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Game developer revokes a user's Steam key after negative review

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Here's a case of how to definitely not deal with getting negative feedback. A developer of Depth of Extinction revoked a user's key after a negative review. Update: A statement from the developer.

Depth of Extinction is a game that went through itch's "First Access" program where they sold limited amounts of keys across various rounds. Like a lot of games that start off on itch.io, the developer promised a Steam key when the game makes into onto Valve's store. So to make matters worse, this was a user who helped fund them a little before the wider release.

You can see the Steam forum post here where the user talks about it, which is now locked by the developer which was made after they put up this user review on Steam. Looking at the short review, they're not even saying all that much and it sounds like a pretty honest post as well as remaining quite polite with their negative thoughts about it.

The reply the developer sent to the user, is a great example of how to not respond to players of your game who dislike certain aspects of it:

Sorry about that, but I thought I you weren't interested in playing the game. I would have loved to get your feedback during the First Access but I didn't see anything from you until the Steam review, which was a little confusing. I really don't see how you saw enough of the current version of the game to make the judgement call you did there since we made massive changes in the last few months that were all just on Steam.

I can get you another key if you are interested in playing more and perhaps providing some feedback on how we can improve the game.

As polite as the developer reply may seem, how could they have thought this would be a good idea? They did also apologise in a later post after. Since I actually quite like the game, it also stings a bit to see a developer I also supported do something like this. Thankfully, the situation is now resolved and the user does have access to it on Steam once again. Honestly though, I'm a little in shock that doing something like this would ever cross someone's mind.

I've given plenty of negative reviews in my time here and on Steam itself, I've later changed my mind on it especially in times when there's been a patch to improve things and this user could have done the same but that's not the point. This feels like an attempt to silence negative feedback to me, it doesn't sit right at all.

It does also bring up some interesting questions about how easy it is for developers to remove peoples access to their games. While it's a system that can help developers in certain situations, it's also a system that is quite obviously open to a bit of abuse. I do have to wonder what Valve think about this as well, so I've reached out to them for a comment and I will update this if they reply.

This does make another interesting case for DRM free games outside of Steam, since a developer can't just take away your ability to play it. While a DRM free store could remove the game from you, you're still able to fully back it up yourself.

Hat tip to madpinger for the info.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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74 comments
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poiuz Oct 20, 2018
Quoting: Delicieuxz[…]
Let's quickly wrap up this off-topic discussion: The GPLv2/v3 are in conformance with the law in the EU & the USA. They have undergone legal scrutiny in courts (GPL Enforcement Cases and the rights can also be revoked (e.g. Busybox vs Best Buy + 13 other companies (2009-2012)).

Quoting: DelicieuxzMany publishers write digital licenses knowing that they don't count for much beyond their psychological influence to invoke or prevent certain end-user behaviours - which is something publishers still consider to be valuable.
Of course, I'm not questioning that. I'm simply stating that there are legal reasons to revoke a license.


Last edited by poiuz on 20 October 2018 at 5:09 pm UTC
Scoopta Oct 20, 2018
Liam you mention DRM free games as if they don't exist on steam. People seem to misunderstand. Just because a game is on steam doesn't mean it's DRMed and it doesn't mean you can't back it up. Steam does provide OPTIONAL DRM that a Dev must deliberately choose to use. There are actually a good number of games in my steam library that are not DRMed at all. An easy way to test is to run the game manually and see if it sets your steam status to in game. Even some games that do that don't actually require steam to be present so the most accurate way of testing would be to close steam and then try to run the game. I wish people would realize that the Steam storefront and Steam DRM are two completely different and semi-unrelated things. The Steam DRM requires your game be published on the Steam store in order to work. The Steam store requires no such thing in return though.


Last edited by Scoopta on 20 October 2018 at 6:27 pm UTC
Liam Dawe Oct 20, 2018
Quoting: ScooptaLiam you mention DRM free games as if they don't exist on steam. People seem to misunderstand. Just because a game is on steam doesn't mean it's DRMed and it doesn't mean you can't back it up. Steam does provide OPTIONAL DRM that a Dev must deliberately choose to use. There are actually a good number of games in my steam library that are not DRMed at all. An easy way to test is to run the game manually and see if it sets your steam status to in game. Even some games that do that don't actually require steam to be present so the most accurate way of testing would be to close steam and then try to run the game.
Sure, but plenty of Steam games have some form of Steam integration. I'm sure you understood my wider point.
Scoopta Oct 20, 2018
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: ScooptaLiam you mention DRM free games as if they don't exist on steam. People seem to misunderstand. Just because a game is on steam doesn't mean it's DRMed and it doesn't mean you can't back it up. Steam does provide OPTIONAL DRM that a Dev must deliberately choose to use. There are actually a good number of games in my steam library that are not DRMed at all. An easy way to test is to run the game manually and see if it sets your steam status to in game. Even some games that do that don't actually require steam to be present so the most accurate way of testing would be to close steam and then try to run the game.
Sure, but plenty of Steam games have some form of Steam integration. I'm sure you understood my wider point.
I understand the point but at the same time I think people make a bigger deal out of Steam's DRM than it actually is. Hell depending on the game there are even extremely trivial ways around it.
Liam Dawe Oct 20, 2018
Quoting: Scoopta
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: ScooptaLiam you mention DRM free games as if they don't exist on steam. People seem to misunderstand. Just because a game is on steam doesn't mean it's DRMed and it doesn't mean you can't back it up. Steam does provide OPTIONAL DRM that a Dev must deliberately choose to use. There are actually a good number of games in my steam library that are not DRMed at all. An easy way to test is to run the game manually and see if it sets your steam status to in game. Even some games that do that don't actually require steam to be present so the most accurate way of testing would be to close steam and then try to run the game.
Sure, but plenty of Steam games have some form of Steam integration. I'm sure you understood my wider point.
I understand the point but at the same time I think people make a bigger deal out of Steam's DRM than it actually is. Hell depending on the game there are even extremely trivial ways around it.
I rarely make a big deal out of Steam's DRM and in this case it wasn't specifically about Steam's DRM. It was mentioned, sure, but only because this happened on Steam. The main point is that it's a reminder on how stuff can be taken away.
thykr Oct 20, 2018
You have to keep in mind that the developers are human beings too.
The person who did this probably had a bad day, was very fed up already and read this review and took it personally or something, which lead to them over-reacting. It happens to everybody once in a while.

Sure that's wrong, but he did apologize and fix things anyway.


Last edited by thykr on 20 October 2018 at 7:00 pm UTC
Scoopta Oct 20, 2018
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: Scoopta
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: ScooptaLiam you mention DRM free games as if they don't exist on steam. People seem to misunderstand. Just because a game is on steam doesn't mean it's DRMed and it doesn't mean you can't back it up. Steam does provide OPTIONAL DRM that a Dev must deliberately choose to use. There are actually a good number of games in my steam library that are not DRMed at all. An easy way to test is to run the game manually and see if it sets your steam status to in game. Even some games that do that don't actually require steam to be present so the most accurate way of testing would be to close steam and then try to run the game.
Sure, but plenty of Steam games have some form of Steam integration. I'm sure you understood my wider point.
I understand the point but at the same time I think people make a bigger deal out of Steam's DRM than it actually is. Hell depending on the game there are even extremely trivial ways around it.
I rarely make a big deal out of Steam's DRM and in this case it wasn't specifically about Steam's DRM. It was mentioned, sure, but only because this happened on Steam. The main point is that it's a reminder on how stuff can be taken away.
Alright, fair enough.
WabbitSlayer Oct 20, 2018
Quoting: Dribbleondo> This does make another interesting case for DRM free games outside of Steam, since a developer can't just take away your ability to play it. While a DRM free store could remove the game from you, you're still able to fully back it up yourself.

Subtle.

A drm free store took all my games away. GOG. I did a creditcard chargeback on the virtual goods I purchased. GOG closed my account.
psycho_driver Oct 20, 2018
Quoting: WabbitSlayerA drm free store took all my games away. GOG. I did a creditcard chargeback on the virtual goods I purchased. GOG closed my account.

That sucks. However, I think the point is that if you had the games downloaded, you'd still 'own' them.

Out of curiosity, why did you do the chargeback?
Ehvis Oct 20, 2018
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Quoting: Guest
Quoting: EhvisIt should not even be possible for a dev to revoke keys. Revoking a legally paid key is theft. There's just no other way to look at it.
companies do it all the time if a player does something like say cheating in a game. I quite agree with you though.

I don't recall seeing that. They take away access to an online service, but they don't invalidate your key.
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