Do you want to get rid of the voting and have the game with the most players/playtime win instead?
To be quite honest I have tried to be very cordial with Facepunch throughout the jam, from support tickets to DMs, I have presented issues as I've seen them and I get no response. Instead I was mocked by several devs that I was just crying or complaining, when in reality if you guys actually tried to deal with the issues I was presenting then I doubt this cheating situation would've escalated to what it did now.
It is clear that Facepunch has a SERIOUS COMMUNICATION PROBLEM. You guys do NOT reach out to developers, communicate with them, or even attempt to respond to any serious complaints, let alone actually take complaints seriously. You guys also seem to completely miss the point of what I am trying to say. I'm trying to present OBVIOUS issues that I personally can see a mile away, and so can so many of the other developers in this community. Everyone was complaining about it since the beginning of this jam, and Facepunch chose NOT to address these issues, instead ignoring them and letting them bottle up until the last possible second to do whatever the fuck decision this was. I mean WHAT competition would have ANY credibility for doing something like this last second rug pull? Imagine going to a real competition in person, and the organizers are about to put the medal over your neck and they just completely disregard you and instead find 5 other people to give the medals to. What the fuck? I truly hope that other developers in this community, especially new ones like myself, look at this situation and ask themselves "They can do that? They will just change the rules of the competition and replace the top competitors as they choose?" Because that is literally what happened to me, and it CAN happen to you. Regardless of if you think my game is good or bad, there is always the possibility that you will be a target in a competitive environment and eat the bullet during the cross fire.
I will present my situation from my perspective, and I do think I was a unique case in this competition as no other game has had to go through what I have had to deal with during this jam, maybe at a small scale but I experienced the horrid nature of this competition at a much larger scale, that much is crystal clear to me. I am having to advocate for myself on a public message board where I have experienced a significant amount of hatred by other developers. That leaves me to ask over and over again. Why can't this discussion be had over private? Why didn't Facepunch reach out before making this ridiculous decision to discard serious competitors in their game jam and replace them with a parade of other devs? And note: I'm not saying the other devs did anything wrong here (Though I truly can only assume that these other devs were bitching and moaning the entire time that the top 5 was fake and botted, it's so blatant if you look at the discord logs).
I was number 1 in nominations for a significant portion of the second half of the game jam. Like I said in my first post COMPLETELY ORGANIC. I didn't cheat, I didn't bot, I didn't even ask my friends to play the game. I was just developing my game and it garnered a lot of interest from the S&Box community. It even garnered a lot of interest from people in the discord, and what everyone doesn't seem to understand is that the negative bitching moaning users are louder than the ones that are just playing the game and having fun. It seems like there is a SERIOUS disconnect between understanding what the players of S&Box want, what they engage with, and what they spend time on, and what other developers assume people want to play. I made it to the top 5 because I tried to build something that was fun and what I thought was unique and would bring in players, and it worked. Meanwhile, these other guys that released late, didn't get enough nominations, whatever it is, just bitched and moaned that life is unfair and they got rewarded for it. They didn't build their player base. They didn't have to go through the barrage of negative reviews and constant harassment from other devs while trying to build something successful. I literally did exactly what was expected from the initial statements for the game jam: Release early, have people playtest, and iterate. This is LITERALLY what I did.
The other thing is that players were clearly not aware that unfinished games were going up on the Game Jam, and so I, following the initial statements, was just getting tons and tons of negative feedback that the game was unfinished. Even the players had no idea what this game jam was and how the submissions worked. Yet again, clear miscommunication by Facepunch. I was also receiving tons of harassment and negative feedback over the discord.
I kept my head down and I built out the game, and over the first week of no sleep, no leaving my house, nothing, just developing the game. I turned the negative reviews into positive ones. I managed to build the player base and garner tons and tons of nominations from LEGITIMATE S&BOX PLAYERS. I had a major patch on September 18 and I managed to garner a huge amount of positive nominations over the weekend. I was literally like almost 22 nominations ahead of anyone else, and I was the first to break past Roundbound. This obviously painted a huge target on my back, and once again I started getting harassment from other developers. Especially what I could only assume are the botting cheating developers like the dev of Micro Wars (This is my accusation and I will make it).
And once again, painfully obvious that the developers are completely disconnected from the actual player base of the game.
At this point it was (TO ME) very obvious that Micro Wars was cheating. He caught up to my nominations score by 1 behind me while everyone else was behind, and quite honestly I don't see how he could have done that unless he just told a bunch of people to buy and bot the game. Regardless, this wasn't MY FIGHT, it was Facepunchs'. It was the DUTY OF THE ORGANIZERS OF THE COMPETITION TO ROOT OUT CHEATING. I made support tickets and brought this to the attention of several devs over discord. I won't name their names but I was literally just mocked by them instead, so I can only assume that there is a negative bias towards me from a few Facepunch devs. (And yes. I can prove all of this. I have screenshots of ALL of this. I recorded all of it, in case some bullshit situation like this happened).
Throughout the rest of the week, I was still building nominations. I led the entire top 5 the entire time, target painted on my back, constant harassment from other devs. I don't think it's understood just how emotionally draining and mentally hard it is to deal with a significant amount of people calling you a cheater, harassing you, and telling you your game sucks. Literally the only thing that kept me going throughout this burnout and hard time was the fact that I saw serious engagement from players. I had people playing for HOURS going through the dungeons of One More Room, exploring constantly, and all I wanted to do was keep building the game out for the people that actually loved the game, it's what kept me going.
During this period the only person that was even close to competing with me was Micro Wars, and it was so FUCKING BLATANTLY OBVIOUS that they were botting their nominations that I don't know why Facepunch didn't immediately start an investigation into their nominations AND MY NOMINATIONS. Literally Facepunch could've just looked into all of this and said "Yes, they're botting, disqualified." and looked at my account and seen that it was legitimate. I don't know why this wasn't done earlier, and I asked Facepunch MULTIPLE times to do this. This would've made everything so much smoother, and it would probably have led to me not getting harassed for the rest of the duration of the game jam. Instead, Facepunch stays quiet and does nothing, literally nothing.
So, I went through all of this. Got to the end while still just pushing through and building the game and building nominations, and other competitive games were rising up. These were legitimate games that looked like they had good backing and support. The few I can think of is Spellslinger and Goblingeddon . To me it was frightening to see these games coming up, but it's fair game. I am a competitor, just like them, I'm not a fucking cheater. The winner wins and I am in it for the spirit of the game jam and for building something that brings true value to S&Box.
Micro Wars was still on the board. No investigation, no checking if they're legitimate. Even at this point. I will even throw more accusations around and say that I think several games and developers actually colluded together to dislike/review bomb other games as well as nominate each other's games to boost each other up and give each other positive reviews. Micro Wars and Swarm Defenders both absolutely fucking despised me and were doing everything they can to try to take me down.
This was obviously a ticking time bomb. I could see this a mile away. It threatened the legitimacy of the entire competition and it threatened my legitimacy as a competitor. These cheaters should NOT have been allowed to continue participating.
Even after all this, and the mental and emotional toll it took to get to this point. I made a new trailer, finished the game to be an end to end experience (start, middle, end game) and released it, and continued to patch it afterwards, at this point other competitors were catching up and it was all fair game from what I could see. Until Micro Wars literally just gained like 40 nominations out of nowhere, and we all know where the fiasco went after that. I can only assume that I was caught in the cross fire of all of this and was assumed to be cheating too. No investigation. No outreach. Nothing. Just blanket disqualification essentially.
On top of all this, just looking at the discord there was a disgusting amount of witch hunting going on that was NOT BEING SHUT DOWN BY FACEPUNCH. Why? Why wouldn't you guys just ban and get rid of these guys stirring up dissent over the competition? It's the job of Facepunch to organize and manage this competition and to ensure a fair game. You guys literally didn't do any of this and just allowed all this dogshit to stir up until it exploded.
I am writing all of this because yes, I am resentful. I fully expect to be mocked by this post, but truthfully I am a passionate game developer just like many of the other people trying to build on S&Box. I saw it as an opportunity to build something that I can continue even after the jam, and to potentially jump start myself into building and being a creator on this platform, but all this competition did was completely erode and destroy any trust I had in Facepunch, the platform, and the passionate spirit of making games by other developers. I never got a chance to see if I placed into the Top 5. It was taken from me. This entire competition was taken from me, and I hope Facepunch realizes that you guys crushed the audience I've been building, the project I've been building and quite honestly just put me in a state of shock. Even now I have to fucking advocate for myself after all this bullshit. It's ridiculous.
I still hope that Facepunch will find a solution to this and can make things right, somehow, because I still do believe that this platform and engine could be successful. I hope you guys can see that, but at this point I've never felt so fucking 'rug pulled' or discarded from a competition in my life, and whether the Facepunch devs like my game or not, or the other game developers like my game or not. There is clearly a large majority of S&Box users that LOVE the game. Even now I get more people playing the game than the top entries.
I'm not even in the Playfund. I get nothing out of this. I have just been completely fucked.
And to all the other developers. I am like you. You can be in the same situation I am if you ever make it to this spot. Several other games that were in the top 5 ARE in this situation and don't have or aren't able to advocate for themselves. Instead choosing to just stay silent and accept the result.
