Shovelware games company Silicon Echo closes after Valve throws it off of Steam
"Our reputation is destroyed beyond repair," wails games company with little reputation to destroy
Silicon Echo Studios, a maker of terrible games hawked on Valve Software's Steam PC games download service, has thrown in the towel.
It comes just days after Valve's crackdown on 'shovelware' led to Silicon Echo's entire portfolio of games being thrown off Steam.
Valve axed almost 200 games from the Steam Store in the crackdown in an effort to cut out so-called "asset flippers", companies producing poor quality games based largely on un- or under-developed assets running on gaming engines.
The games were all developed by Silicon Echo Studios, which has a reputation for flogging low-quality, cheaply-made games in a bid to cut a quick profit on the PC gaming platform.
Following Valve's cull, Silicon Echo has announced that it had no other option but to call it a day.
"This situation has completely destroyed everything we have been working for in the past three years and we are forced to give up game development at this point for more that [sic] one reason," Silicon Echo wailed in a statement to Polygon.
"Mainly because our reputation is destroyed beyond repair, but also for financial reasons. We wish we have been warned about this before, in that case we would focus on a different business plan of development.
"The only information we have been given is that our games were consistently at the top of user reported titles primarily for practices that are deceptive to the customers.
"This did not fully explain the reason for complete account and business termination, so naturally we sent an email to Valve politely asking some additional questions."
Valve, which early last year also cracked down on devs posting 'bullshots' in Steam Store listings, pulled no punches about the quality of Silicon Echo's offerings and their popularity among Steam users.
We have removed those games from the Steam Store and ended our business relationship with them
"We have a full-time team monitoring reports and they identified an issue that lead to the removal of some titles from a few different Steamworks accounts," claimed Valve in a statement.
It continued: "These accounts were generating a lot of reports and frustration from customers and other developers. It turns out that the bad actors were all the same person operating under different accounts.
See also: 13 of the worst games on Steam
"What we found was a set of extreme actions by this person that was negatively impacting the functionality of the store and our tools.
"For example, this person was mass-shipping nearly-identical products on Steam that were impacting the store's functionality and making it harder for players interested in finding fun games to play. This developer was also abusing Steam keys and misrepresenting themselves on the Steam store.
Spamming cloned games or manipulating our store tools isn't something we will tolerate
"As a result, we have removed those games from the Steam Store and ended our business relationship with them.
"The Steam platform is open, but we do ask developers to respect our customers and our policies. Spamming cloned games or manipulating our store tools isn't something we will tolerate. Our priority is helping players find games they will enjoy playing."
According to YouTuber Sid Alpha, Silicon Echo Studios accounted for 'at least' 10 per cent of all games released on Steam in both July and August.
Silicon Echo, according to the 'Crappy Games Wikia', didn't even go as far as "developing" games: "Silicon Echo simply bought game engine tutorials and uploaded them without any modifications. Silicon Echo didn't even bother developing games."
So, good riddance.