A total of 248 games from a single developer have suddenly disappeared from Steam. This is by no means a mistake, but rather a deliberate action by Valve.
Which studio is involved? During your forays into the Steam store, you may have come across the name “Atomic Factory.” This developer has an absurdly high number of games on Steam, most of which are low-budget productions.
“Atomic Factory” is a studio that employs the method of “asset flipping.” They purchase pre-made assets, meaning elements for a game, and reuse them with little modification. A popular case of a game that resulted from this is the recent scandal surrounding The Day Before.
However, this alone is not enough for Steam to simply delete nearly 250 games from the platform. The real issue lies much more in the methods by which “Atomic Factory” made money in the past.
Valve itself recently secretly developed a new game – read more on MeinMMO about what it’s all about. Here you can also see the trailer:
Expensive games and many positive reviews
How did the business model work? Many games from “Atomic Factory” waited on Steam with absurdly high prices. Here, one paid well over the classic full price of 60 Euros. 90 Euros and more were normal, and some games even cost up to 260 Euros.
If one was willing to spend that much money, the understandably high expectations were disappointed. The games were of low quality and not worth the price asked. Nevertheless, they had numerous positive reviews on Steam. How was that possible?
The trick was to initially offer a game cheaply, often for just under a Euro. After that, positive reviews were purchased and the rating improved. Then the studio gradually raised the price of a game to such an extent that hardly anyone would buy it through conventional means.
The games then found their way into Random Key Bundles
, which users can purchase through third parties. These usually cost only a few euros and promise a certain number of random games – while also guaranteeing a certain quality based on Steam reviews.
Since the games from “Atomic Factory” already had many (purchased) positive reviews at this point, they fell into this category. In this way, the studio sold its titles actively, just through key bundles. A developer on Steam has 5,000 keys available per game.
By the way, it is not relevant whether buyers of the key bundles leave a bad review afterward. Because the bundles only count reviews that come from direct purchases. Keys do not count.
Valve has now intervened in this case and deleted a large part of the catalog of “Atomic Factory” from Steam. Were you already familiar with the studio and their games? Have you played one? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments. Another game on Steam recently faced accusations of being a scam. Read on MeinMMO to find out what it’s all about and what experts have to say.
