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. As the required investments are lower for users and publishers alike, mobile asset flips derive profits from free-to-play downloads with frequent in-game advertising and/or a freemium model. [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] 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. [5]
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 managed by Valve. 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 functionality include game update automation, cloud storage for game progress, and community features such as direct messaging, in-game overlay 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, augmented reality, 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.
Garry's Mod is a 2006 sandbox game developed by Facepunch Studios and published by Valve. The base game mode of Garry's Mod has no set objectives and provides the player with a world in which to freely manipulate objects. Other game modes, notably Trouble in Terrorist Town and Prop Hunt, are created by other developers as mods and are installed separately, by means such as the Steam Workshop. Garry's Mod was created by Garry Newman as a mod for Valve's Source game engine and released in December 2004, before being expanded into a standalone release that was published by Valve in November 2006. Ports of the original Windows version for Mac OS X and Linux followed in September 2010 and June 2013, respectively. As of September 2021, Garry's Mod has sold more than 20 million copies. A successor, Sandbox, has been in development since 2015.
A fan game is a video game that is created by fans of a certain topic or IP. They are usually based on one, or in some cases several, video game entries or franchises. Many fan games attempt to clone or remake the original game's design, gameplay, and characters, but it is equally common for fans to develop a unique game using another as a template. Though the quality of fan games has always varied, recent advances in computer technology and in available tools, e.g. through open source software, have made creating high-quality games easier. Fan games can be seen as user-generated content, as part of the retrogaming phenomena, and as expression of the remix culture.
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.
Facepunch Studios Ltd is a British video game developer and publisher headquartered in Birmingham, England, founded in June 2004 and incorporated on 17 March 2009 by Garry Newman. The company is most known for its sandbox video game Garry's Mod and survival game Rust. Facepunch is currently developing s&box, which is regarded as a spiritual successor to Garry's Mod.
A Let's Play (LP) is a video documenting the playthrough of a video game, often including commentary and/or a camera view of the gamer's face. A Let's Play differs from a video game walkthrough or strategy guide by focusing on an individual's subjective experience with the game, often with humorous, irreverent, or critical commentary from the player, rather than being an objective source of information on how to progress through the game. While Let's Plays and live streaming of game playthroughs are related, Let's Plays tend to be curated experiences that include editing and narration, and can be scripted, while streaming is often an unedited experience performed on the fly.
Early access, also known as alpha access, alpha founding, paid alpha, or game preview, is a funding model in the video game industry by which consumers can purchase and play a game in the various pre-release development cycles, such as pre-alpha, alpha, and/or beta, while the developer is able to use those funds to continue further development on the game. Those that pay to participate typically help to debug the game, provide feedback and suggestions, may have access to special materials in the game. The early-access approach is a common way to obtain funding for indie games, and may also be used along with other funding mechanisms, including crowdfunding. Many crowdfunding projects promise to offer access to alpha and/or beta versions of the game as development progresses; however, unlike some of these projects which solicit funds but do not yet have a playable game, all early access games offer an immediately playable version of the unfinished game to players.
In the video game industry, AAA (Triple-A) is a buzzword used to classify video games produced or 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.
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.
Meme Run is an endless running video game created by American indie developer Ninja Pig Studios for the Wii U console's eShop service. The game features extensive use of Internet memes; for example, the player character is a stick figure with a trollface for a head, and the levels are made up of Lenny faces. The game was designed to appeal to both hardcore and casual audiences, but has been widely criticized both before and after its release for its perceived low quality.
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. James Stephanie 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.
A review bomb is an Internet phenomenon in which a large number of people or a few people with multiple accounts post negative user reviews online in an attempt to harm the sales or popularity of a product, a service, or a business. While a large number of negative reviews may simply be the result of a large number of customers independently criticizing something for poor quality, a review bomb may also be driven by a desire to draw attention to perceived political or cultural issues, perhaps especially if the vendor seems unresponsive or inaccessible to direct feedback. Review bombing also typically takes place over a short period of time and meant to disrupt established ratings that a product already has at review sites, sometimes backed by campaigns organized through online message boards. It may be used as a mass-movement-driven coercion tactic, as a form of protest, or may simply be a form of trolling. Review bombing is a similar practice to vote brigading.
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.
Video games can include elements that use blockchain technologies, including cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), often as a form of monetization. These elements typically allow players to trade in-game items for cryptocurrency, or represent in-game items with NFTs. A subset of these games are also known as play-to-earn games because they include systems that allow players to earn cryptocurrency through gameplay. Blockchain games have existed since 2017, gaining wider attention from the video game industry in 2021. Several AAA publishers have expressed intent to include this technology in the future. Players, developers, and game companies have criticized the use of blockchain technology in video games for being exploitative, environmentally unsustainable, and unnecessary.
The Epic Games Store is a video game digital distribution service and storefront operated by Epic Games. It launched in December 2018 as a software client, for Microsoft Windows and macOS, and online storefront. Android and iOS versions of the store launched in August 2024, with the iOS version only available for European users. The service provides friends list management, game matchmaking, and other features. Epic Games has further plans to expand the feature set of the storefront but it does not plan to add as many features as other digital distribution platforms, such as discussion boards or user reviews, instead using existing social media platforms to support these.
Emulators of the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo's current eighth-generation video game console, have been in development since 2017, less than a year after the console's release. Multiple emulators have been in development, the most well-known being Yuzu and Ryujinx, both now defunct. Switch emulators have been widely noted by video games journalists for the swift and significant progress of their abilities to accurately emulate the console, as they are already able to run existing and new titles for the console in a playable state, sometimes within days of their release, as well as able to run on a variety of devices, including PCs running Windows and Linux, and the Steam Deck.