Just the other day, I gave an update on the Domina Controversy but it seems that “Steam’s most-hated developer” didn’t learn his lesson and ended up getting banned from Steam completely, with all of his games being delisted in the process.
Context:
- “tehbignic” aka Dolphin Barn is a developer most known for their game, Domina, a Gladiator-Management game that wasn’t perfect but it offered at least a few hours of fun for any fan of management games.
- At some point, the developer started to publish patch notes riddled with false information, anti-mask paroles, misogynist and transphobic messages, weird conspiracy theories, and a lot of hate speech aimed at transpeople, women, and people that wrote negative reviews of his game.
- After a public meltdown that the developer published on the official Domina Twitter Account, the account was suspended and before long, Valve banned Dolphin Barn from accessing their own hub due to many community guideline violations, particularly in regards to them insulting/flaming users.
- And now, the developer got removed completely from the Steam Storepage and all their games were delisted after they continued to flag negative user reviews as “fraudulent” while attacking other people, including Keffals, while spreading more transphobic bullshit on the platform.
- After their attack on Keffals, the Domina dev’s private Twitter account also got suspended.
It’s a shame.
Domina wasn’t a great game… and it barely passed as a good game but I enjoyed myself quite a bit at the time with the title. But then, the developer seemingly gave up and stopped developing the game before eventually removing content and attempting to sell said content as DLC.
It’s honestly a shame, especially given how much thought went into the title and how great the soundtrack is.
At some point, the developer gave up on their game… and then something in them flipped and they decided to release public, bigoted meltdowns in their patch notes while also insulting and harassing people with different opinions.
Who knows what made them turn out like this but in the end, it’s just a shame. I would like to imagine that the brain that came up with Domina could also come up with other good titles. Instead, they decided to attack people, call them clowns, and just behave like an absolute manchild. It’s a real bummer, innit?
TW/CW: Transphobia/Bigotry
The last bit that they decided to publish before the game was taken down was especially tasteless and incredibly fucked up.
In a last-ditch effort to get attention from people that otherwise wouldn’t care about them, the Domina Dev released an announcement where their game now suddenly isn’t called “Domina” but rather “Dominus”. “They were a man all along”, he continues while calling “Domina” the game’s “deadname”.
Steam’s most-hated developer then continues to shout out the same ol’ jokes that transphobes have been telling for years.
It’s not even original. That’s the sad part. It’s just the same insults that transpeople get to hear every day for years and years. It’s idiotic.
Fraudulent Reviews?
At last, I wanted to talk about fraudulent reviews on Steam.
Yesterday, I published this post over here, stating that there are Steam Curators that resell keys and scam Indie Devs.
Basically, it’s about scammers that tried to get back at a developer that only sent them demo keys… but it backfired on them and they got removed from Steam.
The Indie Dev behind “Broc the Investigator” reported in a Twitter thread that these reviews were fraudulent since the keys they got weren’t activated and since they weren’t even able to play the full game. A Reddit user then also revealed that most of those accounts are owned by the same admin who creates these pages on the same day and who probably boosted their follower counts with bots/bought followers.
Anyway, the reason why I bring this up is because of Dolphin Barn’s “fraudulent reviews” claim.
Even if people end up writing fraudulent reviews or reviews that have to do with your politics/values and not your game, there is a good way to deal with that and a bad way to deal with that.
What @COWCATGames did is the good way to deal with it. The solo dev reported the reviews in question but also tried to spread awareness on it without attacking the people behind it.
Meanwhile, what Dolphin Barn did is the bad way to do it: Any reviews that were negative (by users) were reported/flagged by him but unflagged by moderators. Still, instead of conforming with Steam’s ToS that they themselves agreed to, Dolphin Barn ended up attacking, calling out and insulting people that wrote those reviews.
Furthermore, the Domina Dev also complained publicly about how the moderators behind the ban or behind the unflagging of those aforementioned reviews aren’t showing their face/name – demanding that they come forth about it. What the fuck?
This is barbaric at best. It’s just terrible behaviour really and honestly, I’m just confused as to how an adult can turn out like this.
Thank God, it’s over now, though. Hopefully.
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!
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