Legendary Hoplite: Arachne’s Trial

"Legendary Hoplite: Arachne’s Trial" Legendary Hoplite: Arachne’s Trial is not a game. It's an advertisement for a product called "Legendary Hoplite". Legendary Hoplite is The product this is advertising is a very poorly made mobile app tier Plants vs Zombies ripoff... and it's incredibly weird to see shady developers like this push out an advertisement then pay for a bunch of fake reviews from the Russian review farm uncovered by Sentinels of the Store. But, what should we expect from TripleBrick? They're scammers.. But this isn't completely relevant because this is not Legendary Hoplite, it's just an advertisment for it, so it's not correct to try to review that completely distinct product. We must instead review this for what it is... an advertisement. If you enjoy advertisements, you can consume them for free on the web or on Youtube without needing to add them to your game library, download them, and then launch the advertising. It's impossible in a general sense to recommend people should do that over playing real, full games on Steam, and that applies here with "Legendary Hoplite: Arachne’s Trial" too. This is only free in the same way that adverts on Youtube and banner ads in your browser are. This is a game demo that's been dumped on Steam to advertise another Steam store page in the hopes of raking in some cash. Just because advertisements are free, doesn't mean they're worth your time. It's important to understand there's a formal process to create a demo/page for a game which hasn't been followed here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/demos While it might seem like an inocuous mistake, publishing demos and advertisements as if they are full games is misleading and in some ways harmful. This advertisement is taking up marketing space and visibility that would be better made available to a developer that's done the right thing and created a full game. Instead, that visibility is given over to a demo/advert that's been published incorrectly and is polluting the marketplace. It's unclear if this mistake was made through incompetence or a deliberate intent to mislead gamers. Often developers may choose to incorrectly publish demo/advertisements as separate games as a cheap way to bypass paying Valve for marketing presence on the Steam front page, which may seem clever to them, but it's harmful behaviour and it's not good for gamers. [quote][b][url=https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/federal-register-notices/16-cfr-part-465-trade-regulation-rule-use-consumer-reviews-testimonials-final-rule]Warning: Review Manipulation![/url][/b] This software features a number of fake positive reviews from accounts known to be in the business of review manipulation/paid reviews. They're all written in either Russian or broken English, appear at almost exactly the same time, very shortly after the software launched on Steam, all have a direct Steam purchase of the software, and the accounts are used consistently to write fake reviews for asset flips and other cash grabs/scams. The "Positive" review score on this software should be disregarded due to this blatant, unethical review manipulation. This is done to deceive and scam gamers into paying for a bad product. Due to the 2024 FTC ruling (16 CFR Part 465), these fake reviews are a violation of US Federal Law.[/quote] Bearing in mind that advertisements don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? Nope. This isn't worth downloading. While this didn't cost me any money up front, I still feel ripped off.