From "domestic light" to "bad reviews", what did "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" do wrong?
Text | Starlight
| Shi Can
A dark horse fell and a farce began.
In late April 2022, "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds", which had been praised by many players as a masterpiece of domestic independent games, fell into an "unprecedented crisis". Dazzling red bad reviews filled the comment area of "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds", Steam's recent praise rate was only 3%, and related news swept through various game forums.
Bad reviews of "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds", image source Steam
With the reputation of "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" plummeting, this once "domestic light" "bravely climbed the peak" on the bad review list, and even about to catch up with the Steam version of "Three Kingdoms Killing" that had been pointed out by thousands of people due to various stubborn diseases.
In order to defend the latter's "throne", the king of bad reviews, the victims of "Three Kingdoms Kill" have gone to the comment area of "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" to praise, and the players of "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" are not willing to show weakness and imitate the actions of the enemy.
Thus, a paradoxical scene appeared: players on both sides went hand in hand to brush each other's praise, and the goal was to crucify their own games on the column of shame in history.
No one could have predicted that today, with the large inward volume of the game industry, even the name of "the worst game" will be won by players.
So, what exactly made the once well-known "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" fall off the cliff?
Waterloo in Ghost Valley
Released on January 27, 2021, Ghost Valley Eight Wilds is officially positioned as an open-world sandbox Xiu Xian game, which integrates the Xiu Xian system with the cultural background of the Shan Hai Jing.
As early as the early stage of the launch, the unique Chinese style xiuxian selling point of "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" attracted many domestic game supporters and was pinned on high hopes. "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" reached the best-seller list with the enthusiastic support of players, and the number of people online reached a staggering 150,000 at one point, breaking the record for the number of people online at the same time on Steam National Tour.
According to the 2021 "National Tour Sales Annual List" released by Baidu National Tour Sales Bar, "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" ranked second, with sales of 3.9 million sets and sales of about 250 million, second only to NetEase's multi-person competitive masterpiece "Forever Doomed".
Image source 2021 "National Tour Sales Annual List"
No one thought that the reputation of "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds", which had been smooth all the way, would be destroyed in this spring.
The starting point of the bad review wave is April 18, and the fuse is the mod production tool that the game update has launched. The so-called "MOD" is an abbreviation of English Module, Chinese mostly translated as "game module", which is a modification or enhancement program applied to games.
In fact, "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" has already had large and small mods spontaneously produced by the people, which can creatively expand the game content. Now the official statement that the mod tool is supposed to be a happy thing, but when the tool is actually online, the player realizes that he has been played by a "word game".
For games like Ghost Valley, which is primarily released on the Steam platform, people default to the official access to the familiar Steam Workshop. As a result, the official "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" did not act on common sense, but provided a third-party new tool called "Creative Workshop".
The Steam Workshop has always been known for its openness and ease of use, while ghost valley eight wilderness feature "workshop" dwarfs, in every aspect you can think of to give players a bad experience.
First, the featured Workshop has an unusually strict review mechanism, and secondly, the tool has a series of outrageous user terms, such as "the right to review, modify and/or delete your imports without prior notice".
In actual use, the "Workshop" does not provide installation functions, players not only have to install third-party software called Fanbook, but also provide mobile phone number information to register. The downloaded MOD requires the user to unzip it and put it into a specific folder, and then import it in the game.
A series of tedious and roundabout questions have sparked strong dissatisfaction in the player community, and rumors have spread. Some people speculate that the official is to "sell the MO of the white prostitute player" in combination with the tool protocol, and some people suspect that "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" is using players to drain third-party software. The harsh review also deviated greatly from user expectations, and combined with the initial "false publicity", the first wave of negative emotions among players exploded.
The day after the release of "MOD Maker 1.0BETA", "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" added more than 300 bad reviews to Steam. Looking back now, it was nothing more than an appetizer before the storm. On April 20th, Zhang San of Onigu, the producer of "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds", opened a live broadcast on Station B, and mentioned the "Creative Workshop" incident in the conversation.
To the player's anger, Zhang San's response attitude is unusually impatient, and it is full of dissatisfaction with the player's scolding. Zhang San claimed that some things could never be given to the player from the official point of view, and the sharp statement further angered the users who paid the bill.
The "taboo" content referred to by Zhang San's speech mainly points to issues such as "soft pornography", but "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" itself is not a "pure good" work. The game's already existing "edge ball" content and the so-called "double repair" system made Zhang San's speech unconvincing to the public.
After that, the bad review storm intensified, and the official "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" had to respond again, claiming that the choice of third-party "creative workshop" was for content management considerations. However, players quickly punched Zhang San in the face, and they pointed out that the Steam Workshop only needs to turn on the "selection" mode to achieve the "first trial and then send" that the official cannot do.
The producer's apology letter did not save the reputation of "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds", but instead made the official more embarrassed by the loopholes in the response. Since then, "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" has closed the Fanbook jump, and the language is unclear in the communication with the player.
What's even more bizarre is that "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" was updated in the early morning of April 26 to block all folk mods, causing an uproar. On the same day, the Eight Wilds of the Valley of ghosts immediately withdrew this act without providing any explanation.
Players who had once favored Ghost Valley Ran Out of Patience and turned away, leaving only tens of thousands of new bad reviews on Steam as evidence.
Image source "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" Steam page
Not long ago, "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds", Ghost Valley Studio and producer Zhang San, who were still proud of the spring breeze, were deeply mired in the quagmire of notoriety and could not extricate themselves.
What did Zhang San do wrong?
At present, the player community generally believes that the fundamental starting point for the various strange moves of "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" is for the version number. People suspect that Zhang San tried to shrink the scale of content in order to avoid regulatory risks, and eventually won the opportunity to operate in the domestic market for "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds", sequels and even mobile game versions.
Disputes such as overlord clauses and diversion suspicions can be resolved through communication, but the conflict of core concepts is the root cause of the problem of "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds", that is, the conflict of interest between users and game developers.
For Zhang San, who is trying to apply for a version number, for the sake of longer-term commercial interests, "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" cannot meet the mod content scale required by players, so it is bound to require players to make concessions to this. But the early cake has been drawn, and Ghost Valley Eight Wilds has to be the scalp to launch the castrated version of the tool.
For the player, this is pure deception. What's more, "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" itself has great particularities, and it is actually still in the state of EA testing, which makes the nature of the problem even worse.
Image source "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" Steam page
EA (Early Access) means "Early Access" and is a special feature introduced by the Steam platform. Through the EA test, players can purchase products that are still in the development stage and experience game content first.
Most of the games tested by EA are projects from small and medium-sized developer teams. Through the user's advance payment, the developer can withdraw part of the funds in advance in order to continue to advance the project, solving the basic survival problem.
Players who participate in the EA test are also different from the average consumer, their purchase is more like an "investment bet", which is a recognition of the game's potential and an encouragement to developers. Essentially, EA testing is similar to a new type of crowdfunding, and developers are obligated to honor the development plans promised to players.
In the EA mechanism, consumers face the additional risk of "paying early" itself. When the developer fails to deliver on its promises, players will never be able to play the full version of the game again and will not be compensated accordingly. What connects players to developers is not a purely economic contract, but trust and emotional betting.
In the past, "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" relied on a long update plan to obtain the help of players, and covered up the limitations of the existing content of the game through an enterprising attitude, which not only gained the reputation of "domestic light", but also brought huge economic returns to the development team.
Correspondingly, when the "potential stock" of "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" hurts the player's emotions in a rough way, the backlash of the player community is bound to be more intense, because it is tantamount to a betrayal. After the end of the "honeymoon period", disappointed players can only escape from this opposite world of Xiu Immortals.
Perhaps controlling the content and applying for the version number is a logical path for business, but this does not mean that Ghost Valley Eight Wilds can break the invisible contract with the player for this purpose. In the longer run, "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds" is overdrawing the trust of domestic game supporters in domestic games, and its negative impact may be more profound than we think.
At the beginning of the story, if there is no spontaneous group of supporters, who in the world can recognize Zhang San, and who can recognize the fledgling "Ghost Valley Eight Wilds"?