Sunset: A Final Look Back at UberStrike

Remember back when I was talking about UberStrike, an FPS that got absolutely destroyed when it launched on Steam? Well, seems like it's finally getting what it had coming to it.

Just to refresh some people's memory, UberStrike is a "free-to-play" first-person shooter that got massive amounts of negative reviews when it launched on Steam some time ago. One reason for this being that it screwed up the in-game economy when the accounts and game data was ported, and basically a few in-game purchases became a few bucks cheaper than before the move to Steam. Another reason for this being the absolute chaos that cheaters created. You literally could not find one match without there being a cheater.

This went on for a few months, and people eventually just had to deal with it. Then a few weeks ago, Cmune, the developing company for the game, decides they're going to "sunset" the game. Which basically means they're going to slowly, over the course of three months starting from April 13th, going to shut down the game.

On April 13th, they already pulled the download link from the Steam store. They also stopped all credit purchases for exclusive items. Starting May 13th, they're going to disable the in-game shop for these exclusive items. Finally, on June 13th, they're going to shut down the game servers.

"Finally," I thought to myself. It was about damn time Cmune decided to take this crap down. But no matter what, shutting a game down isn't always what a developer should do. And especially not in this manner.

First off, the game was definitely a childhood experience to some people, including myself. Like I said before in my last post about the game, UberStrike used to be a game called Paradise Paintball. I was one of the ONLY people who ever played the first version that came out in 2008, in the Apple store. Over a short period of time, the game went through three updates, one getting rid of the original chibi character models, and overhauling the weapons from just the machinegun and rocket launcher to adding a sniper rifle and a backup pistol, all available to the player, with a shotgun available to purchase or rent. Spring grenades also made their debut, along with the legendary Oriental Kenzo, Gideon Tower's original design. Perhaps some of you remember the infamous crane camping spot on Kenzo? Or maybe the windowsill spot?

PP was then given a MAJOR overhaul. The game took it's new name, UberStike, redesigned Oriental Kenzo, and gave the game a more cyberpunk look. The game was still fun to play, albeit inferior to the beauty of Kenzo and paint splatter. Campers always found new tricks, from ledge glitches and wall glitching on Gideon's, to hiding in treetops. Young pros found their way to the top of the leaderboards, clans were made, rocket jumpers and noscopers all had their place here.

And then... it just didn't take off from there. Veterans missed the original feel of PP, and weapons became broken. The Deliverator, one of the original UberStike weapons, became too expensive for people to rent weekly. The UberMachinegun had 100% accuracy, which made it a poor man's sniper rifle. Game design became sloppy too. They ended up releasing "blueprint maps," which were basically maps without any art to design them. Though they ended up having designs to go along with them, they were often the same. One map even had wall clipping issues with moving walls. You could literally stand in the path of this rotating wall and clip through it.

I guess Cmune just thought it was too much of a hassle to support it, so I can see why they'd want to cut it off. We knew it from the start when we were able to buy weapons without the use of credits. But the way they handled the game before the Sunset was just a massive disappointment.

Hackers were a HUGE problem in the early Steam days. And Cmune did nothing, leaving players to just deal with it. And the controversy with the in-game purchases did nothing to help this, coupled with the fact that many would just decide to hack funds into their account.

Granted, they may have been working on their other games, but to just turn a blind eye on the community that primarily supported them is just wrong.

And so they decided to just shut it down. They pulled the downloads, stopped credit purchasing, and basically just told everyone that the game's over. People are petitioning to release the servers to the public, but to no avail.

It honestly was a lot of fun to play this game. From the chibi characters, to the hilarious glitching, to the desperate times of cheating, I truly enjoyed the game, but it was just sad to see how it all just went downhill. It turned into a travesty of a game, but we still can't let go of the fact that it was once our own little community, our little painball paradise - or Paradise Paintball.

To the UberStikers and the PP veterans who found this, it was fun meeting you all.

--GameKiller

YouTube: The end is near? YouTube Meta

It's been a while since I've been uploading content to YouTube, and things have steadily been growing worse and worse looking at it from the outside.

It's obvious that YouTube is starting to become a somewhat broken system that both YouTubers and viewers just seem to hate.

Recently, there have been startling increases in copyright strikes on growing channels like I Hate Everything and Chibi Reviews. These channels are entirely innocent and in the right, but unfortunately, due to YouTube's automated copyright claim system, these channels have faced copyright claims from companies who are only making false claims and strikes purely to profit off stolen monetization from the videos, or just to make their lives a living hell.

This isn't just a problem with copyright claims, however. Literally anyone can report a video for abuse of YouTube's content creation rules and have the video taken down, the channel's abilities limited, or even have the channel taken down completely. Again, this is all automated, and nothing really helps to deal with the situation.

Changes have been promised, and just hours ago, Chibi Reviews has released a video detailing a written response to the false claims. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/bAu4e6OsTOU

But these changes were much needed months ago, when the problems started! All of this could've been avoided if the system were made better, or have these claims reviewed by someone, or maybe a legal team dedicated to handling these things.

But are these changes too late? Is the broken system enough to push creators towards a new website?

It's known that things tend to die fairly quickly on the internet. Remember #YOLO? The thing that went on for years, then suddenly just died? What about Kim Kardashian? Facebook? Myspace? These things used to be the biggest things circulating the web, but have suddenly been left, tossed aside and forgotten.

Internet memes and celebrities like #YOLO and Kim Kardashian have seen fame and glory like no other. But soon, people just started growing sick of it, and wanted something new. Sites like Facebook and MySpace were the pinnacle of middle school social media hubs. But once modern news and internet memes had started to circulate through Twitter and Instagram, being the most popular kid at school through posting about your life became less important than keeping up with current trends in Instagram and Twitter.

Now keep in mind, memes tend to last a few weeks, maybe months before meeting their sudden cutoff due to a new hot topic. But social media hubs take a little longer to gain popularity due to the immense design and catering towards users that current sites have to take into account to gain popularity. This is why you have so many sites that all basically do the same thing, with a slight difference, or does it's job much better. To give a little insight into this, and how YouTube has changed over time, here's a brief history of the social media platforms.

MySpace was the biggest thing in the early 2000's, but was eventually replaced by the newer site called Facebook. Twitter is created late 2006, designed to be kind of like a news reel for internet trends and topics, though people create accounts to also become some sort of Internet celebrity. YouTube has also started to become popular, and Google acquires it under their name.
By now, MySpace is totally dead. Beginning in 2010, Apple and Google have revolutionized smartphones to the point where social media is affected.Instagram becomes a new site where concepts from Facebook and Twitter have been merged to become this picture sharing hub. Snapchat and Vine follow suit, but have been more inclined towards plain picture-sharing and short video sharing.
2012 YouTube is in the middle of a revolution. Since the initial release of Minecraft, a steady increase of gaming channels have been created, and other channels as well. Animations and animator channels no longer popular.
Tumblr has also become a well-known site starting somewhere around 2013, a site aimed towards people who share a common interest, and group together to form communities. Facebook is now starting to have a serious decline in traffic, and is slowly starting to meet it's demise.
2013 YouTube's year-long revolution gas ended with a rather surprising outcome: YouTube superstars are now a thing, and a gaming channel rush has been created because of this new YouTube star dream.
Minecraft is a huge topic circulating YouTube, and multiple channels have been created solely for the purpose of uploading Minecraft gaming content.
Regarding other topics, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook all gain massive traffic on news related to One Direction, the new British boy band.(eww) Middle schoolers talk about this all the time on Facebook, and prolong Facebook's life a little longer. Snapchat and Vine are now recognized as social media platforms, and used to share pictures and videos of that party last night or that funny thing caught on video.
2014 YouTube has now recognized a critical flaw: channel inflation. Now, channels are so similar to each other that you can't possibly seem to grow a channel large enough to become what is now known as PewDiePie. Minecraft starts to see decline in traffic by the end of 2014. Social media hubs continue on creating new trends, mostly surrounding disasters or controversies, sometimes new internet memes.
2015 YouTube has identified a fatal flaw: the copyright claim and report system. Since the channel inflation, Google implemented an automated copyright and report system to deal with issues surrounding copyrighted content and issues against content creation rules. People have now found out it's possible to abuse this system to take down channels and steal monetization from channels for profit. These issues continue to this day. Also, FNaF.
Social media hubs remain stable to this day, however Facebook is now regarded 'dead' to some users, replaced by more defined hubs like Twitter and Instagram.

So as you can see from that rather lengthy bit of information, we see that YouTube's 2013 revolution has created problems for itself. MySpace and Facebook were both completely dead to some people due to other sites doing their job much better. This is a huge deal towards YouTube, because Twitch, a new live-streaming service that had rapidly grown in popularity in 2014, could mean the potential decrease in traffic for YouTube. Because of this competitor, and the fact YouTube's service towards creators is completely broken, YouTube is in jeopardy or being easily replaced.

Now, other channels have been made too. Review channels, reaction channels, musicians and other creators alike all now have a place in YouTube due to the creator boom. Because Minecraft has become less of a thing, gaming channels have slowed gaming channel growth and allowed other YouTubers to grow in size.

However, it's a power struggle.

YouTubers are now fighting for popularity, doing whatever they can to increase their traffic. Click bait videos are common, prank channels fake their pranks, and sometimes go to extremes that can violate the content creation rules, and sometimes abuse of the copyright and report systems can cause channels to be taken down or have their abilities limited.

CEO Susan Wojcicky has given a speech saying that they are going to try to resolve this issue. Finally we're getting the help we need! But is it too late?

Google has already been experimenting with different ideas for their other services. Google wave was supposed to be a a hub for people to communicate ideas and things like that, but ended up being scrapped for the much better(in a sense) Google+. Inbox is a new approach to Gmail that they launched mid-2015, and Google Messenger is a new SMS app they made earlier this year, however can be seen inferior to the more functional Hangouts app. It shouldn't be a surprise if Google tries to create a new video-sharing platform to replace YouTube.

But maybe that won't be seen for a while. Maybe this is the era of the internet where things finally start to settle. YouTube is such a big part of Google, it couldn't possibly be given the axe. Of course, changes will come once in a while, but maybe YouTube will live on as a permanent part of internet life. It's a scary thought that something horribly wrong could happen to YouTube at any moment, but eventually fate will decide.

That's all for this post, again, I'm sorry for the extended hiatus. If you've been watching my YouTube channel, you'll know that I have gone dark because of my main computer frying. I should be back online in a few days, since I get my new computer's parts soon. I also am not a huge fan of working on a mobile phone, so that also explains why I haven't been making posts, but this topic came up and I felt like I really needed to get this out there.
That social media history bit was rather interesting to be honest. I might make a full report on it later.
Big shoutout to I Hate Everything, Chibi Reviews and GradeAUnderA for helping to bring this copyright controversy to light. They've all suffered false claims and the BS that they bring. Support them by spreading #MakeYoutubeGreatAgain!
What do you think about this YouTube meta issue? Be sure to share this post with anyone you know who creates YouTube videos regularly, or YouTube staff themselves!

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

--GameKiller

Payday went Completely Overkill: Payday 2 Blues pt. 2

A while ago, I talked about how Overkill had somewhat left the community(and myself) in a bit of an uproar, as the newly-installed microtransactions had went against Overkill's previous promises, upset in-game weapon balances, and added a new economy to the game, much like other Valve titles.

However, they've gone and done it again, as they released, with Update 90, the Completely Overkill safe, modeled after the Completely Overkill DLC pack, which with Update 90, adds a safe and drill, plus 7 DLC packs for free. The safe is not tradable or sellable, however the contents are.

The update also adds Team Boost, which boosts reward drops at the end of missions. Team Boost is available from special weapon skins. Each safe has a chance to drop a skin with Team Boost. The reward boost is better if more people in the team have a Team Boost skin.

The Crimefest 2 safe is now gone, however is still tradable and sellable. In it's place are two more safes, the already mentioned COP safe and the Dallas safe, with added chance for Team Boost.

Now that most of the recent changes are out of the way, here's the big problem. They continue to piss people off.

The community still isn't happy because they thought they were going to fix this problem. Overkill has already tried to fix it by adding the drills to the random reward drop at the end of missions, and have delivered on removing a safe. But with two more, and one of which is only for those who bought the COP DLC, and with no word on the game being released as F2P.

Not only that, but the weapon skin fiasco has had more fuel thrown in the fire, as Team Boost will now be the most sought-out item in the community market. It upsets the game balance further, and infuriates people longer.

I get what Overkill is trying to do in the Team Boost aspect. They want to stress the fact that this is actually supposed to make the game more co-operative, where people want other people to have Team Boost so that they get better rewards. But this isn't the way we want it.

We still have to get Team Boost from microtransactions, which siphon away the money that the numerous DLC packs didn't already. We don't want the skins to affect our gameplay other than cosmetic purposes. In fact, we never needed cowboy weapons, flamethrowers, or things like that. It makes the game look too unrealistic, where bank robbery is supposed to be a very serious thing, from both sides of the law.

The uproar among Payday players has grown worse enough that forum moderators are going on strike. Three mods are now unwilling to moderate the Payday 2 forum until a public interview is held.  

I like to believe that i am not unreasonable but unfortunately the situation constantly degraded. We will no longer refuse to work if we are given a public interview with a member of Overkill. We want to be heard and see what Overkill are willing to do to fix the situation.-♥Ashley♥

It's a shame that moderators have to deal with the people who are making threats and making constant distress for other people, but Overkill was definitely to blame for the added hate, and I completely agree with the opinions of these mods. They don't have to deal with this if Overkill isn't going to make it easier for them.

From this point, it doesn't look like it's going to be any better from here on out. Maybe Overkill can dig themselves out of this hole before they go too deep, or maybe the game will die out long before that happens. They already agree that this has been somewhat unorganized and messy, but it doesn't look like they are making it any better for themselves, or anyone else.

--GameKiller