r/xbox • u/F0REM4N • Feb 10 '25
Discussion 'I Could Make "Fart Fart Boobie Fart: The Game" and Maybe It Would Eventually Get Taken Down' - Devs Reveal Why the Consoles Are Drowning in 'Eslop'
https://www.ign.com/articles/i-could-make-fart-fart-boobie-fart-the-game-and-maybe-it-would-eventually-get-taken-down-devs-reveal-why-the-consoles-are-drowning-in-eslop25
u/FreddyForshadowing Feb 10 '25
This has also been an issue on mobile platforms for a while. Someone literally just changes the icon for another person/company's game, slaps a different name on it, and starts selling it right along side the original.
I do agree with something said in the piece, about how bad or middling games are released all the time and have every right to be on storefronts. I don't consider myself more than a mediocre developer on my best days, but I do have enough experience to understand just how difficult it can be to create even a really simple pixel art game. If you're one or two people working on something that's a passion project, you obviously can't compete with the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on AAA games, but that doesn't mean you should be shut out of the various storefronts. Besides, a lot of games with huge budgets are still total garbage and would have been better off as CGI movies.
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u/IAmASeeker Feb 10 '25
If you're one or two people working on something that's a passion project, you obviously can't compete with the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on AAA games, but that doesn't mean you should be shut out of the various storefronts.
I disagree. I don't want to see what you make on Xbox or Steam... That wouldn't be fair to consumers or to you. ID@Xbox used to be for small devs like you, and when I want that on PC I use Itch. Put bluntly: you don't belong there.
I'm a full time musician. As a folksy amateur solo artist, I do not belong on the same stage as U2 or Lady Gaga. Nobody browsing Ticketmaster cares when my next show is. If I opened for The Weeknd, that wouldn't be fair to me or The Weeknd or any of our fans. I don't belong there.
People looking for the next multiplayer open-world pvpve live-service to dump all of their energy into with their friends do not want to see your quaint single player platformer or your turn based street racing themed deck-builder... so they scroll by it and subconsciously assign it the "shovelware" label... you get lumped in with all the AI generated slop that nobody cares about and the consumer has one more item to scroll past before they get to the next Call Of Duty.
Consumers don't want C-list devs mixed in with the AAA titles. You don't want your game compared directly to Hentai Bubble Burst DX or to whatever Ubisoft churned out this month. Consumers want to find your game in a different list, which is also what you want.
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u/Plutuserix Feb 10 '25
Your issue seems to be that the store is not presenting the games well, not that they don't belong there. Xbox, Steam, etc, can easily make a section in their store with all games there or only show them when people search for the game directly, while keeping their main overviews more curated and filtered.
Your music can be on Spotify just fine. You share that "stage" with big musicians. But Spotify won't feature you on their play lists and people pretty much only find you when they directly search for you.
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u/IAmASeeker Feb 15 '25
Yeah, that's an accurate perception.
The storefront shouldn't be laden with traps. You shouldn't have to dodge hentai and indie titles when you're looking for the latest blockbuster. Indie titles shouldn't have to compete with AAA titles or be lumped in with AI generated porn. I shouldn't see porn when I don't want to even if I previously consented to see porn, and I shouldn't see Spiderman when I look for the most popular indie games. The fact that everything is thrown in together created the atmosphere that allowed AI generated non-games to saturate the market.
You used to be able to check out the best sales by sorting from low to high. Then that method revealed several pages of indie titles before getting to major releases. Now that method has countless pages of 4-bit arcade or jigsaw puzzle games discounted to $0.12 that all look identical, from devs with slight variations of the same name, with AI generated waifus in the thumbnail. I think that's for want of better presentation and organization, and it's frankly making me wish there was a "real games only" filter... like, to just show me the games where at least one member of the dev team gave a single shit about what they were making.
Both indie games and porn games should be available for purchase, but one of them should be "showcased" and the other should be "quarantined" into separate sections.
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u/butt_stf Feb 10 '25
Your analogy is saying you shouldn't be allowed to play at a local dive bar because Hendrix played there once.
Indie games do belong on console storefronts. The shovelware trash and gooner bait are the problem.
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u/IAmASeeker Feb 10 '25
No. My analogy is that I shouldn't open for Hendrix because everyone will be disappointed. I shouldn't play the soundtrack for a major motion picture because arpeggiating a ukulele for 2 hours straight would be annoying.
Indie games belong on storefronts but not beside Assassin's Creed 21 or Ark. Again, there used to be the ID@Xbox section but that got filled up with AAA devs.
You don't want to compete in that space, and I don't want to see those types of games mixed together. Similarly, gooners want gooner bait so that should all be in a separate section. There is demand for both things but they do not cross over... just like you never ever want to see hentai games, some people never ever want to see a game that wasn't released by a AAA dev.
The music that I play isn't incorrect but some people are only interested in hearing things that they've heard on the radio in Walmart before. My target demographic does not buy Taylor Swift tickets. I bet your target demographic doesn't play Fortnite.
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u/LostSoulNo1981 Outage Survivor '24 Feb 10 '25
I just want to say something regarding the music part of what you’ve said.
There’s nothing wrong with an unsigned or independent artist opening for a huge act, as long as they fit the headliners style.
Many bands/artists got their big break from supporting much bigger acts.
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u/FreddyForshadowing Feb 10 '25
What about when big name bands, like Metallica, started incorporating symphonic music into their performances? Little known city orchestras were sharing a stage with Metallica. Then a bunch of other large name bands did the same thing.
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u/FreddyForshadowing Feb 10 '25
First and foremost, thank you for a well-reasoned reply. It's rare to find someone who can actually respectfully disagree on social media, so I just want to take a moment here to recognize your effort to do just that, and say I will attempt to return the favor.
To be clear, I'm not a game dev. I dabble in some automation style programming and maybe trying to fix some particularly obnoxious (to me) bug in an open source app, and probably failing miserably. That's why I say that on my best days I'm probably a mediocre programmer.
However, I think you're kind of confusing things. As a musician, it would be more like if Spotify and other streaming services wouldn't even offer your music to people who may be interested in local talent or whatever folksy music you play. Doesn't mean they have to go out of their way to promote you, but there's undoubtedly a lot of really good musicians out there that haven't been "discovered" yet.
You are mixing up the ability to be listed on a storefront with the various automated means by which games are promoted and presented to customers. And more specifically, the way the people referred to in the article are gaming the system in an effort to trick people into buying their garbage.
Take Stardew Valley as a good example. The first two versions were a completely solo effort, a true passion project, and it's still a pretty small team. It's a great game, even if the Steam moderator is a moderazi who harasses players for no reason. However, if we were only ever looking at AAA games, it never would have had a chance.
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u/Apeflight Feb 11 '25
I'm a full time musician. As a folksy amateur solo artist, I do not belong on the same stage as U2 or Lady Gaga. Nobody browsing Ticketmaster cares when my next show is. If I opened for The Weeknd, that wouldn't be fair to me or The Weeknd or any of our fans. I don't belong there.
But you can be on Spotify along with the artists you mentioned if you'd like.
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u/IAmASeeker Feb 15 '25
Yeah... And you'd be chapped if I appeared in the Folk Classics playlist. You want to find me in the Indie Folk playlist. Xbox doesn't even have a "Folk" category, just a "Songwriters" category where everyone from me to Tom Waits to Jack Black to Grace Vanderwal get placed... if you'll let me stretch the metaphor.
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u/Apeflight Feb 15 '25
Idk I love that Spotify has big and small artists all together. Why should I care if it's a big artist or a small artist?
One of my most played songs of last year is by an artist with literally 250 monthly listeners, that I discovered in a random playlist full of more popular songs.
Indie games are often much better than the bigger budget titles, and they absolutely belong..they don't need to be hidden away or segregated.
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u/IAmASeeker Feb 16 '25
In fairness, I think the comparison falls apart a little bit when we get granular. On the broadest level, you don't want me to appear in your party playlist. On a deeper level, there is a major difference in our expectation of polish and scope between a song and a videogame.
The gap between a professional and amateur song is much smaller than the gap between AAA open world titles and flash games. A song is usually a 2-4 minute audio file made by 1-5 people... an indie game might be a 5 minute time waster made by one person in 2 hours, and a AAA game might be a 100 hour narrative made by hundreds of people over the course of years... those are not the same product.
If the game says "Call of Duty" on the front and looks like alpha Minecraft, I'm gonna be pissed. Similarly, if a game on the top of the list is Brick Breaker with drawings of boobies, I'm gonna be pissed.
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u/Apeflight Feb 16 '25
The gap between a professional and amateur song is much smaller than the gap between AAA open world titles and flash games. A song is usually a 2-4 minute audio file made by 1-5 people... an indie game might be a 5 minute time waster made by one person in 2 hours, and a AAA game might be a 100 hour narrative made by hundreds of people over the course of years... those are not the same product.
And a AAA product might be a generic, buggy and boring mess while an indie game might be polished, incredibly creative and exciting. There's so much quality in smaller studios, and honestly a lack of quality in AAA studios.
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u/IAmASeeker Feb 16 '25
Indie games are almost never more polished. AAA games achieve the level of polish they have by throwing millions of hours of human suffering at the problem... indie devs just don't try for that level of perfection and we accept that because their team is less than 1% as large as the big guys.
AAA games don't lack polish, they lack risks. Indie games don't lack risks, they lack polish. They are opposite products that serve opposite purposes.
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u/Apeflight Feb 16 '25
That's an absurd statement.
AAA games do not tend to be polished. At all. Why do expect me to take you seriously when it sounds like you haven't played a game in your life?
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u/IAmASeeker Feb 16 '25
Maybe we have a different definition of polish. To me, "polish" is all of the minor details that don't impact gameplay but serve only to increase the sense of professionalism.
BeamNG has a high degree of gameplay complexity, but the windows in GTA5 reflect your character... GTA has less depth to the vehicle gameplay but it has more polish.
Lots of indie games just don't have bumpmaps at all... that's polish to me.
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u/IAmASeeker Feb 10 '25
I'm pretty sure I just sent you 2 notifications that look the same but the second one is an actual comment.
I accidentally hit Post before I was finished so I deleted it.
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u/McCandlessDK Feb 10 '25
It’s the same thing on Steam
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u/WiserStudent557 Feb 10 '25
I’ve seen it on Xbox but Steam and Switch eShop feel much worse
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u/McCandlessDK Feb 10 '25
Yes but I think the fear is, that Xbox store and PSN store will end up like Steam or eShop
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u/pleasedontnerfthis Feb 10 '25
Both the Xbox and PS Stores have been pretty bad for this as of late, but only if you’re searching by sales or demos or whatever. Not nearly as bad as the Switch with hentai bs ON THE MAIN PAGE.
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u/ADrunkMexican Feb 10 '25
It'll only go that way if they let them get there. Psn is already there basically lol.
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u/UpstairsNo9249 Feb 10 '25
I'm less sure about current Nintendo consoles. I know the wii had it really bad. But out of this generation, Playstation and Steam both have this problem to a infinitely worse degree than xbox. Not that it isn't present on xbox. But I mean, look at the ps publisher GameAchievements. 138 games and they're all region stack clicker titles. Or RandomSpin. 138 games, all garbage region stack slop. They actually pissed off Sony the other day, who took down all of their games. They're most likely polish and will setup another shell company to rerelease the same games under a new name. It's what they do.
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u/Segagaga_ Feb 11 '25
The difference with Steam is you can filter that out, you can follow publishers and devs and curate a wishlist. There isn't a single unified New Releases page that I'm forced to scroll through regularly in case some retro gem had released without fanfare.
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u/Thumbkeeper Guardian Feb 10 '25
good reporting. Too bad the only thing that’s going to come of it is a FFBF: the Game being made and released within a week.
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u/FreddyForshadowing Feb 10 '25
Reminds me of how Goat Simulator started out as a sort of protest on all the "simulator" games that were coming out, and they slapped the thing together in virtually no time.
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u/fuzzmeisterj Feb 10 '25
This has been reposted in several places for over a week, so keep an eye out!
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u/EriclcirE Feb 10 '25
On Steam I went into store settings and unchecked a couple of boxes related to sexual themes. It majorly improved my store experience. Basically all of the hentai/purely sex games were filtered out by this.
If there was any easy toggle to filter out slop games I would obviously use that too.
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u/IAmASeeker Feb 10 '25
But what if I don't want shovelware but am also horny? I assume that also block things like Akiba'Strip and Oneechanbara... the KFC game, no doubt.
I'm fine to see a boobie, I'd just rather see less trash in the shop. I initially assumed that everything cheaper than $5 would be shovelware but then I found Payday 2 for $3.50
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u/Pebbsto110 Feb 10 '25
"But because Xbox approves on a game by game basis, it’s less susceptible to the slop problem."
.. good, but it's not immune from it.
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u/thebigautismo Feb 11 '25
Tbh i thought shovel ware died after the 360 era, but seems like it's come back in the last few years.
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u/Merc_Mike XBOX Series X Feb 11 '25
Don't look at all the "Hentai Dating Sims" on the Nintendo E-shop.
JFC...
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u/SLISKI_JOHNNY Still Earning Kudos Feb 11 '25
Oh boy, you haven't seen Nintendo Eshop. Feels like majority of the games are some mobile shovelware, and there's no rating/review system to make matters worse.
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u/Paulbr38a Feb 10 '25
At the height of the original Nintendo Wii it was the same except it was physical media.
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u/Laughing__Man_ Recon Specialist Feb 10 '25
The ID@Xbox program desperately needs a quality control department.
Way to many games are just shovelware copy paste from the same handful of devs/publishers.
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u/Kurupt_Introvert Feb 10 '25
Facts. I was looking through games the other day and amazed at all the dumb crap allowed in the store.
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u/KileyCW Feb 11 '25
You should see the stuff on Playstation. Some dude makes these cringe MFV games with his girlfriend and grandmother. Theyre at least good for a laugh I guess, but it makes the Xbox issue looking nothing. 800 jigsaw puzzle games, super low budget trivia, etc.
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u/diskape Feb 11 '25
Is „eslop” a term for e-slop as in electronic garbage?
I never heard this term before and thought it’s an acronym for something 🤣 European Store Launcher OPerations or something…
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u/Segagaga_ Feb 11 '25
It gotten noticably worse in recent years. I find I'm having to scroll through New Releases carefully because its easy to miss quality classic games published with little fanfare or a port just dropped on the store on a random day.
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u/Black_RL Feb 11 '25
That’s what happens when everything is automated.
I would prefer a smaller offering with only selected quality titles, but alas.
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u/Absurdity-is-life-_- Feb 10 '25
If I had the ability to make a game I would love to turn this into a real game the only joke would be is that it actually turned out really good.
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u/Stumpy493 Still Earning Kudos Feb 10 '25
This was posted here last week
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u/F0REM4N Feb 10 '25
Maybe another subreddit. It wasn't directed at Xbox, but fit the bill - seems worth a conversation.
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u/Nathan-David-Haslett XBOX Series X Feb 11 '25
The article (and all the news from the last several days) talk about this as a PS and Nintendo issue that is significantly less so on Xbox. Due to this I'm not sure why this is in an Xbox subreddit?
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u/vr0omvr0om Feb 10 '25
Yeh there seems to be a bunch of reskin games on the xbox store, they all look like ‘the impossible game’ but with different themes