Other Redditors kept insisting that I do so..

This is a screenshot from the HoMM Olden Era demo.
Do we need this? And if yes, where does it end?
I remember other games with screens like "Press ESC to open the menu" or "Left click `Play` to open a new game" or "Press Spacebar or W to jump" in a Jump 'n Run.
All of this feels a little ridiculous to me. But please do enlighten us if you think it's for the better.

I’ve been working on a skate game with chunky PS1-style visuals and a top-down camera. The easiest way to describe it is probably the old Tony Hawk GBA games, just in full 3D.

It’s a top-down PSX-style skate game with bowls, tricks, chunky pixels and a camera angle that lets you see the entire park right before you completely miss the landing.

It’s still early, but skating around bowls from this perspective is starting to feel surprisingly good. Curious what people think of the camera and overall style.

We recently got our first "AI slop" comment about our game.

The ironic part is that we use zero AI-generated assets.

No AI-generated art.
No AI-generated marketing materials.
No AI-generated trailer.

We even work with human translators instead of relying on AI, despite being a small team.

We completely understand why people are cautious AI-generated content is everywhere right now.

But it feels like we've reached a point where "AI" has become the default accusation whenever someone doesn't like something.

Have any of you experienced this?

Did you ignore it, explain yourselves, or just move on?

join our discord: https://discord.gg/JfFnRansqN

Lately I've been living a soap opera.

Quick recap: my game went viral in China, with all the good and bad that comes with it. If you want to read the story from the start, I'll leave links to my other posts at the end.

But today I'm opening up a debate I never had a strong opinion on: does piracy help or hurt games? Because I think piracy is eating my game, and my server, alive.

---

My server blocked

A couple of days ago, my hosting provider started blocking my backend. That's where I handle player analytics, scores, and so on. Turns out an excess of requests was forcing my server into temporary shutdowns. I thought I was being attacked, so when I asked them to just block the conflicting IPs, they told me there were hundreds of them, and that it looked like a legitimate flow of players.

Happy about the success and stressed about the urgency, I spent several days optimizing database calls, adding Cloudflare protection, and upgrading to a bigger hosting plan just to make sure there wouldn't be more blocks.

---

For every 10 new players, 9 are pirates

When I finally finished optimizing everything, I checked the new players table and their usernames caught my attention. All of them were named xdgame, a Chinese website known for promoting pirated content.

Every time I hit refresh, at any hour of the day, exactly 22 of the last 25 entries had that name, despite being different Steam accounts. Today I had to widen the filter to the last 100 entries to confirm that 99% were pirates.

[Screenshot of table full of pirates]

---

Optimizing my anti-pirate system

I already covered how my anti-piracy system works in previous posts, though honestly I don't know if it still works on this PC version or if they've already bypassed it.

[Link to anti-piracy system post]

As soon as this situation started, I did an extra optimization on the database to stop processing data coming from these versions. But the underlying problem is still there: there's nothing I can do on the client side, since I have no way to update the pirated version. That means the number of calls hitting my server stays exactly the same, and the only thing I can do is keep a bigger server plan to hold up the service. Hopefully the pirates update their version at some point.

Even so, I decided to leave new user registration active, just out of curiosity to see where my players were coming from. That's how I ended up counting that 99% today.

---

"Pirates aren't in your market" - ☝️🤓

When the piracy situation got out of hand, I partnered with a Chinese publisher, who I have to admit seem to work really well. They opened pre-registration 2 weeks ago, took down several mobile pirated versions, and got thousands of sign-ups for the official version on day one. I've been genuinely happy with the reports they've been sending me.

Part of the reason I did this was an argument I kept seeing a lot: that if the game isn't on mobile, new pirate players are pirates because they don't have a PC to play on. But now that mobile piracy seems somewhat more under control, PC piracy is growing at an incredible rate.

Maybe they were simply choosing mobile out of convenience, not necessity, when it was free.

---

I released a PC-only feature that made everything worse

One of the updates I released to keep improving the official version was a mod that connects the biggest Chinese streaming platforms (Douyin, RedNote, and Bilibili) to the game. This lets livestream viewers show up as customers in front of the streamer and chat with them.

This mod is an external executable shared on my game's forum. It started slow since nobody knew about it, but now there are hundreds of players live on those platforms every single day.

Personally, I think this has also driven the increase in PC pirate players, since they can enjoy the mod here, when they couldn't on mobile.

---

Does piracy help games?

I don't buy into the "pirates who enjoy the game will buy it later" idea, so I was never a defender of piracy, though I never condemned it or looked down on anyone for pirating either. I just live alongside its existence and try to do so in the best way I can as a developer. As I explained in other posts, my only "remedy" was making the burger joint's customers dress up as pirates while an un-mutable sea shanty plays, and only paying a couple of doubloons for their food. A feature that kicks in after an hour of play, and works more like a bit of karma toward pirate players than an actual punishment.

When my game started going viral, I also wrote a post saying that maybe piracy itself helped me reach more people, since it generates more videos on social media and gets more people talking about the game.

[Link to piracy post]

But after analyzing these last few days, I think I might have been wrong. Here's the data:

• March 2025: My game came out a year and a half ago.
• June 2026: It goes viral in China through Douyin (their version of TikTok).
• June 28: The pirated PC version comes out, without many players.
• July 11: Mobile pre-order goes live on TapTap China, and anti-piracy measures are put in place.
• July 18: I release the Livestream mod for PC.
• July 20: I notice an increase in PC pirate players, though it had already been building up before this.
• July 20–22: My sales drop about -40%, and SteamDB shows a noticeable decline in active official players.

Right now I'm counting 9,000 players under that piracy website's name.

So at this point, my opinion on piracy is no longer "piracy exists in parallel with healthy growth."

---

Why am I writing this?

I'm not writing this looking for attention, since thankfully the game is still doing well. Nobody here needs to buy it, that's why I'm not sharing the name. [Link to the post about my game is doing well]

My day-to-day over the last month has been putting my project aside to handle this situation as best I can, and while stressful, it's been quite the experience. That's why I keep sharing it so much.

Many of you have encouraged me to keep posting about it, but to those who haven't, I'm sorry if I've become tiresome with this topic. I feel like it shows a side of gamedev that a lot of people don't talk about, out of fear that the situation will get worse or just jinx it.

The main reason I write this is because I genuinely enjoy sharing my story, it's helped me make better decisions for my project and my future as a studio more than once. I've gotten messages that made my day, and I feel like other users find it interesting too. Again, if that's not your case, I hope you'll forgive me for continuing.

I'll keep you posted whenever there's news. If you want me to, that is.

---

*Disclaimer: This post is AI-translated. I'm a native Spanish speaker, I wrote and structured all of this in Spanish, and had AI translate it into English. I reviewed the translation afterward to make sure the message hadn't changed. Hope you don't mind.

---

*Update: After some users suggestions I tried to remove the php files that were receiving all the data and update oficial users to a new endpoint. Somehow pirates trying to reach a non-existen url causes a higher CPU usage so I used Cloudflare to block this URLs. Now server is under 10% of usage! 😁

I’ve been working on DARK RAIL for a pretty long time now, and I finally wanted to share the trailers here.

It’s a grimdark turn based management roguelike where you run an Inquisition from a train hub, send people out on quests, manage resources, deal with prisoners, revolt and madness, and generally try to stop everything from falling apart.

I’m honestly really proud of how far it has come, even though there are still things I want to improve.

A lot of the game is better because of people who tested it, gave feedback, pointed out confusing parts, found bugs, or just told me directly when something did not work. When you work on something for this long, you become blind to a lot of obvious problems, so that outside input has been incredibly important. Sometimes harsh but fair comments are the biggest favour you can do to a developer.

Some systems, UI changes and balance improvements only exist because someone took the time to explain their experience properly. I’m genuinely very grateful for that.

The demo is out now on Steam in case anyone is curious and wants to try it. No pressure at all, but I would love to hear what people think.

Thanks for watching!

Games really are double edge swords. Like a lot of great things it can be a great source of meaning and a great source of escapism. I feel like the older I get the less time there is to spend time on the games. We decided to create a game we can always come back to and at the same time give us positive reinforcment on new healthy habits we're trying to get used to.

Everybody will be able to play by their own pace, but everyone's custom character build and adventure will be completely different because specific healthy habits would unlock specific stats and abilities on your lifestyle. It's super early, we are building everything by hand but we'll also have: online party system, open world hex map, turn-based fights, exploration, custom gear and mini games. We know that the market is flooded with similar concept projects but it seems like many of them are trackers rather than a fully fleshed out games.

Curious if anybody is already using or have used something like this?

Hi everyone!

We’re currently developing a cozy game about moles going on a wholesome, healing adventure aboard a steam locomotive!

It’s designed to be a relaxing co-op experience—along the journey, small obstacles might pop up, but nothing you and your friends can’t overcome together!

We don't have a playable demo ready just yet, but since we’ve only been working on this for about a month and a half, we’d really love to hear your honest thoughts on the overall atmosphere and visuals.

Any feedback or suggestions would mean the world to us! Thank you!

Here is the full project > https://www.artstation.com/artwork/2LxK2J

Hi, I'm an artist that just finished artschool and I want to specialize in steam capsules, here is my first atempt. Any feedback is welcome !

After a decade of development (mostly solo, then joined by my partner) and a dozen playtests, my free-to-play indie 2D platformer MMORPG Soul's Remnant is launching into Early Access on August 13th via Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3451980/Souls_Remnant

I was inspired by classic, old-school MMORPGs like MapleStory, Ragnarok Online, and Mabinogi. My game features a classless skill system, hundreds of items to hunt down, co-op dungeons and bosses, crafting, gathering, and an original soundtrack by yours truly. It's built for folks who love grinding, partying up, trading, and carving out their own build, all inside a fully player-driven economy. And there's no pay-to-win because we are monetizing through cosmetics and convenience items only.

It's been a journey and a half, to say the least. If you're interested, wishlist Soul's Remnant on Steam and join us on August 13! It's free, so we'd love for you to give it a try!

I am making a game in RPG Maker. I want to release it for free. I don’t think I can get away with anything above $3.99 considering low production values so I think, why even bother with a price? I have money, and would rather see the game reach more people. I do have some worries, for once that people tend to make assumptions about free games, ”low-effort/asset flip/AI slop/F2P/etc”, even though I put a lot of hard work into it and it’s fairly substantial. (4-5 hour playthrough) I see a lot of posts agonizing about prices, and I suppose this is another one, but I would really be interested in hearing people out if anyone released more substantial games for free and how it went.

He figured it out in no time of course. He played for like half an hour and I had torn him away from Zelda to play it for me! He said unprompted 3 times, this is so fun, Mum. I’m BURSTING. Haha. He also arranged all the inventory into categories which I thought was really interesting. 10 year olds can be pretty brutal so I’m taking this as a win 😂

Hey everyone, I am a 3D Prop Artist and Generalist, And I am open for Commisions!
I specialize in highly detailed 3D Assets and Props, But I am able to deliver a range of different assets and needs!

I use Blender, Substance Painter, ZBrush, Photoshop/Affinity Designer, Marmoset Toolbag, Marvelous Designer in my workflow

What I can do:

• Realistic Hard Surface & Organic Models
• Modular Environment Kits
• Highly Optimized Assets: Suited for Mobile and VR Usage
• Stylized or Low-poly Assets
• Basic Rigging and Animation

Why work with me:

• On-time delivery without any compromises
• Excellent Communication and iterative process
• Flexible Pricing for Indie teams

Pricing:
Project-based rates. Feel free to send me a DM to discuss your project and needs!

Portfolio:

Feel free to check a detailed breakdown of my work here!
If you would like to see more of my work specific to your needs feel free to reach out!
ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/mo-shoura

Contact:

Feel free to send me a message via Reddit, Email or Discord

Discord: mhd1__
Email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])

Working on animating a parasite violently forcing its way out of a corpse for my horror game. Would love to hear your thoughts on the overall feel.

If you’d like development updates or want to be first in line when it’s released , you can sign up for our mailing list at https://arachnid.dev.

Hey all, I've been working on a prototype in Godot to bring my art style to life and really happy with the results so far. I have a Steam page you can get to via https://james.sh/game for wishlisting and looking forward to sharing more WIPs here in future!