DOTA 2 is Getting Negative Reviews on
Steam Because of Half-Life 3
DOTA 2 is getting review bombed right now. The reason?
Half-Life 3. Allow us to explain.
Last week, Marc Laidlaw, former writer for Valve and head
writer on Half-Life, posted the plot of Half-Life 3 as he
would’ve written it. Well, with the serial numbers filed off,
anyway. This caused people to realize that it’s been 10 years
this October since Episode 2 released (holy shit!).
And, as some sort of retaliation, pissed off fans have set to
trashing the scores of other recent Valve properties on Steam.
Specifically, DOTA 2, though CS:GO hasn’t been immune.
Most of the negative reviews name drop Half-Life in some
way. And, uh, the Half-Life games themselves are getting
similarly hit.
Total honesty, it’s vaguely childish; especially since most of
the reviews are poorly spelled and occasionally use caveman
grammar. It’s also the least likely way to get Valve to do what
they want. At the same time, it’s somewhat understandable,
as Half-Life was considered one of those transformative
works for the medium. And, you know, it’s been 10 years, it’s
hard not to get antsy after that long. I suppose for the time
being, however, that DOTA 2 will have to abide.
Darkwood Devs Put Their Game on The Pirate Bay
Developer Acid Wizard learned a lot making Darkwood, their first game. For one, they
mastered their fear of the genre (survival horror). For another, they took a different approach;
no jump scares, all terror.
But what’s more, they also learned something about dealing with consumers. And their
response to a number of setbacks and consumer dealings is impressive. They uploaded the
game to The Pirate Bay; the only catch being that they don’t want anyone to buy the game
through those shady key reseller sites. As per their (frankly interesting) story posted on Imgur:
Steam lets you refund a game if you haven’t played it for more than 2 hours, and as a developer we
can see the reason why people refunded it. When we read the explanation from someone who
wrote that he needed the refund because he didn’t want his parents to be stressed out when seeing
the bill at the end of the month… well, it made us feel quite bad.
So we decided to do something about it! If you don’t have the money and want to play the game, we
have a safe torrent on the Pirate Bay of the latest version of Darkwood (1.0 hotfix 3), completely
DRM-free. There’s no catch, no added pirate hats for characters or anything like that. We have just
one request: if you like Darkwood and want us to continue making games, consider buying it in the
future, maybe on a sale, through Steam, GOG or Humble Store. But please, please, don’t buy it
through any key reselling site. By doing that, you’re just feeding the cancer that is leeching off this
industry.
That’s all pretty cool of them. So, if you’d like to give a gesture of good faith in turn, the link to
the game on Steam is below. Give it a try: and, if you like it, show your support by buying
Darkwood.
18
GAMBIT | SEPT/OCT | 2017