The Shooter Tactics Incident

I started my YouTube channel only a few short months ago. I didn't do anything particularly interesting, nor did I intend to. It was merely a project for me to do when I was bored and to motivate myself to try new games. I'm not TotalBiscuit, or Jim Sterling, or Zero Punctuation. My word carries no weight outside my circle of friends. So I never in a million years expected to have my criticism of some shoddy asset-flipped game that was being distributed for free via Steam Greenlight be perceived as a career-ending assault on the dev of said game. But that is exactly what happened with Shooter Tactics.

I was browsing through Greenlight late 2015 when I came across a poorly-made, badly-designed .gif for some game called Shooter Tactics. Intrigued by the bizarre icon, I decided to investigate. What I found was a half-decent looking military FPS attempting to get Greenlit, and had a comment section with people claiming that the dev was deleting comments and the dev himself was being less than professional to say the least. That in mind, and the fact that the dev was offering a free beta build of the game to download,  I decided to do an Aark Plays video of the game just to see if it was worth a damn. It was fairly competent in its own way, although it was very obviously cobbled together and had a lot of unforgivable bugs for a multiplayer-focused shooter such as being able to shoot through solid objects. I gave my criticism and stated that I was voting no, and left a link to the video so other people could see somebody who wasn't the dev play the game and hear my opinions on it. That was supposed to be the end of it.

Fatfly, the developer of Shooter Tactics, had other plans.

The next day I received several notifications from YouTube about comments on my Aark Plays video. When I went to read them I had found that a person who claims to be the musician for Shooter Tactics left me these heartfelt responses. This "Foodie" person (who I now believe is actually just one of the alt accounts of Fatfly due to the same spelling extremely odd errors and mannerisms) decided that the best way to get me to say that the game was great and had no problems, was to come on to my video and insult me. Now thoroughly intrigued by this whole scenario, I went back to the Greenlight page to see what was going on. I found that the developer was throwing a tantrum in the comment section: deleting comments, locking threads, banning people from the comments, insulting anybody who had anything bad to say about his game, and was convincing himself through repetition that anybody who didn't like his game was nothing more than a troll who was "jealous" of his game and wanted to destroy it. He was repeatedly insisting that major bugs in his game were caused by hackers and that his website was under constant DDoS. He also was maintaining that he had spent $12,000 on this project. To which, after some digging, people discovered was a complete and utter lie. It would seem that the overwhelmingly vast majority of the game was an asset pack developed by the folks at lovattostudio.com. When confronted with this, Fatfly responded by saying that he uses assets because it would take him too long to make them himself. You read that right. He flips assets because he's too lazy to do anything else. So that begs the questions "well what the hell was he doing for the full year of 16 hour days he claims to have spent on this game?". Jerking off probably.

In response to all of this, out of a desire to ensure that people were aware of the abuse this dev was throwing at absolutely ANYBODY who didn't like his game, I decided to put together a second video to showcase the tantrum that the dev was currently having. In the video I cover the initial comments on my channel, the general verbal diarrhea being vomited by the dev, and various flaws in the responses the dev had to my criticism. I explain how telling people they have no right to criticize you is absolutely laughable considering that Greenlight itself is designed for criticism, and especially considering that he intends to charge money for this game at some point.  Predictably, more of the same happened. Only this time, Fatfly was going to the very place he purchased the assets in attempt to gather people to side with him against the big bad dragon guy with barely 30 subscribers on his shitty let's play channel. Fatfly had gone to the lovattostudio forums to complain about me, where he was met with more of the same criticism he was getting on Steam. His responses were along the lines of "oh you're all just like THEM. The TROLLS." After I found the forum post on steam by way of YouTube analytics, I was met back on Steam by Fatfly directly where he said he was going to report me for spam and trade scam. This of course is hilarious because I hadn't posted any repetitive or off topic forum threads, and I couldn't spam his comments even if I wanted to because he had banned me from them after my first video. And trade scam? Really? Does he think Valve doesn't check these things? I've never traded with anybody on steam before, let alone Fatfly. The only thing I've ever actually done with Steam items is sell them on the market for a grand total of around $20 credit, and even then I never do that much. Fatfly sent various other vague threats to people as he desperately grasped at straws trying to scare people in to not criticizing him. Which at this point HE was being criticized more than Shooter Tactics was. Finally, he made one last forum thread and then immediately locked it so nobody could respond. His big dramatic response to everybody who had ever said his game wasn't that great, or that he wasn't being very nice, and finishes it off with the glorious "well, I never really wanted to be on Steam anyway".

After all this went down, I decided I would ride the sweet sweet publicity that Fatfly was so graciously giving me and I did one last follow-up video covering all the crap Fatfly had done between then and when my second video was posted. It wast mostly more of the second video. I showcased what Fatfly had been doing, responded to his comments and explained why his logic was flawed, and gave my personal take on the entire situation. Fatfly had, for the most, part, calmed down and had left the Greenlight page, although he did show up every now and then to leave some nasty remark. But for the most part, it seemed like it was over. During that time, people had dug up a bit more on Fatfly and found out that he is supposedly a 51 year-old man living in Australia (a fact made more apparent in a video he himself did in response to another YouTuber who was criticizing him). One person actually tried to dox the guy, to which I had to remind people to not stoop that low, and to be more mature than Fatfly. Views trickled in to my
videos, I gained a few subs, I learned that was the 4th time Fatfly had uploaded the game to Greenlight, I received a random rape/death thread on YouTube from who I can only assume is yet another one of Fatfly's alts (although I have no proof), and for the most part things settled down. The Greenlight page was pushed to the back as more games were uploaded and people's attention was drawn to other things. I went on to do more Aark Plays videos and I more or less put the incident out of my mind.

But Fatfly wasn't done.

Recently, he uploaded Shooter Tactics to Greenlight for the 5TH TIME. He wasted no time at all going after people who criticized him and was on a rampage, determined to label anybody who didn't like the game as a cyberbully. As newer people were actually voting for the game and falling for the mass deletion of comments, I posted my 3 videos in the forums (as I was still banned from the comments), and numerous other people all brought up the last time Shooter Tactics was on Greenlight, shutting down any chance Fatfly had of getting the game greenlit. He was going after people left and right and then...on that day...abusive Greenlight devs received a grim reminder...

Jim Sterling caught wind of this and did a Best of Steam Greenlight Trailers video on Shooter Tactics, doing an excellent job of showcasing Fatfly's latest tantrum, and even bringing up both my own and another YouTuber's videos and showcasing some of the backlash we have experienced personally from Fatfly. With Jim Sterling manning the helm, people poured in to the Greenlight page for Shooter Tactics and flooded the comments with criticism and bashing, started a huge discussion thread about the Jim video, and even flooded on to my videos to give support, causing my subscriber count to shoot up. Fatfly more or less avoided the Greenlight page after Jim Sterling got involved, and as of the time of writing, has taken down the page altogether Although I highly doubt this is the last we've seen of him.

This entire fiasco is a prime example of what can happen when a Greenlight hopeful is too full of themselves to accept criticism. They lash out. The try to silence people. They send threats. And in the end, all they have done is ruin their own future on Steam. My subscriber count on YouTube has doubled, I get to claim that I've appeared in a Jim Sterling video, and my channel is getting the support it needs to grow. Meanwhile, Fatfly has deleted his 5th attempt at getting Shooter Tactics on Steam and has to hang his head in shame as his spectacular meltdown is archived forever in the depths of the internet. Greenlight devs, I implore you. Learn from the mistakes of Fatfly. Don't do what he did because in the end, the only person who will end up hurting is you.