Vidjama Gmaes Work

Inspires review bombs over bullying an indie dev.

Everyone loves Schedule 1 on Steam. All my homies love Schedule 1 on Steam. It is currently the #2 most played game on Steam and has a 98% overwhelmingly positive rating with over 77,000 reviews. You know who doesn’t have an overwhelmingly positive review on Steam? Drug Dealer Simulator 1 and 2.

Well that’s not entirely accurate. Drug Dealer Simulator has a “very positive” 80% rating and the sequel right now is at a “mixed” 60%. Both games have an overwhelmingly negative rating for recent reviews in the last 30 days, and that’s because Movie Games S.A. decided the best course of action would be to make the internet hate them. How? By bullying an indie dev for making a similar game better than they did.

Schedule 1 in fact has peaked at 459,000 concurrent Steam players compared to Movie Games S.A.’s creations which peaked at a much lower 7k and 9k respectively. The Polish developer is investigating Schedule 1 for potential legal action over claims that the game is too similar to Drug Dealer Simulator.

Now I don’t know if Movie Games S.A. are doing this because they are washed up hack frauds jealous that a more talented solo developer did what they did, but also better, and isn’t part of a sweatshop Polish content mill that mass produces shoddy, bug ridden simulator games that rarely ever see post-launch support. I’m not sure if the investigation or their explanation of it as being an obligation marks them as petty, vindictive losers who would rather legally bully the competition instead of creating a quality game of their own. I have no idea if any of that is true.

But the internet sure thinks it is.

The two Drug Dealer Simulator games are getting tanked in user reviews over the last few days, with customers pointing to the sheer hubris behind threatening legal action against a solo developer for making a better game. Meanwhile over on YouTube the coverage is spinning up and, like Steam, Movie Games S.A. are not being viewed as the good guys in this ordeal.

Movie Games isn’t suing Schedule 1 at the present moment. They might never sue. That’s kinda irrelevant at this point, because the public opinion is clearly not in their favor and only turning against it the more they decide to talk about the legal maneuvers. The only question is how deep will Movie Games bury itself and its developers before all is put to rest?

Because gamers hold grudges for a long time.