Welcome to GreenWatch
For those discovering GreenWatch for the first time, GreenWatch is a weekly series held on both TechRaptor and Digital Homicides covering anything going on with developers/groups/users in the Steam/Steam Greenlight community. With that small introduction done, let's get into this week's GreenWatch.Yolo Army Sold?
For those who aren't aware, Yolo Army is a Steam group famous for doing a lot of boosting on titles on Steam Greenlight. They came to the Steam community's attention primarily back in late June and early July after trying to boost a game called "Shooter Tactics" on Steam Greenlight and has gotten a huge audience for hosting frequent giveaways on their group.It was recently brought to our attention that the group might have actually been sold off to a different user as in a discussion forum on a different group, former owner of the group, "Mofo", stated in a response to user "YukoValis" that the group had been sold off. To whom, Mofo did not say.
If you look at Yolo Army's page now you'll notice that this is the user who is currently the owner. The user's profile has been marked as private so most forms of information about the user's groups/friends etc. could not be gathered. However, some forms of information about the user's history was uncovered which we will talk about later.
Now it's actually unknown at this stage when the group was actually sold or even if it was sold as Mofo recently responded to another comment by a user known a R3ap4r claiming that Yolo Army wasn't sold, contradicting the comment that Mofo made to YukoValis.
So at this stage it's still unclear if Yolo Army has been sold or not however if it was sold, there was no notice put up on the group it's self of it being under new management. However, if the group was sold, traces of the exchange (if it occurred) have been traced by the GreenWatch research team from late July-early August this year. If the group was actually sold, then it would be going against the Steam terms of service
Rock God Tycoon Being Launched in Early Access
A game was uploaded onto Greenlight back in 2014 and was greenlit after an unknown period of time, the best it can be traced back to was prior to July 2015.The game's store page is currently up and it's been marked as going into Early Access. You might be wondering what's wrong with this title going into Early Access?
Well, on the Greenlight page of the game one of the developers responded to someone wondering if the game was going to be in Early Access and the developer responded
After discovering the information, I actually contacted the 2 developers of Rock God Tycoon and got some responses which didn't really resolve much. The first developer, Seabass claimed that they had some playtime in and realized that their view of the game was different from the players of the beta's opinion of the game, he also stated one part of the game wasn't entirely complete. He also claimed that the comment about the game not being in early access was made 1 year ago, which meant that it was said when the game was in an even less stable state, and also quickly directed me to Panos instead (the 2nd developer) once I brought up that the comment was made more recently than 1 year (it was actually made 6 months prior to the conversation.) I then got him talking a bit more and he stated that: "I had a full-time job then and we worked on the game very little."
Seabass wasn't only working on Rock God Tycoon, Seabass still has a game called "Project Explore" up on Steam Early Access and has been there for over a year, which he started development on while Rock God Tycoon was still on Steam Greenlight and still under development. Seabass claims that development of Project Explore has had to be put on a temporary halt due to financial issues.
I then conversed with Exterminator (the head developer of the game) and he told me that despite Seabass being labeled as one of the developers his comments should "not carry any weight towards the game."
DarkEvil's Response
A couple of weeks ago, GreenWatch covered a story on a game called "Jet of Adventures" by Darknight Studio, showing evidence of Greenlight boosting occurring on the game seeing as people were commenting "done" and leaving their e-mail addresses.Well, I was actually contacted by an unhappy DarkEvil (head of DarkNight Studio) concerning my coverage. DarkEvil claims that I was attacking him based on "some old events" that occurred 3 weeks ago, which was also when the story was first reported over on the Digital Homicides group. He also kept on changing the subject of when I kept bringing points up against him, repeatedly saying that it was "2-3 weeks old." However, DarkEvil, despite not admitting to it in previous conversations, openly came out and said vote boosting did occur with Jet of Adventures, however, he claims that he will wait for it to be greenlit the normal way.
Fatfly's Temporary Ban
Recently, developer Fatfly reuploaded his game Shooter Tactics/Wake Up/War is Hell to Steam Greenlight.For those unaware of Fatfly's history, in the past, he has thrown both racist and homophobic remarks at people, such as this. As mentioned before as well when talking about Yolo Army, Fatfly also became infamous within the Steam community after receiving Greenlight boosting services from Yolo army for his game Shooter Tactics which was later renamed to Wake Up and is currently calling it's self War is Hell.
Well, earlier this week, Fatfly actually got banned from all forums across Steam by a Steam moderator, including his own. It was only a temporary one however as the ban was lifted 24 hours later. Not that much is known about what the ban was actually for, the only piece of information that we're aware of is that it was placed by an official Steam moderator.
Force Invasion Store Page Update
Last week we covered a game that was on Greenlight called Life is Pain however shortly after the game was greenlit, it was replaced with a different game called Force Invasion and showed examples of the game being different from the original Greenlight game. The original Greenlight game that was posted was a 2D platformer game however the game that replaced the game shortly after it was greenlit, titled Force Invasion, didn't have much information linked to it, except that it was an Unreal Engine game, which already made it incredibly different to the game that was advertised on Greenlight.Well, just a quick update for that story, the store page description has been added showing even more evidence that the game is completely different. The information reveals that it's set to be a first person shooter and that the game is currently in Alpha testing.
Slingshot People Vote Boosting
Just for disclosure, there's nothing concrete here, however, there is evidence pointing towards it.There's a game on Steam Greenlight called "Slingshot People" that has been on Steam Greenlight for a significant amount of time and randomly, out of nowhere, tons of Russian comments come in, saying things like "voted", which suggests that there may be vote boosting occurring with the project. I tried contacting the developer of the game but he doesn't appear to understand English.
Thanks For Reading
I want to thank everyone here for reading this week's GreenWatch, tell me what you like/what you didn't like about it, tell me your opinions on the stories covered this week as well.
