Asset flip

An asset flip is a type of low-budget, poor-quality shovelware video game, specifically one in which a video game developer legally purchases pre-made assets, such as a game engine, 2D art or 3D models, and uses them to create numerous permutations of generic, often unfinished games to sell to unsuspecting customers in the guise of a finished product. Asset flips have been noted to be a problem on many online distribution platforms, especially Steam, which has little to no restrictions against them, outside of select cases in which Valve Corporation intervened to ban certain developers from the platform. The Switch eShop was also accused of allowing the sale of asset flips.[1] Critics have criticized the deceptive and fraudulent nature of many asset flips, which by definition have little unique content, and are often riddled with bugs, if not largely unplayable. The Unity game engine, due to its easy accessibility and "Asset Store", has become notorious for asset flips, to the point where legitimate developers typically hide the fact that their games were created using Unity to avoid a negative impression.

Not to be confused with Property flip.

History

The asset flip game rose to prominence with the advent of pre-made royalty-free assets. While these assets have "democratized" development for indie games, allowing access to a higher quality of asset than individual developers could create themselves, and created lucrative revenue opportunities for asset creators, it also led to asset flips, which "use a large amount of pre-made assets from stores like Unity's to create a game with relatively few original assets".[2]

In 2017, developers Digital Homicide were accused of creating asset flips by game journalist Jim Sterling, who reviewed one of their games, The Slaughtering Grounds. In response, they sued Sterling for US$10 million, as well as anonymous Steam users for US$18 million. These lawsuits were dismissed, and the developer's games were removed from Steam for violating their terms of service.[3]

In 2018, Steam declared, after pulling the school shooting game Active Shooter, that it would "allow everything" on its platform regardless of quality.[4] Valve engineer Erik Johnson later clarified that Steam would only remove "obvious troll" games, despite the contention of critics and gamers that asset flips are harmful to players, developers and Steam itself. The steadily increasing amount of asset flips on Steam, due to a loosening of inclusion criteria, led to what commentators called the "Steampocalypse", in which discoverability for most indie developers dropped precipitously regardless of game quality.[5]

Criticism

Some critics and developers, such as Bennett Foddy, have lamented the use of "asset flip" as a "catch-all" term, believing that some high-quality or experimental games that use a large amount of pre-made assets are unfairly labeled as "asset flips" by players, such as PUBG.[5]

See also

References
  1. Craddock, Ryan (2020-05-11). "Nintendo Accused Of Hosting Asset Flip Game On Switch, And Fans Aren't Happy". Nintendo Life. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
  2. Valentine, Rebekah (2018-07-19). "Unity: "Games wouldn't see the light of day" without asset stores". GamesIndustry.biz. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
  3. D'Anastasio, Cecilia (2017-02-21). "Court Throws Out Digital Homicide's Case Against Critic Jim Sterling". Kotaku. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
  4. Lucero II, Louis (2018-06-08). "Steam, After Pulling School Shooter Game, Says It Will Sell Nearly Everything". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-12-16.
  5. Grubb, Jeff (2018-07-12). "In defense of asset flips on Steam". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2020-12-14.
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