Post by DEMBERG in Vote Manipulation Investigation Topic

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Hello everyone :) We've seen the conversations that were made and since one of the games in question was our game we decided to keep away from the discussions about possible manipulation. Since every creator's opinion is welcome in this discussion, we will join it if you don't mind.

We are a group of 3, and we are making games for about a year now. Actually, one of our games was in the top 20 of GMTK Jam, which we didn't even think was possible. Even though you don't have any reason to believe me, I can only say that we don't have any reason to manipulate the votes, especially for a small prize pool. All we want is for people to play our games, and hopefully to like them. The only thing we did was to share on social media the jam and ask people to leave us a rating if they want to, which we thought was ok, considering that anyone can rate games. Also, and I'm only saying this because there seems to be a lot of confusion about this, our game is FREE. Yes, it has ads and you can pay a dollar to remove them, but that is all. Whether you play with or without the ads, you are playing the same game. Paying to remove the ads does not unlock ANY additional content.

We thought that a mobile game would be just as acceptable as a browser game or a windows-mac-linux build and we just took that route because we thought our game was very fitting of the concept of mobile gaming. We didn't make a mobile game with ads to discourage anyone to play it and frankly we were very disappointed that even though we took the time to check everyone's efforts, most of you did not do the same.

Even so, we understand that for some of you this was your first jam, but if I may leave you with an advice, this behavior is not fitting with the game developers' community, and even more so with the itch community. We are all here to help each other, learn from each other and do something that we love, and if you continue to use itch, you will find out that it is a community that shows a lot of love to everyone's efforts.

We as a group have participated in quite a lot of game jams since we started working together and I think none of us has ever come across such rude behavior in the past, and I feel that this is more about the prize pool than anything else. Aside from the fact that all of us have jobs (I personally am the programmer of the group and I work professionally in the game industry, in a small indie studio with 6 people), why would we try so desperately to win a prize of 100-200$?

In the end, we will support any decision made from the hosts and the Shacknews community, and we want to thank all the people that contributed to this jam taking place. I just want to clarify that we never did anything with the intent to manipulate the rating process, and we certainly could not care less about who wins the prize money. We hope that all of you continue making games and help the game dev community grow, and if you'll have us we'd really like to see you again in the Shacknews Jam V.

Deleted post4 years ago

Deleted 4 years ago

StealthNinja4 years ago(+2)

Hello, I would like to sum up some disagreements with statements in your reply and potential concerns regarding your jam submission:

Your game is free with ads. If there is any way you can generate ad revenue from people simply trying to play/test your game for the jam, it should not be allowed as a jam submission.
Your game is only available on the Google Play store, meaning those without access to it cannot play your game. You also included a misleading download button with no downloadable files, otherwise it probably wouldn't have been allowed to be submitted in the jam.
"...and frankly we were very disappointed that even though we took the time to check everyone's efforts, most of you did not do the same."

Your game was the 3rd most rated game, with 22 ratings, most of which came from outside the jam according to romsteady. For those that participated in the jam, some of them may not have been able to play your game as, again, they did not have access to the Google Play store.
"...this behavior is not fitting with the game developers' community, and even more so with the itch community."
"...I think none of us has ever come across such rude behavior in the past, and I feel that this is more about the prize pool than anything else"

These statements come off as extremely arrogant and make it seem like you're trying to play the victim here. Where is this coming from? No one in previous discussion posts or even your jam submission comments was rude to you, as far as I can see. There were only concerns as to how your game was submitted, the inclusion of ads in a jam submission, and the way you received votes.

Just to clarify, I do not benefit whether your game is disqualified or not, however, I believe it is unfair to others in the game jam if your game remains in the jam due to vote manipulation and the existence of some of the described issues. And if you "certainly could not care less about who wins the prize money", I hope you can understand as to why many of us believe this way. For the good of the game developers' and itch community, I hope you choose to resolve some of the above issues in future jam submissions, and I wish the best of luck to you in future jams.

DEMBERG4 years ago(-2)

Even though we do not agree with our submission been thought of as violating rules, as I said before, we will support any final decision made about this. The points you mentioned that seem to you as violating rules weren't clearly specified about the jam, but it is a good thing that romsteady clarified that these will become rules for future jams.

When it comes to the comments I made about other participants not being polite, you can see for yourself rude comments made about us in a previous discussion, which was actually an announcement about the jam results, which, as much as our comments seem arrogant to you, seemed very pretentious to us, because they were made only after the winners were announced. And that made them seem even more about the prize pool than anything else. So let me say it once more: we could not care less about the prize pool, and we will gladly accept our disqualification if most of you feel that this is what must be done.

Now, about the game being only on the Play Store let me clarify that the only reason that we did not just upload an apk, is because I personally thought that the game would be more fun if it had leaderboard and achievements. And I'm saying this because I believe that some of you think that we did that for the ads, but this is irrelevant. Even if we submitted an apk, the game would still have ads. This is just the game we created. And if it is wrong to only upload an android build, it should also be wrong uploading only a windows build.

Also, one last thing if I may: the Download button HAS downloadable files. It is for downloading the OST of the game, in our minds a nice way to reward everyone who is kind enough to support us.

It seems I managed writing yet another extensive comment so I'll stop here. All in all, we are all very sorry that our submission created problems, but you have to understand that we also don't think that we' re in the wrong.

itch.io

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