It’s no secret that Nintendo’s e-store is flooded with “shovel,” low-quality games that apparently only exist to take up space (and perhaps become a quick buck for the publisher). But over the last year or so, the eShop is facing an even more insidious editorial tactic: the so-called “asset flip”.
What is an asset flip?
Asset investments describe a game built entirely using models, prefabricated environments, and sometimes even entire templates or demo versions. Typically, these assets are purchased with full rights, totally over the table, through stores such as the Unity Asset Store.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with using prefabricated resources in a game; Independent game studios usually have resources, so they can pick up prefabricated assets and then use them for their own games, reducing development time and keeping the overhead low. But some publishers simply license resources and turn them into a digital showcase – in this case, Nintendo’s eShop – as if it were a completely new game, sometimes without changing anything.
The practice is technically legal. It is also frowned upon.
“A lot of people don’t have the skills to produce all the elements of their games and the sites they sell assets are incredibly valuable,” said Luke Wild, who runs the YouTube channel StarorShovelware, he said Kotaku in an email. But creating a game entirely from assets — or worse, using a complete game template — not modifying any of the basic resources and publishing it as a “game” in the eShop is a mistake in my mind. ”
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Asset investments are not exactly a new issue and have, in fact, been a concern for the PC video game community for some time. In 2017, Steam removed more than 170 games which were considered asset investments. (A game that has not yet been canceled: Invest the resource. It is in early access.)
But in recent years, the practice has proliferated in the Nintendo storefront. Wild has openly chronicled the growing scourge and documented his efforts in a video released this weekend:
As Wild detailed in an extensive spreadsheet, around 90 games released in the eShop so far in 2021 can be qualified as asset investments. Of these, the mobile editor Pix Arts, which you may know as the suit behind gems such as Jump stack ball i US Navy Maritime Conflict—He is by far the top criminal, having published 34 volumes of bona fide assets.
A few weeks ago, Wild actually dedicated an entire video to shed light on company practices. Benoît Varasse of Pix Arts, who is listed as the developer of lots of Switch–published Pix Arts games, intervened in the comments, writing:
There is absolutely nothing illegal or immoral about buying Unity Asset Store assets or TurboSquid graphics and [making] games out of them. It is also legal to purchase a mobile gaming license from the Unity Asset Store and make an adaptation in other formats. In fact, this is exactly what the Unity Asset Store and its ecosystem are designed for.
Pix Arts did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Pix Kotaku.
How can you say a game is an active flip?
Finding out an asset investment is both an art and a science. Wild organized the first games in the eShop in reverse chronological order (via the e-commerce site) Offers Deku). He then identified any fish-looking game. (Wild has “developed a skill” for detecting this kind of thing.) From there, discerning whether or not a game was an asset flip was reduced to reverse image search or retail outlets. drag assets. In some blatant cases, the developer would not even change the name of the original resource. Whoopsies.
Critics of asset investing believe that the practice, while above the board, is overshadowed at best; is another misleading business practice designed to entice consumers to buy an inferior product with a very attractive sticker price. Wild, for one, thinks he should stop.
“Nintendo needs to step up and take some kind of action in terms of both asset investments and the shovel that populates the e-store,” Wild said. “I would also like to make them more aware of the issue in the hopes that they will be a little more cautious with what they buy and with whom they buy.”
When asked for comments, a Nintendo representative said the company “has nothing to announce on this issue.”