention the huge number of "bundles" they sell, which I've only seen done by scammy devs.
I'd be interested to know what engine/s they use, because it feels like they have a template and are churning out as many variations on the concept as possible, with success being more luck than skill.

[talgaby]

They are a small Polish publishing firm that has a ton of smaller subsidiaries. Actually, even these are their games:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/559100/Phantom_Doctrine/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/792300/The_Beast_Inside/
Apparently, they publish only the Simulators under their own name. I'd guess those are the "in-house" ones.

[Zarkow]

They are doing a variation of app-store strategy to find success - where one carpet-bomb the store with clones of your own games in many variations to find ones that take off and the put effort into making those get as much money as possible -- their version seems to be to put out as many concepts as they can and only develop and launch those that reach a threshold in wish-listings and/ore news-articles, where it is very likely that the games doesn't really exist when they put the pages first up.

[Tamaster]

I think they just have a lot of controlled studios / sections / subsidiaries and so on. I never saw anything truly malicious from them, have even played some of their games and they were actually pretty good.

Never saw any asset flip or really terrible stuff from them. Might be they do use some of the same assets or functions between their simulator games, that's true, but that's fair game in my eyes.

[Omali]

Playway has become the Hanna Barbera of "simulator" games in that they've figured out a way to put them out cheaply and fast. Other than crowding the upcoming release list I haven't seen anything particularly malicious out of them.

[TribalSage]

I found this to be interesting. Viking City Builder is very similar to Manor Lords and the devs of Manor Lords have chimed in on it here. The reason I added this to this particular discussion is because Playway are advertising it on some other store pages with a bunch of other games.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1401370/Viking_City_Builder/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1363080/Manor_Lords/

[Zarkow]

Viking City Builder has horrible post-process effects/screenshot adjustment (sharpness turned up to 11). Done to make screenshots "pop", but looks horrible if one actually plays...

[Maggerama]

Didn't read it all, so excuse me if it was said already, but maybe they just license their engine\editor to small Polish developers, so anyone can make a game for them on PlayWay's terms, maybe even with financial help, with the publisher taking care of the marketing and pocketing most of the profits. At least this is how the scheme looks to me at first glance. Could be shady, could be perfectly legal. Need digging.

[Omali]

Originally posted by Magerama:

Didn't read it all, so excuse me if it was said already, but maybe they just license their engine\editor to small Polish developers, so anyone can make a game for them on PlayWay's terms, maybe even with financial help, with the publisher taking care of the marketing and pocketing most of the profits. At least this is how the scheme looks to me at first glance. Could be shady, could be perfectly legal. Need digging.

They're the second biggest publisher in Poland and they have a ton of subsidiaries and companies they invest in.

[Maggerama]

That's what I thought. Still, doesn't make them look that much less sleazy.

[MightyBalian]

Sorry to necro a few month old thread but I felt like I had to chime in, as I'm a pretty big fan of PlayWay. They're just a large publisher, as other have said. They actually have great customer support over on their Discord and they regularly interact with their fans (I mean, at least they did anyway. havent been on the discord in ages, so unsure if thats changed). They actually did once get exposed for putting their name on an asset flip but they said that they were unaware it was a flip and they immediately fired the dev team and gave the concept to ones of their other devs who are currently reworking it to be a DLC for House Flipper. So, they definitely have respect for the quality of their games. Anyway, just my two cents.