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[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Giving away Steam Keys to influential YouTubers and streamers is a common form of marketing that indie developers employ to help get their games noticed. However, this practice has brought upon the curse of indie creators getting hounded for Steam Keys every time they release a game, often by people who can’t even offer exposure in exchange. In a recent Q&A post, Japanese indie developer Housenka bluntly rebuffed Steam Key beggars, to the satisfaction of the community.

Housenka is a member of the indie studio Denneko Yuugi, which is currently producing the 3D action RPG Machina of the Planet Tree: Mugen Ourokaku. This is the third entry to their Machina of the Planet Tree series, and based on currently available images and videos, it boasts some stunning 3D graphics, paired with anime-style character designs.

Denneko Yuugi’s frequent teasing of the game’s attractive and high-quality characters on social media has generated a lot of interest towards the upcoming title among both Japanese and English-speaking users. However, it seems the popularity has also come with the price of unwanted inquiries.

In a now viral Q&A post (seen above), Housenka answers various questions from users in a sarcastic but light-hearted manner, such as “Will there be sex? – No, please make your way to DLsite.” and “Can you make the character’s butt and thighs thicker? – Just accept her for who she is.” But the last frequently asked question, “I’ll promote you, give me a Steam Key,” earned only a relentless “Buy it, you piece of sh*t.” from the developer. In a reply to a commenter, Housenka adds, “I think every person who has released a game on Steam wants to say the same thing.”

Even among indie developers, taking a “harsh” tone with customers is not such a common sight in Japanese spaces, so the studio’s official diss earned a lot shocked yet impressed reactions.

On another note, creators on overseas communities like Reddit warn fellow indie developers to be wary of requests for free Steam Keys, as a lot of them merely want to resell the received keys. Such scammers may also pretend to be influential content creators, so thorough fact-checking is crucial before accepting offers.

Denneko Yuugi’s Machina of the Planet Tree: Mugen Ourokaku is currently in development for the PC (Steam), with an Early Access release planned for this year. A demo is available on the studio’s official website.

“Buy the game, you piece of s**t,” indie dev applauded for dissing Steam Key beggars - AUTOMATON WEST

A Japanese indie studio's blunt official stance towards people begging for free Steam Keys has gone viral in the community.

automaton-media.com

 

[MonkeyClaw36]

Influencers are a cancer. There I said it.

Begging for freebies for " Exposure" is BS. Most of those beggars dont even have 50+ followers.
Good on the dev for calling them out.

Just by calling yourself an Influencer doesnt make you one.
Hell, I call myself King and yet here I am. Slaving away hoping for a day off.

 

[KaiserBecks]

Sort of related:



“Influencers/content creators” often get multiple keys and instead of giving them away, they sell them to kinguin. There are steam curators who start their “community” for the sole reason of making money this way.

 

[Danjin44]

3D action roguelite game!

why indie keep wanting to make rougelite?

 

[dreamstation]

Good on em. Those clowns make enough money talking shit to buy their own god damn key. I have to, why shouldn't they?

 

[MonkeyClaw36]

Good on em. Those clowns make enough money talking shit to buy their own god damn key. I have to, why shouldn't they?

Usually people begging aren't the most popular in their field.

 

[SCB3]

Influencers are a cancer. There I said it.

Begging for freebies for " Exposure" is BS. Most of those beggars dont even have 50+ followers.
Good on the dev for calling them out.

Just by calling yourself an Influencer doesnt make you one.
Hell, I call myself King and yet here I am. Slaving away hoping for a day off.

I personally think that any streamer should have to BUY the game, they're profiting off it 100% all the time

 

[calistan]

why indie keep wanting to making rougelite?

Quicker, cheaper and easier than being original, I suppose

 

[GymWolf]

Quicker, cheaper and easier than being original, I suppose

Like in every genre, you need talent to make good games, not everyday you get an hades, doing a rogielite isxnit a recipe for success if your game is not good.

Also, no genre is original anymore, they would not be more original if they were making a platform or an action game.

 

[SJRB]

Based.

 

[crackajack]

Streamers that have no actually significant followership begging for freebies are stupid, but giving people that probably anyway have enough money free stuff for exposure wasn't invented by influencers. Despite regular people despising them getting stuff shoved up their ass for no "actual" work. Any partnership in sports with brand xyz is the same thing- "just" requires rare talent and putting in actual work. They do not even stop at giving it to you free but pay for exclusivity. Just imagine streamer xyz partners with a game and can't play anything else on stream for let's say an entire year. I guess free gaming chairs free headsets and whatnot come with such conditions.

The whole advertisement world is imho anyway just insane and pretty much moving around fantasy money but not as bad as banks and their actually entirely fake bubbles.

 

[MonkeyClaw36]

Streamers that have no actually significant followership begging for freebies are stupid, but giving people that probably anyway have enough money free stuff for exposure wasn't invented by influencers. Despite regular people despising them getting stuff shoved up their ass for no "actual" work. Any partnership in sports with brand xyz is the same thing- "just" requires rare talent and putting in actual work. They do not even stop at giving it to you free but pay for exclusivity. Just imagine streamer xyz partners with a game and can't play anything else on stream for let's say an entire year. I guess free gaming chairs free headsets and whatnot come with such conditions.

The whole advertisement world is imho anyway just insane and pretty much moving around fantasy money but not as bad as banks and their actually entirely fake bubbles.

 

[hemo memo]

why indie keep wanting to making rougelite?

High replayability with little content. That’s why.

 

[Holammer]

why indie keep wanting to making rougelite?

Get off your fainting couch. They offer replayability which results in player retention/high engagement and more sales. It's a super popular genre and they can be made with a shoestring budget.
There's something there you clearly don't understand, which made Vampire Survivors clones a huge genre with 100s of imitations. Made it and Hades two of the best rated and top selling games for the past few years. Current indie darling Balatro is tearing up the track and you wonder why they make rogue-likes.

 

[Guilty_AI]

I think the tone is somewhat lost in translation here.

why indie keep wanting to making rougelite?

They really like her

Spoiler

But for real, its just one of those genres that don't necessarily sell a lot but sell consistently. Similar to deckbuilders and Boomer Shooters.

 

[Holammer]

I think the tone is somewhat lost in translation here.

They really like her

Spoiler

But for real, its just one of those genres that don't necessarily sell a lot but sell consistently. Similar to deckbuilders and Boomer Shooters.

That's just Rouge, here's the actual Rouge-like.

 

[hemo memo]

Get off your fainting couch. They offer replayability which results in player retention/high engagement and more sales. It's a super popular genre and they can be made with a shoestring budget.
There's something there you clearly don't understand, which made Vampire Survivors clones a huge genre with 100s of imitations. Made it and Hades two of the best rated and top selling games for the past few years. Current indie darling Balatro is tearing up the track and you wonder why they make rogue-likes.

Hades & Vampire Survivors shine, but roguelike graveyards loom large. Genre alone isn't enough for success.

 

[alucard0712_rus]

What a great stuff!
I agree with devs.

 

[calistan]

Like in every genre, you need talent to make good games, not everyday you get an hades, doing a rogielite isxnit a recipe for success if your game is not good.

Also, no genre is original anymore, they would not be more original if they were making a platform or an action game.

When I see a game described as roguelike/lite, I associate that with procedural generation of the levels and endless repetition. That's a big turn-off for me, I would rather somebody had hand-crafted it rather than relying on the RNG to create infinite variations of the same thing. I guess that's what I meant by 'original'.

Anyway, I might hit the dev up on the Twitter, see if he'll send me a key so I can check this one out.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Reading Indy posts are more fun than watching 'O' faced thumbnails, ads and smash that subscribe button, check out my patreon.

 

[adamsapple]

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

Nice animations, keeping an eye on this.
Also, he's right.

 

[JimboJones]

Is this one of those hentai games.

 

[poodaddy]

why indie keep wanting to making rougelite?

Chronic deficit of creativity and innovation in the industry right now, and despite what some think, that definitely does extend to Indies to some extent. I understand why to a degree, but still, it's lamentable.

 

[Kikorin]

Lot of games should thanks Twitch streamers/Influencers for their success, like Fall Guys, Palword, Only Up, etc... So is right to decide to not send free copies to account with 50 followers, but you can't even say is worthless. It depends, you have to choose wisely. Sometime could even be useful to send your free code to someone with 1000 followers really into these kind of games (if you sell like 5 copies because of that is already worth the "investment").

 

[Dacvak]

Influencers are a cancer. There I said it.

You’re 100% right though

 

[Kataploom]

Lot of games should thanks Twitch streamers/Influencers for their success, like Fall Guys, Palword, Only Up, etc... So is right to decide to not send free copies to account with 50 followers, but you can't even say is worthless. It depends, you have to choose wisely. Sometime could even be useful to send your free code to someone with 1000 followers really into these kind of games (if you sell like 5 copies because of that is already worth the "investment").

Problem is that many "youtubers" make a living by asking devs for free keys and instead of using them to review the games, they sell them on Eneba, CDKeys, etc., they have several accounts to ask devs for free keys so they can accumulate a bunch and sell them all, it's a pretty standard scam practice these days, that's how you get many of the cheap steam keys on those sites, and they're too many to filter out.

 

[nush]

Indies don't have a marketing department to filter all this stuff out. Ebeggars? *Suprisepikachu.jpg

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Is this one of those hentai games.

In a now viral Q&A post (seen above), Housenka answers various questions from users in a sarcastic but light-hearted manner, such as “Will there be sex? – No, please make your way to DLsite.” and “Can you make the character’s butt and thighs thicker? – Just accept her for who she is.”

 

[MagiusNecros]

why indie keep wanting to making rougelite?

Short repetitive games where you suffer in the beginning and wreck things maybe after 20 upgrades. Once you've played one you've played them all. Sad really.

---------

Developer seems like they are going to attempt to develop probably something similar to Senran Kagura but it seems rather rough and a ways off. Probably an easy pass since the enemies you fight are just cutesy giant slimes. Yuck.

Doesn't seem all that interesting to me. Some guy tried a demo.

 

[Griffon]

The game is looking great, guy needs to have a steam page so I can wishlist that shit ASAP.

 

[ReyBrujo]

But for real, its just one of those genres that don't necessarily sell a lot but sell consistently. Similar to deckbuilders and Boomer Shooters.

This. Roguelites aren't usually long, might take one or two weeks to finish and usually leaves you yearning for more so they strengthen their sales as a whole genre. Plus they are easy to pick up and play, just smash a button to attack, initial combos are usually press this button four times or this button five times or this button six times and you get a powerful attack.

 

[Thanati]

Influencers are a cancer. There I said it.

Begging for freebies for " Exposure" is BS. Most of those beggars dont even have 50+ followers.
Good on the dev for calling them out.

Just by calling yourself an Influencer doesnt make you one.
Hell, I call myself King and yet here I am. Slaving away hoping for a day off.

I’m with you 100%. They are a pox on everything.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

The game is looking great, guy needs to have a steam page so I can wishlist that shit ASAP.

Don't worry, fam. I'm going to keep an eye on this one, and once they put up a Steam page, I'll make a thread about it (I usually do this with most interesting indie titles that catch my eye.)

Edit:

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

The game is looking great, guy needs to have a steam page so I can wishlist that shit ASAP.

Looks like the Steam page for the game went up over the weekend.

 

[Garibaldi]

Looks canny generic. Anime waifu number 800,001. She has nice teeth tho. I applaud her dentist.

 

[thief183]

Like in every genre, you need talent to make good games, not everyday you get an hades, doing a rogielite isxnit a recipe for success if your game is not good.

Also, no genre is original anymore, they would not be more original if they were making a platform or an action game.

According to gaf the only orinlginal games are 3rd person walking and shooting from time to time simulations, with lot of cutscenes and "old man" difficulty.

 

[BacklashWave534]

I personally think that any streamer should have to BUY the game, they're profiting off it 100% all the time

It's called marketing and it makes sense in many circumstances. If someone has a large audiance and giving them a single free copy will help you sell thousands of copies why would you not? Nothing wrong with influencers reaching to form a business relationship with a game dev to market thier product. I've bought many games because i've seen someone streaming them and thought they looked cool. Sounds like the indie dev doesn't understand the marketing part of the business.

 

[ReyBrujo]

Oh, they understand it quite better than you.

 

[MagiusNecros]

Looks like mindless fun. Looks like they took one of their OC's from their first game(RPGmaker RPG) and made a Roguelite beat em up out of it.

I honestly dunno why they(game devs in general) haven't made a Musou game with a Roguelite Survival/Horde mode. But that might be asking too much.

 

[Kamina]

Wannabe influencers and key-beggars are annoying, however there is no need to directly insult people for every little thing you don’t like, a simple “no” should suffice.
Also get out of here with that roguelite nonsense.