Vendetta - Curse of Raven's Cry, the re-release of poorly received Raven's Cry has been removed from Steam, and the situation gets weird.
On SteamDB someone has removed a ton of information from it, and it no longer has a store page.
After looking into it, it looks like Topware were paying people to review the game positively on Steam. Check this reddit post for information on it. There's quite a bit of evidence, and Topware even threatened legal action against someone who claimed it, oh my!
I wonder if this is Valve protecting Steam users against a rogue developer, or Topware trying to cover its tracks? I reached out to both of my Topware contacts, but I don't expect a reply, and they never did reply to my request for a key...I wonder why.
Thanks to frostwork in our IRC for pointing it out. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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DamonLinuxPL Jan 28, 2016
TopWare is not a developer. They are german publisher, and they almost destroyed the Polish developer Reality Pump (Two Worlds II, Gorky17, Earth and etc.).
Bad things related to the Raven's Cry is their affair. I am glad that they got for this...
Bad things related to the Raven's Cry is their affair. I am glad that they got for this...
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I played this game through in full and actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Now, I'm not saying it's a good game, it's not, and the practice of releasing the "fixed" game months later as a new game, compounded by the alleged paid reviews, is shady as **** and inexcusable. Regardless, I had a lot of fun with the game. Once in a while a game comes along that I can objectively see as being a bad game and yet enjoy playing it. This is one of those games. I guess I just really enjoyed the naval battles and playing a pirate that's like a real pirate, a straight up ***hole murderer, and not the bogus romanticized pirates we usually get, and that was enough to get me to look past the clunky as **** on-foot combat, crappy production value, fanfic level dialogue, and myriad of hilarious bugs.
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My main issue was they forced people into manually sending them proof of purchase to gain access to the new version, which was essentially just a big patch. That was my first alarm bell, and I noted it in other articles.
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I may sound like a broken record now, but: Do not trust user "reviews". Do. Not. Trust. User. "Reviews".
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wintermute Jan 28, 2016
I quite enjoyed it too (Vendetta, didn't buy the original), though I think they should have been selling it for 33-50% less than what they were asking for it.
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Vendetta - Curse of Raven's Cry is acutally a re-release of Raven's Cry. I couldn't see that anything changed in the re-release. It has the same issues, bugs (even story-breaking ones), performance problems and really no difference story-whise (as far as I could get, I am stuck on one story-quest, played there three times, always the same issue). This issue was already (occasionally) there in the original version. They didn't even fix the voice-overs for the Vandetta release.
The exactly same game with a different name. That's what this is.
It has it's enjoyable moments, but the quality of the release is very poor. Very sad to me, since the game has a lot of potential.
Last edited by STiAT on 28 January 2016 at 8:24 pm UTC
The exactly same game with a different name. That's what this is.
It has it's enjoyable moments, but the quality of the release is very poor. Very sad to me, since the game has a lot of potential.
Last edited by STiAT on 28 January 2016 at 8:24 pm UTC
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Quoting: GuestBut for some reason it’s exactly the opposite that happens… Reviews with no information get upvoted, and informative reviews often get downvoted.
I wonder if some people give thorough reviews a "TL;DR" downvote.
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Quoting: DamonLinuxPLTopWare is not a developer. They are german publisher, and they almost destroyed the Polish developer Reality Pump (Two Worlds II, Gorky17, Earth and etc.).
Bad things related to the Raven's Cry is their affair. I am glad that they got for this...
According to Wikipedia Reality Pump was actually founded by TopWare, so it's not like TopWare bought and dismantled a previously successful studio. Still, Vendetta was clearly mismanaged, but it's difficult to tell who is to blame for what.
Also, Gorky 17 was developed by Metropolis Software who was since bought and closed by CDPR.
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Quoting: GuestSteam's system is pretty good by allowing voting on reviews.
The ones throwing thumbs around are just as random as the quality - or validity - of the reviews themselves.
Sorry guys but don't get fooled. Do not trust user reviews.
In addition to the random paid reviews who are bad enough as it is, far worse is the fact that some just have hardly any references for the game they play at all - they don't know how much better the alternatives are cause they've not played'em, have no perspective nor the ability to weight components - and typically don't mind writing and have a reasonably convincing way of expressing themselves, making us believe they actually know what they talk about. But the wider perspective is completely missing behind the disguise.
Thumbs are given on a wide range of reasons, including whether or not they agree with the conclusion of the review. Who may be wrong. Or because they think the text was funny. Or their buddy wrote it. Or downvote cause it was too long. Or... The average thumb-givers are just as clueless, just as random.
And of course you do find reasonable reviews in there. But it's like sorting through garbage to find food.
Do not trust user "reviews".
Last edited by Beamboom on 28 January 2016 at 10:32 pm UTC
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DamonLinuxPL Jan 28, 2016
Quoting: ricki42Quoting: DamonLinuxPLTopWare is not a developer. They are german publisher, and they almost destroyed the Polish developer Reality Pump (Two Worlds II, Gorky17, Earth and etc.).
Bad things related to the Raven's Cry is their affair. I am glad that they got for this...
According to Wikipedia Reality Pump was actually founded by TopWare, so it's not like TopWare bought and dismantled a previously successful studio. Still, Vendetta was clearly mismanaged, but it's difficult to tell who is to blame for what.
Also, Gorky 17 was developed by Metropolis Software who was since bought and closed by CDPR.
Nope.
1. TopWare born as Poland dev studio.
2. Next they create Reality Pump - dev studio in Kraków.
3. German corporation Zuxxez Entertainment buys Poland TopWare and next kill it - TopWare end of life.
4. Zuxxez Entertainment changing name to TopWare Interactive!
5. TopWare (German) still selling games making by Poland TopWare and Reality Pump.
6. TopWare (German) absorbed Poland Reality Pump.
7. TopWare (German) take off Raven's Cry from German dev studio (because of horrible results) and gives Raven's Cry to continue developing Reality Pump.
8. Reality Pump gets broken game and have deadline to release it! TopWare is coordinator at this project.
9. After release it, TopWare leads to bankruptcy Reality Pump.
10. Reality Pump trying to survive - from dev remains only 18 employees, other left to the newly created brand of CD Projekt in Krakow.
11. 18 devs need to continue developing at Vendetta for TopWare...
12. Reality Pump still trying to survive...
Also if you can use Google Translate, you can read in Polish press many things about TopWare and as they trying leads to bankrupcy Reality Pump - you can read many stories from developers... who left from this ship. If you can, try read it. It's very important to show the true picture of what is happening.
Also, you have right about Metropolis Software with Gorky17. But in this time. Gorky was made by Metropolis for TopWare (this Poland TopWare) and worked on the game people of Polish TopWare and Reality Pump, with this same time as was Metropolis. Sorry for poor english, Im not native speaker.
Last edited by DamonLinuxPL on 28 January 2016 at 11:39 pm UTC
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