Here's a case of how to definitely not deal with getting negative feedback. A developer of Depth of Extinction revoked a user's key after a negative review. Update: A statement from the developer.
Depth of Extinction is a game that went through itch's "First Access" program where they sold limited amounts of keys across various rounds. Like a lot of games that start off on itch.io, the developer promised a Steam key when the game makes into onto Valve's store. So to make matters worse, this was a user who helped fund them a little before the wider release.
You can see the Steam forum post here where the user talks about it, which is now locked by the developer which was made after they put up this user review on Steam. Looking at the short review, they're not even saying all that much and it sounds like a pretty honest post as well as remaining quite polite with their negative thoughts about it.
The reply the developer sent to the user, is a great example of how to not respond to players of your game who dislike certain aspects of it:
Sorry about that, but I thought I you weren't interested in playing the game. I would have loved to get your feedback during the First Access but I didn't see anything from you until the Steam review, which was a little confusing. I really don't see how you saw enough of the current version of the game to make the judgement call you did there since we made massive changes in the last few months that were all just on Steam.
I can get you another key if you are interested in playing more and perhaps providing some feedback on how we can improve the game.
As polite as the developer reply may seem, how could they have thought this would be a good idea? They did also apologise in a later post after. Since I actually quite like the game, it also stings a bit to see a developer I also supported do something like this. Thankfully, the situation is now resolved and the user does have access to it on Steam once again. Honestly though, I'm a little in shock that doing something like this would ever cross someone's mind.
I've given plenty of negative reviews in my time here and on Steam itself, I've later changed my mind on it especially in times when there's been a patch to improve things and this user could have done the same but that's not the point. This feels like an attempt to silence negative feedback to me, it doesn't sit right at all.
It does also bring up some interesting questions about how easy it is for developers to remove peoples access to their games. While it's a system that can help developers in certain situations, it's also a system that is quite obviously open to a bit of abuse. I do have to wonder what Valve think about this as well, so I've reached out to them for a comment and I will update this if they reply.
This does make another interesting case for DRM free games outside of Steam, since a developer can't just take away your ability to play it. While a DRM free store could remove the game from you, you're still able to fully back it up yourself.
Hat tip to madpinger for the info.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
It even makes me wonder if there are games I have that are no longer there and I'm simply unaware of it honestly.Most likely no games are missing. You might have not noticed, but someone else would. Don't make it bigger deal than it is.
I don't think games bought directly on Steam are revokable. This key was beta key he got directly from the dev as part of the Itch.io deal.Indeed, this situation is thankfully reasonably rare, doesn't change any facts of the matter though, still rubbish.
It even makes me wonder if there are games I have that are no longer there and I'm simply unaware of it honestly.Most likely no games are missing. You might have not noticed, but someone else would. Don't make it bigger deal than it is.
Dribbleondo 20 Oct 2018
Subtle.
It should not even be possible for a dev to revoke keys. Revoking a legally paid key is theft. There's just no other way to look at it.It actually makes perfect sense. If someone buys keys with stolen credit cards and tries to resell them, or maybe it's just review/testing keys for limited time period. As I already mentioned, I dont think this can happen on Steam bought games. This was the case of a game activated with a key that the person got from the dev via email.
It should not even be possible for a dev to revoke keys. Revoking a legally paid key is theft. There's just no other way to look at it.It actually makes perfect sense. If someone buys keys with stolen credit cards and tries to resell them, or maybe it's just review/testing keys for limited time period. As I already mentioned, I dont think this can happen on Steam bought games. This was the case of a game activated with a key that the person got from the dev via email.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be an option to have keys revoked that were not legally paid. But the dev there's no reason for a dev to be able to do that on their own.
I don't know how much time and effort the developer has put into the game, but they're probably miffed at seeing a negative review that's going to affect the sales. Especially *if* its from a backer who had a chance to give feedback earlier.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be an option to have keys revoked that were not legally paid. But the dev there's no reason for a dev to be able to do that on their own.And who else if not dev? Valve? How would Valve be able to recognize valid request? Most likely there is very specific TOS and agreement between dev and Valve how to use this feature and Valve will only intervene if abuse happens. This mistake was fixed rather quickly, so we did not have a chance to see how would it played out.
I would have loved to get your feedback during the First Access but I didn't see anything from you until the Steam review, which was a little confusing.
What, does this mean that the devs have no use for feedback and criticism once it's past First/Early/whatever Access? Their whole message comes off as highly delusional. HOF Games needs a PR guy. Badly. In the meantime, I will be supporting more reasonable devs.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be an option to have keys revoked that were not legally paid. But the dev there's no reason for a dev to be able to do that on their own.And who else if not dev? Valve? How would Valve be able to recognize valid request? Most likely there is very specific TOS and agreement between dev and Valve how to use this feature and Valve will only intervene if abuse happens. This mistake was fixed rather quickly, so we did not have a chance to see how would it played out.
Yes, Valve and the valid request would come from the dev. The dev should not be able to revoke a Steam key by himself without first justifying it to Valve.
GustyGhost 20 Oct 2018
Yes, Valve and the valid request would come from the dev. The dev should not be able to revoke a Steam key by himself without first justifying it to Valve.And it will take a week and therefore be useless, or it's gonna take a moment, because noone will really properly check it out and be useless as well. The request probably goes through Valve, but I doubt the have any capacity to vet everything thoroughly. Valve trusting devs and only stepping in if issue arises makes more sense on this scale actually.
And that's terrible ways to promote your business..
brandleesee 20 Oct 2018
The dev should not be able to revoke a Steam key by himself without first justifying it to Valve.
I completely second this. The dev is essentially representing the name of Valve. This would imply that its name is not tarnished by a developer making use of its game-distribution platform. Checks ought to be implemented to reign in abuse.
What property is and what taking another person's property is are things that are defined in law. And once an item passes its first-sale (don't know if that applies in this situation or not) then the seller no longer holds any authority over that item. Software licenses are also a property, and a seller or former possessor of a software license has no legal right to do anything to another person's software license once they have given it to someone else.
More information on that is in this post:
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/953835-truth-you-own-the-software-that-you-purchase-and-any-claims-otherwise-are-urban-myth-or-corporate-propaganda/
[...]are you sure of that?? I thought that modifying a binary was illegal.[...]
As far as I remember, it's perfectly legal as long as you're not using that modification to circumvent any DRM system outside of your local copy (and even then, you should be fine outside of the USA). If you're circumventing a DRM system in your local copy, you're fine, it's within your consumer rights to use the software in whichever way you intend.
I am definitely not a lawyer though.
EDIT: I believe most of this was sorted out with the DRM systems in place for home medias (DVDs and BluRays); ie. you bought the thing, you have the right to modify it to make sure you can actually use it.
Last edited by Cybolic on 20 Oct 2018 at 12:21 pm UTC
I participated in a closed beta test of one game, the dev sent the keys to activate the game on Steam. After the test and before the actual release they were revoked. I see this as a completely legit practice, they gave it for free and took it away later. There's no way for Steam to know if the key was paid for or just given away, maybe for a limited time so I don't see why this should be explicitly disabled for all developers. Of course, if it was a paid key that's been revoked just like this it's unacceptable but it's the first such case and it must be settled with Steam support and legal means. After all, that's not the only way the dev could scam the customers, they can ban them in-game using Steam IDs or remove the game for everybody (push empty depots or such). It's not possible to prevent this reliably.No problem with free beta keys being revoked, happens all the time, especially to me when testing Linux builds for developers.
In the case of getting a key for supporting a developer early with your money, it's absolutely mad to take it away with reasons like this.
The bit I can't get over is this:
Sorry about that, but I thought I you weren't interested in playing the game.That's a real face-palm.
Patreon
PayPal
How to set, change and reset your SteamOS / Steam Deck desktop sudo password
How to set up Decky Loader on Steam Deck / SteamOS for easy plugins
See more from me