An asset flip is a type of shovelware in which a video game developer purchases pre-made assets and uses them to create numerous permutations of generic games to sell at low prices. [1] Such games tend to be viewed by gamers as uncreative, [1] and as diverting attention from less popular high-quality titles. Asset flips have been noted to be a problem on many online distribution platforms, especially Steam. [2] The Nintendo Switch eShop has also been accused of allowing the sale of asset flips. [3]
As mobile gaming became popular during the 2010s, app stores such as the Google Play Store have predominantly featured games which utilize "knockoffs" of popular IPs in a similar format. [4]
The term asset flip was coined by games journalist James Stephanie Sterling around 2015. [1] The term is largely applied in a pejorative sense, referring to low quality games produced using pre-made assets. Vice referred to such titles as "cobbled together, barely-functioning games". [5] The meaning of the term received considerable debate after the launch of PUBG in 2017, as while the game made use of pre-made assets, it was successful and influential in the development of battle royale as a genre. [6]
The asset flip game rose to prominence in the 2010s with the advent of pre-made royalty-free assets. The Unity store launched in 2010, [7] and Unity acknowledged the problem of "flips" in a 2015 blog post, [8] and Sterling's initial coining of the term took place around this time. [1] In February 2017, developers Digital Homicide Studios were accused of creating asset flips by Sterling, who reviewed one of their games, The Slaughtering Grounds. In response, they sued Sterling for US$10 million, as well as anonymous Steam users for US$18 million. These lawsuits were dismissed, and the developer's games were removed from Steam for violating their terms of service. [9]
In September 2017, Steam removed 173 asset flip titles released by the studio Silicon Echo and associated accounts. 86 of those titles had been launched in the two months before the crackdown, accounting for approximately 10% of all games added to Steam in the period. [10] The games were constructed out of assets from the Unity store, and were released in bulk after the studio had found a means of circumventing the $100 listing fee using a bundle mechanic. [11] Valve released a statement addressing the move, stating: "this person was mass-shipping nearly-identical products on Steam that were impacting the store’s functionality and making it harder for players interested in finding fun games to play". [12]
In 2018, Steam declared, after pulling the school shooting game Active Shooter , that it would "allow everything" on its platform regardless of quality. [13] Valve engineer Erik Johnson later clarified that Steam would only remove "obvious troll" games, despite the contention of critics and gamers that asset flips are harmful to players, developers and Steam itself. The steadily increasing amount of asset flips on Steam, due to a loosening of inclusion criteria, led to what commentators called the "Steampocalypse", in which discoverability for most indie developers dropped precipitously regardless of game quality. [2]
2018 also saw the release of Asset Flip Simulator on Steam on May 4 of that year, a game designed to criticise the practice. [14]
Developer Bennett Foddy has lamented the inconsistent use of the term asset flip as a pejorative, saying that some well-regarded games feature a large number of bought assets, including his own game Getting Over It which he felt could "reasonably be described" as an asset flip. [2]
Shovelware is a term for individual video games or software bundles known more for the quantity of what is included than for the quality or usefulness.
Valve Corporation, also known as Valve Software, is an American video game developer, publisher, and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. It is the developer of the software distribution platform Steam and the game franchises Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Dota.
Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront developed by Valve Corporation. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 to provide game updates automatically for Valve's games, and expanded to distributing third-party titles in late 2005. Steam offers various features, like game server matchmaking with Valve Anti-Cheat measures, social networking, and game streaming services. Steam client's functions include game update automation, cloud storage for game progress, and community features such as direct messaging, in-game overlay functions and a virtual collectable marketplace.
Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, first announced and released in June 2005 at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as a Mac OS X game engine. The engine has since been gradually extended to support a variety of desktop, mobile, console and virtual reality platforms. It is particularly popular for iOS and Android mobile game development, is considered easy to use for beginner developers, and is popular for indie game development.
Platform exclusivity refers to the status of a video game being developed for and released only on certain platforms. Most commonly, it refers to only being released on a specific video game console or through a specific vendor's platforms—either permanently, or for a definite period of time.
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In the video game industry, AAA (Triple-A) is an informal classification used to classify video games produced and distributed by a mid-sized or major publisher, which typically have higher development and marketing budgets than other tiers of games. In the mid-2010s, the term "AAA+" was used to describe AAA type games that generated additional revenue over time, in a similar fashion to massively multiplayer online games, by using games-as-a-service methods such as season passes and expansion packs. The similar construction "III" (Triple-I) has also been used to describe high-production-value games in the indie game industry.
Goat Simulator is an action video game developed and published by Coffee Stain Studios. It was released for Microsoft Windows in April 2014, and ports for Linux and OS X were released in June 2014. Mobile versions for Android and iOS were released in September 2014. Versions for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One were released in April 2015, and for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 in August 2015; these ports were developed by Double Eleven. A Nintendo Switch version containing the game and downloadable content was released in January 2019.
James Stephanie Sterling, also known as Commander Sterling and formerly known as Jim Sterling, is an English-American freelance video game journalist, critic, pundit, YouTuber, and professional wrestler. Before becoming independent in September 2014, she was the review editor for Destructoid, and an author for The Escapist. Sterling is noted as one of the main examples of a YouTuber achieving success through crowdfunding.
Digital Homicide Studios L.L.C. was an American video game developer based in Yuma, Arizona. James and Robert Romine founded the company in 2014 and released poorly received games in quick succession. The studio produced roughly sixty games until September 2016, including The Slaughtering Grounds, Temper Tantrum, and Galactic Hitman. The Slaughtering Grounds, Digital Homicide Studios's best-known title, was released via Steam in October 2014. Jim Sterling's criticism of the game led to a dispute with Digital Homicide Studios and eventually a lawsuit by James Romine against Sterling. Romine also filed a lawsuit against 100 anonymous Steam users in September 2016, accusing them of harassment. In response to the latter, Valve removed all Digital Homicide Studios games from Steam, which Romine stated "destroyed" the studio by October 2016. He subsequently withdrew the lawsuit, while that against Sterling was dismissed with prejudice in February 2017.
Steam Spy is a website created by Sergey Galyonkin and launched in April 2015. The site uses an application programming interface (API) to the Steam software distribution service owned by Valve to estimate the number of sales of software titles offered on the service. Estimates are made based on the API polling user profiles from Steam to determine what software titles they own and using statistics to estimate overall sales. Software developers have reported that Galyonkin's algorithms can provide sales numbers that are accurate to within 10%, though Galyonkin cautions against using his estimates in financial projections and other business-critical decisions. Due to changes in Steam's privacy features in April 2018, Galyonkin had anticipated he would need to shut down the service due to the inability to estimate accurate numbers from other sources, but later that month revealed a new algorithm using publicly available data, which, while having a larger number of outliers, he still believes has reasonable accuracy for use.
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The SXSW Gaming Awards were awards given to video games during the annual South by Southwest Festival (SXSW), held in Austin, Texas typically in March of that year. The Awards were part of the SXSW Gaming Expo which is part of the SXSW Interactive branch of the festival.
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Steam Trading Cards are a digital commodity issued by Valve for use on its digital distribution service, Steam. Steam Trading Cards are a non-physical analogue of conventional trading cards, which are periodically granted to Steam users for playing games, fulfilling tasks, or by random chance. Cards can be "crafted" to acquire Steam-centric awards such as emoticons or profile backgrounds, traded to other Steam users, or sold through the Steam Community Market for store credit.
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