Serial scammer publisher TheGameWallStudios is back in Action |
- Serial scammer publisher TheGameWallStudios is back in Action
- Pose, a 2D skeleton animation tool (free, in progress)
- Too Old For Game Development?
- Obsidian's Josh Sawyer talks about his experiences with Game Engines.
- Are there any active subs for game engine development?
- Free (CC0) Halloween themed 3D assets!
- Giving away my new paid sound asset pack via 100% off discount code "OCTOBER100". Contains 10 light orchestral music tracks, each roughly 2 minutes in length. Great soundtrack for fantasy/medieval themed projects.
- 24 hours of game development in Rust
- What do you think is the most important quality of a game developer?
- i just created a perfectly rigged AWM as always feel free to use it in your game but pls mention my name in the credits of your game (download link in the comments)
- Recreating The Green Lantern Power Ring in UE4 Blueprints
- Thinking about a career change
- How to use shaders?
- Fundamentals and logic of a multiplayer game? Need books, videos or links to learn
- Can you help me testing my bachelor thesis to gather data? Should take about 5 minutes
- Can you help me?
- Unity launch Open Projects: "Embark on an open source gamedev journey with us"
- Prototype Character Select Screen/UI, Any Feedback/Suggestions?
- So... I need advice.
- Tin Toy Pistol: Modeling and Texturing Workflows for 3D Prop
- How to use Blender without a GPU
- What are some good resources for learning how to balance a game?
- I Turned Youtube into a Giant Battle Royale Game!
| Serial scammer publisher TheGameWallStudios is back in Action Posted: 01 Oct 2020 07:12 AM PDT Hi fellow developers. This is a long story, but it's important. I'll start with a TLDR for proper context and explain why this matters TLDR Summary: Last year, we posted a story about how we DMCA-ed our own game and why we did it. Our former publisher, TheGameWallStudios absconded with our money and disappeared with our App ID on Steam. Soon after the story blew up, the publisher went into hiding and removed their entire online presence including the official website, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. We recently discovered the publisher is back. I'm not sure when they returned, but as of writing this post, the website is back online alongside their social media accounts. With this in mind, we wanted to warn indie developers. The publisher has done this multiple times and we don't want anyone else to fall victim to The GameWallStudios' scam again. We weren't the first , and if he continues we certainly won't be the last. If you are ever approached by The GameWallStudios, be cautious. We can't tell you what to do, but we can share our story. Here's the full story from last year, rephrased and summarized from the original post (Original link : https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/ai80zd/we_dmcaed_our_own_game_last_week_because_it_got/ ) WHAT HAPPENED? In 2018, we launched our game on Early Access with a small publisher who approached us several months before launch. The name of this company is TheGameWallStudios, which is run by Eduardo Monteiro. Because it was a small publisher claiming to have relevant experience, we entered into a performance-based contract. Our contact required specific results to be met or the automatic dissolution of the contract. After reviewing the contract with legal advisors and agreeing on some modifications, both parties were satisfied with the contract and we moved forward with our partnership. I want to stress this point because the situation wasn't a case of us simply not reading the fine print of our contract. TheGameWallStudios ran off with our money, stopped replying to our emails and calls, and straight-up went into hiding. While this was happening, we assessed our best plan of action. We knew we could sue him, but feared he'd simply empty his company's assets and run away once more. Putting an injunction to prevent this may work but our UK-based legal advisors outlined the potential cost, and it was far beyond what our studio could afford, especially considering this person stole all of our launch money. Eventually, we DMCA-ed our own game and pursued further action. Ultimately, this allowed us to get our game back, but none of the money. We've been able to continue development, but only after accepting that a huge chunk of our funding was gone forever. One of the worst parts of the entire situation is that none of the marketing activities promised in our contract came through. We were left without money to support our game's Early Access launch. When word of the publisher's scam got around to the games media, the publisher disappeared along with their entire social media presence. Our post in here in r/gamedev was the first to make the wave thanks to the support of fellow redditors. Several notable content creators like Jim Sterling, YongYea, and SidAlpha (who broke the story in the influencer community) helped highlight the situation. At this point, other developers began approaching us and shared stories about their own experiences being preyed upon by the publisher. It quickly became clear that our story was not the first time he did this. At this point, TheGameWallStudios' MO started to become apparent. He would go from victim to victim, preying on small indie developers that typically couldn't afford to have their money stolen. His victims would almost always be forced to close down and didn't have the funds to sue or enough media pull to ensure the world knew what was happening. The deeper we dig, the more we realize how far this went and how many people it affected. For your information , multiple fraud report were made on official law enforcement channels by myself and the previously affected studios. Law enforcement divisions like https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/ was created specifically for issues like this, yet there was no follow-up beyond the initial report and at this point , I have very little faith the law enforcement is interested to pursue this. I wanted to emphasize this because, we didn't just complain to make noise. We wanted to make sure even though we couldn't get our money back, we wanted to put a stop to this nonsense. It's ridiculous that this had to keep happening year after year. SO...WHAT NOW? Two years have passed since our Early Access launch. We've worked hard and have moved on, mostly trying to forget what had happened with the publisher. On a recent whim, I did a quick Google search for the publisher and lo and behold: the website, Twitter, and Facebook accounts are all back up. I'm unsure if he's planning to get back into publishing again. But the website had been edited since it was first taken off line. Our game was removed from the website before the website and social media accounts were re-activated. There have been no posts so far, but once I became aware of this, I needed to get the word out. I've chosen to post this story to raise awareness of this publisher and to advise all indie devs to outright reject TheGameWallStudios. When I first posted about this story last year, we were hesitant to directly name the publisher. Since then, we realized that this is the kind of inaction that allows him to get away with these scams. Now I have, and I hope this Reddit post will immortalize his studio name so that no other indie developers have to go through what we went through. We hope we will be the last of his victims. Considering what happened to us, it's a miracle we survived and we're currently schedule to exit early access into 1.0 very soon. But we were this close to seeing the lights go out. If not by the sheer miracle and right timing , we wouldn't have made it. Many of his previous victims weren't so lucky. As a footnote, I've included these additional readings and some of the previous media coverage from our initial story: GamesRadar posted excellent coverage, also outlining the different studios that also had their revenue stolen. PCGamer : https://www.pcgamer.com/the-studio-behind-this-fps-rts-hybrid-has-successfully-dmcaed-its-own-game/ GamesIndustry.Biz : https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-01-21-developer-uses-dmca-to-reclaim-steam-page Notable Influencers covering this story. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Pose, a 2D skeleton animation tool (free, in progress) Posted: 01 Oct 2020 04:18 AM PDT
 | ||
| Posted: 01 Oct 2020 06:41 AM PDT
 | ||
| Obsidian's Josh Sawyer talks about his experiences with Game Engines. Posted: 01 Oct 2020 09:32 AM PDT
 | ||
| Are there any active subs for game engine development? Posted: 01 Oct 2020 05:22 AM PDT | ||
| Free (CC0) Halloween themed 3D assets! Posted: 01 Oct 2020 09:33 AM PDT
 | ||
| Posted: 01 Oct 2020 09:55 AM PDT
 | ||
| 24 hours of game development in Rust Posted: 01 Oct 2020 02:33 AM PDT
 | ||
| What do you think is the most important quality of a game developer? Posted: 01 Oct 2020 11:12 AM PDT If you had your own studio, what would be the first thing you look for in a potential employee? What do you think makes a good gamedev good? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 01 Oct 2020 12:53 PM PDT
 | ||
| Recreating The Green Lantern Power Ring in UE4 Blueprints Posted: 01 Oct 2020 06:09 AM PDT
 | ||
| Thinking about a career change Posted: 01 Oct 2020 11:47 AM PDT Hi r/gamedev I'm currently mulling over my current career choice and looking to go in a different direction. This decision is one that will have a large impact on my day to day life, so I'm looking to get as much info as possible before taking the appropriate steps I'm that direction. With the upheaval that is COVID, many people's lives have changed pretty drastically. I'm a kiwi and was lucky to have moved back to NZ from the states right before the lock down happened. My intent was to only be back in NZ for a short period, four or so months, and then return to nyc. I'm an actor and have substituted my income with various hospitality jobs through out most of my adult life, and moving back to nyc was going to be more of that. However, the timeline of things is a little up in the air at the moment - with no real end in sight for the state of international travel. I've always loved escapism in all its forms, which is why I'm an actor and love books and video games. I have a long history with video games and countless thousands of hours played. Ultimately I would love to be involved in the industry from a performance perspective, but realize that is just through the conventional means of the audition process. But other aspects of the industry also entice me. Lore and mechanics are two fantastic features of video games that I think I would deeply enjoy, but what knowledge should I possess to find myself in a position where I might attain a job in a game dev house. Should I learn to code in Java or C++. Should I go back to school and get another degree in computer science this time. Should I just download some software and just start building games and creating a portfolio. How should I best use my time to get into the industry. I should mention that I'm 27 and have a Bachelor of Arts. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 01 Oct 2020 10:08 AM PDT I often see in games the use of shaders on 3D models to achieve some effect, for example, teleportation or destruction, but I do not quite understand how to do this if shared materials with atlases are used for performance. The only thing that comes to my mind is to create a model of the twin with the correct shader to show the effect, and then create a normal model or change the material of the model. How it's make? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Fundamentals and logic of a multiplayer game? Need books, videos or links to learn Posted: 01 Oct 2020 04:58 AM PDT Hi there! I am going to take a step up into multiplayer games, but i lack the knowledge and understanding of how it works, so i am here asking for some guidance, help and content where i can learn more about that. I am not asking for code or anything like that. I am asking for how a multiplayer works. How many servers i need, what are the best multyplayer system, how should i do my server conection, how should i read the data from the players, what tools to use, etc etc. What i need i something like a multiplayer guide for noobs book xD [link] [comments]  | ||
| Can you help me testing my bachelor thesis to gather data? Should take about 5 minutes Posted: 01 Oct 2020 09:28 AM PDT
 | ||
| Posted: 01 Oct 2020 04:24 AM PDT Hello gamedev community! I'm a high school student who wants to learn coding. And I want to have some experience before attending university.(I'm planning to choose cs as a major) And I was thinking that learning about game development is suitable for me. So can you give me some tips about where I could start,which youtube channels are useful :) Thank you so much:) [link] [comments]  | ||
| Unity launch Open Projects: "Embark on an open source gamedev journey with us" Posted: 01 Oct 2020 09:15 AM PDT
 | ||
| Prototype Character Select Screen/UI, Any Feedback/Suggestions? Posted: 01 Oct 2020 12:58 PM PDT
 | ||
| Posted: 01 Oct 2020 12:36 PM PDT I am very interested in game development but not in the coding/designing/any of those kinds of things. The thing I am interested in is making the concepts and ideas for the games then polishing them so my dev team could enjoy making it and if people will see it they will go wow. (learning how to script or design is a bonus but not the priority. do any of you have any advice on how should go off of that? thanks ahead. just some depressed youngling. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Tin Toy Pistol: Modeling and Texturing Workflows for 3D Prop Posted: 01 Oct 2020 06:28 AM PDT
 | ||
| How to use Blender without a GPU Posted: 30 Sep 2020 10:26 PM PDT
 | ||
| What are some good resources for learning how to balance a game? Posted: 01 Oct 2020 12:14 PM PDT I've always wondered how video games are balanced. I look at game like Overwatch or Skyrim and I can't help but wonder "how the heck did they come to the conclusion that this skill must do 13 damage instead of 12?". I've heard that they use a lot of mathmatical formulas, but if they do, where can I learn those? How do developers test mechanics so that they know they are fair for multiple different playstyles? Introductions aside, I need to find good resources that could teach me how to balance a game. Do you guys know of any? [link] [comments]  | ||
| I Turned Youtube into a Giant Battle Royale Game! Posted: 01 Oct 2020 12:10 PM PDT
 |
| You are subscribed to email updates from gamedev - game development, programming, design, writing, math, art, jams, postmortems, marketing. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment