Please sign this petition to remove "The Slaughtering Grounds" from Steam (with poll)

EDIT: New information added below.

Main Petition Link: https://www.change.org/p/valve-soft...s-and-grant-refunds-to-those-who-purchased-it

The Premise:
According to those who purchased and reviewed this product (including Jim Sterling), "The Slaughtering Grounds," the latest in a series of Steam Greenlight scams (after Air Control and Earth: Year 2066), is of such atrocious quality that it does not deserve to be on Steam even for free.

Even so, the developer of the game, Digital Homicide Studios (DHS) is censoring all negative criticism by deleting critical posts, threads, and reviews. He is even going as far as to issue permanent bans on the Steam Community hub for simply "disliking the game."

Ironically, however, the banned users did not break any forum rules, so the developer had no grounds for banning, which is ridiculous. Here is an instance of a Steam user who got banned simply for saying, "thanks for the beta key!" Note the lack of a "ban reason."
http://i.imgur.com/hq72Z7s.png

In summary, this low-quality game is scamming Steam users out of their money and its stubborn developer is abusing his power by censoring critical posts and banning random users for nothing.

Conclusion:
If you agree with the contents of this post and the petition, you may do one or more of the following:

1) Sign the main petition on Change.org.

2) Answer "Yes" in the poll above.

3) Respond to this thread with "Signed" and a brief explanation of why you signed.

Additional Information (very useful):
Steam Store Page (with a wall of very negative reviews):
http://store.steampowered.com/app/329950/

Reddit page dealing with the game's copyright infringement issues and other nonsense: http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/2l2yww/the_slaughtering_grounds_using_stolen_art_and/

--->*NEW!* A link to the Unity Asset Store that proves Digital Homicide Studios stole one set of zombie models!:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/10746

NOTE: "The Slaughtering Grounds" is NOT to be confused with the game "Hatred," which is a completely different game. (thanks to @Geers for the advice)

Wow I feel awkward.

Spent 20 minutes writing a post about freedom of expression and stuff before I realized you weren't talking about Hatred...

Count me as +1 for better quality control on Steam.

The review of the review of the first impressions video of the game is ******* priceless. The original review of the first impressions video of the game was taken down unfortunately, so you can't see the glory in its raw form.

Never saw this game before. Thanks for pointing it out but I doubt the game will be removed any time soon unless there is going to be a big pressure on steam to do that. Steam unfortunately has no quality control whatsoever and releases every shovelware available. Voted for quality control in this thread.

While it looks like the game is really bad and the devs are morons I won't randomly sign a petition against a game like that. I don't like jumping onto some campaign like that. Really if you don't like a game don't buy/play it. No need to lecture others on why the game is good or bad beyond making a honest review of why the game is bad. Though even then I'd be careful to make it clear that a game might end up with patches that fix the issues.
I mean the exact same reasoning is behind people making campaigns against PA for being a "scam"...

It's a stupid game for a few $ on steam. The world will turn on even if it stays like it is and nobody will lose more than a package of cookies should they decide to buy it.

I would do so only if it really did literally promise something for a large sum of money, then give something of lower quality than let's say "calm time" or "dinopark tycoon for dos", and then was being completely aggressive about rating censorship.

I will look into it. This game better really be the worse. Like if Uber was selling PA, but then released a 30 minute RPGMakerXV game...

EDIT: So far, it is 5 dollars, and it looks like a functional nintendo game. I will keep looking, but unless it is a non-functional nintendo/mobile game, it seems pretty much a petty sale anyway. Why really pick a fight with something that cost more time for the money, than the federal government believes should be the minimum wage?

So far, I see it looks pretty much like a generic zombie game like an even poorer version of Killing Floor. It is... made on unity? One of the characters in this youtube video I am watching has no name, but he is a "generic" so come to think of it Syphon Filter 2 splitscreen didn't name all of it's playable characters like "russian cop". No it isn't a very "professional" game, lacks a loading screen, but all the text bars fit their squares. Ingame, you can clip through trees and junk, you have no melee, and your gun goes below the bottom of the screen to reload instead of an animation, pretty petty complaints.

To be honest, I love oddworld, but the playstation ISO file emulated on a PC plays with more adaptive flexibility than the vanilla PC port, and GTA4 on PC still mentions xbox buttons in the ingame tips like it were shovel-and-poured from xbox to pc. This is still better than Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. Oh, and it plays like a doom with 3d graphics but massive bugs in trade off and no storyline but instead a mild metagame.

They still sell Doom for about 3 dollars, right? Really, I can't say this was a ripoff. Sorry, just try to move on. Really, 5 dollar games can't justify themselves unless you research them. If it is 5 dollars and good, usually someone tells you about it. Don't get me wrong, this game is bad, it is the worse of it's price likely, but if I accident-bought it before I knew, I'd still probably play it on occasion when the interent is out. So, game making is hard, I personally know people who can make better games than this, but the vast majority would do worse if they tried.

Normally, I'd agree with you.

I don't mind the game being bad, but the level of unprofessionalism on the part of the dev team is downright disgusting. Using mod powers to ban downvoters on a platform cheapens the value of the platform as a whole, not just within their game. Allowing that sort of activity to continue isn't something that should happen.

On top of that, they've already been caught stealing art assets. That's beyond just being "bad".

The game should be removed. Not because the game is bad, but because the people making it are behaving unacceptably and possibly even breaking the law. The petition as a good thing because it will bring some attention to the issues. I don't think the signatures will factor into the decision they make about it, just whether or not it gets seen.

Surely that sort of thing should be followed up by the owner of the art assets, not by the internet mob?

Yes, and besides my personal opinion that the game "functions", baiting a response, confirming he acts like a douche bag, and then using that as an arguement to form an internet mob, is as rigged as if America was responsible for 9/11 so they could pursue foreign oil and terrorists. You shouldn't be baiting this ****. The owner of the art assets will pursue legal action, if they are in fact "cared about", which doesn't make it much more legal than "drinking and driving without getting caught", but that is just the way it works. To be honest, if the art assets aren't cared about enough, then why do you care they use them? I don't, they aren't my friggin assets.

Pfft, if I made a cheap/free game, and they borrowed an obscure asset like a zombie model, for the game's "pay grade", I still wouldn't care. Might send them an email, just to humor myself and make them feel bad. Matter of fact, I would feel so bad that their theoretical career was sinking from poor reviews, I would feel maniacal if I piled a lawsuit on top of that. It is like setting fire to a burn victim.

My thought exactly. Contact the owner of the art assets. Who knows, maybe he will answer "oh yeah sure I sold them my assets"

Considering that in the instance I know about, once pointed out they not only switched it quickly, but went and deleted all posts they could on steam community referencing the IP theft in an attempt at cover up. I find it unlikely that they bought it.

They might have. But if they didn't then without the help of the internet mob caching it there wouldn't be proof. In situations like that there tend to be multiple instances of theft, and I'd also be curious what else might have been stolen.

Like I said, the petition shouldn't effect anybody involved in making the decisions aside from letting them know what's happening. If nobody with a stakable claim wants to do anything then that's their prerogative. They should know about it though, and thanks to the internet mobs that's looking like it'll be the case.

Do. NOT. Thank. Mobs. They do not accomplish things, as if it were the only way. Mobs just overkill bash anything they want, and do you sincerely trust the intellegence of the combined people making up a popularity mob? They band together over this, and next they come here protesting PA for some bogus claims, and you try to stop them and they make it out like their combined intellegence is higher. No. Mobs are BAD, M'kay?

The publicity is alright. And bringing attention to asset holders can be done, if they own it, by contacting them, which should be easy; if it isn't then it's deadware and a dev probably doesn't hurt much in using it for a petty project. The mobbing is not alright. I hate mobs.

dont you rather mean steam having qualitycontroll in the first place?

I updated the OP with new information about the stolen art assets. Here is a side-by-side comparison of two of the assets (models) compared with their in-game models.

Or that they are using art assets from the unit asset store, which from the sound of it is a store where they might just buy the assets?

You can buy those assets, they're in a store.

From what I heard the original banner art was stolen from another game, then removed once pointed out. The stock unity assets were probably bought.

On top of that, it's an early access game, right? Normally I would say the chance of it being placeholder art is 100%.

From the Jim Sterling video review war, it is clear that the developer has some anger problems. I have no plans to buy this game and I even got a good laugh out of those videos. The bugs, art style, and lack of polish are all just missing the point. This dev is an idiot and should probably be laughed at. I haven't seen anything telling me the game is a scam though, which would be the only reason to have it removed from Steam.

Well today a real copyright infringement case was released on Steam. Spartans vs Zombies Defense a mobile port with microtransactions. Its free to play but copyright infringement is horrendous in this game.

Short movie from Total Biscuit that came online today reviewing this case.

This only got better with age.

http://kotaku.com/angered-game-developer-sues-game-critic-jim-sterling-fo-1765484317

Unlike your eyesight.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/digital-homicide-is-suing-jim-sterling.71521/

Pfft, if this was Renegade-X.com/Forums, where I am a mod, I'd have merge those two. Where are your manners? Why not use the existing thread and all it's relative archived discussion? Why make an entirely new thread just for the same topic? Do you even necro bro?