This is actually a bit of a long story, a sort of puzzler, so hold on to your seats tight, because it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
Kobra Games is an indie game developer, who put up its game, Island Light, on Steam Greenlight. So far, nothing unusual. The game was, like so many games on Steam these days (and especially on Greenlight or Early Access), less than stellar, and so got called out for that in reviews. Yep, so far so good.
The bizareness starts right about now. You see, people who posted negative reviews on Youtube of the game started getting strikes against their accounts- this is a pretty serious thing, a strike puts your account in bad standing, and makes it liable to be deleted- the strikes being for ‘copyright infringement’ even though all footage was footage used solely for reviews. The fact that these were issued only for accounts with bad reviews on them makes it all the more suspicious.
Unfortunately, one of these accounts happened to belong to Jim Sterling. And if there is one constant in the gaming industry, it’s that you don’t exactly fuck with Jim Sterling.
The situation spiraled out of control when someone realized that the game’s logo seems to have been directly copied from the work of an uncredited DeviantArt user.
The situation completely went out of control, with the comments on the game’s page being rather… vocal. All of this culminated in the developers simply delisting the game from Steam entirely.
Huh. Okay then.