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DESPRE 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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ANUNȚURI RECENTE
Atomic Fabrik Returns to Steam
16 octombrie - Mellow_Online1 | 4 comentarii

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3203860/Sewing_Stuff/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3204440/The_Cube_of_Love/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3211510/Falling_Cube/

UPDATE - Credit to Steam user Shattered Mind who in our forums shared some more titles that they suspected to be associated to Atomic Fabrik. While I haven't been able to 100% verify them all, I have managed to confirm one of the games, Falling Cube, which has been released under the developer name Goritta Klaus does indeed belong to Atomic Fabrik, as the App Info folder includes the Martha B alias discussed here.

The Imgur album has been updated to show this extra connection.

Original article below.

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So, first of all, a massive thank you to Steam user Gelweo in our group who gave me the first indication of this happening. While it may not be the game(s) affected that they claimed, it set me off on the right tracks to prove what was initially a suspicion to be true. Long story short is that Atomic Fabrik, a notable shovelware developer who got banned from Steam a couple months ago and wrote a very colourful X post about our group blaming us heavily for his own self-conceived downfall has in fact returned to Steam after his ban.

Steam banned Atomic Fabrik because they violated a number of Steam Terms of Service rules, varying from review manipulation, failure to disclose AI generated content and just general intent to deceive consumers and resort to more unscrupulous and deceiving practices involving Jee Two Ayy to distribute their games. However, Atomic Fabrik appear to be circumventing their ban and are still actively distributing games onto Steam.

Now, the degree of this happening, I am unsure. As mentioned, Steam user Gelweo got me off on the right tracks with linking me to the game Fog Racing Circuit, which is an asset flip that follows quite a similar scheme to that of Atomic Fabrik, including the fact it's an asset flip, has an AI generated description, has AI generated artwork and also has review manipulation happening. However, there's yet enought to tie this game and it's developer Squadroni Cacciatori to Atomic Fabrik in a 100% manner for now. However, what I can share is there is enough evidence I feel to tie Atomic Fabrik to another Steam developer, Martha B.

Martha B, like Squadroni Cacciatori has AI generated artwork, a limited disclosure of this, and review manipulation to boot on their two titles.

What makes me so confident to say that Martha B is Atomic Fabrik you may ask? Well, I took a bullet for the sake of this group, Steam and also of investigative journalism on Steam and I bought the two games Martha B has made, and found that within the game files of Sewing Stuff and The Cube of Love, there was a file called "App.Info". And within this file, present in both games, you can find Atomic Fabrik's name listed hook line and center[imgur.com].

What is the purpose behind the App.Info file you may ask? Well, a while ago, me and the Sentinels moderator Occular Malice[x.com] were having a look into a similar query and we connected the developer association through this exact same way, the app.info folder. Basically, Occular, who is a game developer himself, explained to me, that the name listed within the App Info folder is the name of the user account who created the app. I.e. the account that the game that you're playing is bonded towards in the Unity engine.

Now, I know we've discussed previously in this group that Atomic Fabrik was notorious for selling his apps off to other people, however, in this case, the fact the developer names are empty besides from the games that have Atomic Fabrik listed in the files and that they surfaced after Atomic Fabrik was booted from Steam, leads me to believe this is simply Atomic Fabrik operating under a brand new account.

I will be writing to Valve about this, there are some other accounts that Atomic Fabrik is suspected to be operating under, however, I feel I have enough to at least compare notes with Valve about, but I don't wish to make any damming 100% accusations like with the Martha B account, so I'd rather send those off privately than risking both my reputation as providing accurate information, and also risking any repercussions for providing false information that I even have a 5% feeling it may be incorrect.

Please do share this and make people aware. We've been quite lucky to catch this quite early on, as Martha B only has 2 games listed on Steam at the moment. Scammers like Atomic Fabrik shouldn't be allowed a second chance in my view. They have shown a clear discontent to consumers and are clearly only involved in this for self gain. Information is power, so share this far and wide.

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Special thanks to our Patrons old_Navy_twidget, GreyGore and Caff. Your support is much appreciated. If you wish to become a Patron today, please do join our Discord server below to find out how.

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Steam Got Forced to Change Their Subscriber Agreement - What This Means For You
2 octombrie - Mellow_Online1 | 2 comentarii

https://store.steampowered.com/app/25000/Overgrowth/

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/4696781406111167991

On September 27th, Steam announced new changes to the Steam Subscriber Agreement, and I got some requests to go over what these changes are, why they came about and what impact it has on Steam users, so let's get into it.

For a little background, Steam have been in this dispute for the last few years (since April 2021 to be exact) with indie developer Wolfire Games. Wolfire Games for those who don't know are the creators of the popular Steam game Overgrowth, and they're also members of Sentinels of the Store, so hello Wolfire Games if you're reading this!

Wolfire Games filed an antitrust lawsuit against Steam which Wolfire Games talk about more in their blog post[blog.wolfire.com] from May 2021, alleging Valve of using its position to exploit publishers and consumers. They attack Valve's large cut of revenue they get per game sale of 30%. They also claimed that Valve was using Steam to create a monopoly on PC game distribution, and claimed Valve threatened to remove Wolfire Games' games from Steam if the developers charged lower prices on competing storefronts, even if these storefronts charged a different cut of sales revenue compared to Steam.

The original lawsuit was dismissed in November 2021, but Wolfire Games filed an amended complaint in May 2022, and this new amended complaint included allegations that Valve used its monopoly power to impose punitive restrictions on publishers.

If you're interested in the more ins and outs of the lawsuit, feel free to read up on that in these articles:


Well, this lawsuit just had a very interesting development, which has had consequential action that affects most Steam users if you live outside the UK or EU. While it's a noteworthy change, it isn't technically anything new, as if you want what's happened in a nutshell, basically users are having their subscriber agreements updated to the European terms, and here's why.

Essentially what Valve have done to their subscriber agreement is they have removed any mention of an arbitration agreement and class action waivers. For you non-legal people in the room such as me that had to look up what this was, an arbitration agreement is a clause in a contract which means that you agree to settle any disagreements out of court. A class action waiver is a clause that prevents one or both parties from filing a class action lawsuit against the other, effectively protecting companies from larger and more expensive lawsuits.

Well, in some recent filings in the lawsuit[x.com], Wolfire Games brought both of these clauses into question, arguing that they weren't enforeable. In the lawsuit, section 30 and 31 it's stated:

Postat inițial de Lawsuit:
Consumers in the Wolfire action contested the enforceability of the arbitration provision but the Court ruled that the threshold issue of arbitration was delegated to, and needed to be resolved in, arbitration. The Court accordingly granted Valve's motion to compel arbitration.[...]

Plaintiffs to this class action complaint were not named plaintiffs in the Wolfire action. They retained seperate counsel and asserted individual claims in arbitration challenging the enforceability of Valve's arbitration provision. Each prevailed, obtaining rulings that the arbitration provision was unenforceable, either for lack of notice, or because it purports to preclude public injunctive relief in violation of the McGill rule (McGill v. Citibank, N.A., 393 P.3d 85, 90-92 (Cal.2017)), or both. The arbitrator thus granted each Plaintiff's motion to dismiss the arbitration.

The updated agreement now required all claims and disputes to proceed in court and not in arbitration. If you're living outside the UK and EU, the agreement now reads:

Postat inițial de Steam Subscriber Agreement:
You and Valve agree that all disputes and claims between you and Valve (including any dispute or claim that arose before the existence of this or any prior agreement) shall be commenced and maintained exclusively in any state or federal court located in King County, Washington, having subject matter jurisdiction.

In terms of my take aways from this, I do have some mixed thoughts.

One one side, without the class action waiver, consumers have regained the ability to participate in class action lawsuits. These allow the banding together of consumers and it can be particularly beneficial in widespread issues, such as breaches of consumer rights, defective products and unfair practices. It also allows for more public accountability, arbitration often takes place behind closed doors and doesn't set a public precedent. And it overall does give more leverage to consumers when addressing grievances.

However, on the flip side of that, traditional court cases, can take years to resolve. Arbitration does tend to be faster and more efficient in settling disputes so this move does have that potential to delay resolutions being made.

But overall, I would say it's a positive thing, with some drawbacks admittedly, but I hope this has been a helpful breakdown of these changes as some of you did seem at least curious about what these changes were and why Valve out of all times decided now was the time to put this in. I did also read some other theories on PC gamer and Eurogamer why this was brought in, but I still do think the ongoing Wolfire Games lawsuit is the most likely reason behind this.

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

We also held our first ever game night in the Discord server where we got together and played Among Us, so do join us if you want to play games with us all, we're going to try and make it a regular thing.

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Sentinels of the Store recenzii
"Games by developers that have received coverage on our group, as well as identified asset flips and titles tied to anti-consumer/deceptive practices."
Aici sunt câteva recenzii noi de Sentinels of the Store
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1.454 comentarii
Wandering Mania 17 oct. la 17:18 
Mellow_Online1,
Interesting. But did it have to be a country song?
Pardon me while I retch.
Mellow_Online1 17 oct. la 15:45 
So something cool (or at least I think it's cool). Occular Malice, with the help of AI, has put together a song about Sentinels of the Store and he's very kindly allowed me to share it out in the wild.

Please do go give it a listen, I think it's very neat! Thanks, Occular! <3

https://youtu.be/sddQxlSToOw
Obey the Fist! 10 oct. la 1:03 
It looks like the "developer" has about 20 games, because the accounts have all done GenAI reviews for 20 games. Sloppy work.
Obey the Fist! 10 oct. la 0:56 
Incredible... 79 reviews. None of them from Obzor/Mipped accounts. They all look to be GenAI reviews. I've flagged all the accounts in case they show up reviewing anywhere else.

Obvious review manipulation on an obvious asset flip, but I've never seen anything like it.
shade00 9 oct. la 10:10 
video shows lagged movement, no actual gameplay
yep thats an easy fishy fishy
sweetcuppincakes 9 oct. la 7:56 
This game showed up for me through the Steam 250 curator because it has 100% positive ratings. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3028680/Medival_Hustle/
All of the reviewers I looked at have reviewed the same 20 games and all reviews posted on Oct 5th.
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