Only two weeks after being launched through Steam Early Access, Divergence Online was removed from the market place by its developer.
Divergence Online posted about its successful Steam Greenlight campaign stating that the launch would bring in many new players. However, the Steam community had a very negative approach to the game such as allegations of stealing game assets from Star Wars Galaxies.
Divergence online claims to be the unofficial spiritual successor to Pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies but within their own universe as opposed to the Star Wars Universe.
However, the community the community accused the game developers of stealing assets from Star Wars Galaxies and there were personal attacks made towards the creator, Ethan Casner.
Casner reached out to Valve looking for help but was unsuccessful. Casner then took it to the next level by removing the game from Steam and leaving a message about the event on the game’s Facebook Page.
“So I’m sorry, truly I am, but the $100/week we make on steam just isn’t worth the constant abuse that we feel we’re almost single-handedly responsible for dealing with. We make ten times that on our old PayPal store and don’t have to suffer constant abuse to get it, so if it isn’t to make the game distribution process more simple and less of a headache, I’m really not sure what we’re even paying Steam for.”
Even though the game has been removed from Steam, there has been no major impacts to the game as it can still be downloaded from it’s website.
Personal Views
Whether the allegations are true I don’t condone the use of harassment and personal attacks against the game developer. Also, as Valve has shown in the past it continues to be very loose in moderating user comments and that negative feedback should be expected. While Casner received a lot of unnecessary flack on claims that may or may not be true, its important that anyone who regularly rates Steam Games to avoid using personal attacks against the game developers as they are people too.
