For those discovering GreenWatch for the first time, GreenWatch is an ongoing 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.

Whitewash Legal Dispute

Recently, a game by the name of Whitewash was removed from the Steam Store with little to no explanation. However after some owners of the game started raising questions about the game's removal in the game's discussions, the developer of the game "Bedroom Developer" (Steam name "Ultra Noobzor") gave some insight on the game's removal. Originally, the developer originally was blunt and simply stated that the game was going through a legal dispute. However as time progressed and more people started speculating, more information came out from the developer regarding the legal dispute that he was in:

I was making this game while I was working for a company, to pay bills. When I've decided to quit my job and work full time on this game, as a vengeance the company I worked for called a lawyer and they forced me to give them all the files from the game because as part of the work contract anything I produce while employed is company's property. So basically, I lost ownership of this game over to greedy people and the only way for me to finish development would be to start from scratch again since they went to my home and took all the source code files! I could rename the game and start building the game again from the ground up... but I have no more funds to develop this game anymore so because of my ex-employer wanting to sue me if I sell the game without giving them ownership, I had to stop the project.

In short, the developer started development of the game while he was working with a company and due to the company's contract, anything he made while with the company would belong to the company and the company discovered that the game was being sold on Steam and was a breach of contract and have apparently gotten a lawyer on board ready to sue him if distribution of the title were to continue.

Another statement came out from the developer regarding his lack of funding to restart Whitewash's development:

Oh and let me tell you why I have no funds anymore to restart development: Because people took a LOT of keys from groupees bundle and are selling those keys on sites like G2A. The result of that is, the key sellers made a lot of money, but I didn't get not even $1 dollar If those key were actual sales on Steam, I could've fund further development, I would just change name of the game and start over from zero; I had to move on and find another job instead.

For those unaware, Groupees is a bundle site where developers can post their games up for extra forms of promotion and can include them as a game of choice for people to purchase in different bundles at sometimes a cheaper cost than in other places. It was confirmed that Whitewash was distributed on Groupees in Groupees' "Build a Bundle 8" alongside other indie games such as "Guise of the Wolf", "Castleminer Z" and "Luxor 3" just to name a few.

The developer has primarily blamed the unknown company and Groupees for the downfall of his game, however, there are some users that are questioning if Groupees is to actually be blamed for the game's downfall because some Steam users pointed out Groupees is only optional and is not a mandatory site for indie developers to go to. People also pointed out that despite the developer claiming "tons" of people got keys for this without him seeing a cent, people have shown through SteamDB that there haven't actually been many players of the game even with the groupees bundles and G2A sales.

Cloud Asset Flips

An indie developer on Greenlight has been getting a lot of hate sent his way recently. The developer in question goes by the Steam username "Cloud." This is also the same user that posted "Gabe Newell Simulator" to the Steam store which also got some attention drawn towards it. Lately, Cloud has posted up 2 extra games to Steam's Greenlight program called "Hero Slime" and "Raging Fist" posted on the 8th December 2016 and 4th February 2017 respectively.

However, recently it was pointed out by some users that these 2 games are actually asset flips. Hero Slime is actually "Super Platformer 2D" on the Unity Asset Store and Raging Fist is actually "Beat 'Em Up - Game Template." Cloud is also supposedly deleting any comments that are referencing the fact that he's taken a complete project off of the Unity store and is using it as his own game.

Dentola Studio vs SidAlpha

Just full disclosure before I continue, I am friends with SidAlpha, however, this will not affect the write up of this story, all I'm going to do is state the facts.

Recently on Steam Greenlight, a developer by the name of "Dentola Studio" posted a total of 11 games onto Greenlight, all in 1 day. However, as of the time of writing, only 6 of the original 11 are still up on Greenlight. It was pointed out by several Steam users that each of the games uploaded by Dentola Studio were asset flips. Due to there being a lot of games posted, I'm not going to link to all the assets themselves, however, I will post a few of them just as examples.

The story escalates from there. YouTuber SidAlpha uploaded a video to YouTube detailing the developer's games and labeling them as asset flips along with showing the assets that were used for the games. A few days after the video was posted, Dentola Studio hit SidAlpha with a DMCA takedown notice on the video centered on them. SidAlpha broke the story on another video uploaded to his YouTube channel detailing the DMCA takedown.

We have reached out to Dentola Studio for comment but we have currently been met with silence.

Blood of Old Returning to Steam

An indie video game called "Blood of Old" has been on a long hiatus since around April 2016. It was basically an open world RPG that was in early access for a long time. Original user feedback was that the game had potential but was far from complete. Despite people citing potential in the game, people thought it was way too incomplete for purchase and garnered a 29% score on Steam. Around 9 months ago the game was pulled from Steam by the developers themselves and after a long silence a post came out from the developers detailing that they pulled the game due to the negative feedback it received and they claim to have taken the feedback and put it into effect to the game and are happy with the project now and intend to re-release it onto Steam in the near future. They also state previous purchasers of the old version of Blood of Old will get the new version for free.

Valve Cut Ties With Another Developer

Valve have recently announced that they have cut ties with yet another indie developer, this time being "Sylvain Seccia" developer of "Désiré." Valve have stated that the reason behind this is due to the developer apparently controlling multiple Steam accounts to post fake positive reviews for the game in question and Valve refuse to be affiliated with endorsing this sort of behavior.

Thank you everyone for reading this entry of GreenWatch and I hope you found it insightful, informative and interesting.