Horrorcow Zoe Quinn / Chelsea Van Valkenburg / Locke Valentine / @UnburntWitch / @Primeape / CrashOverride / Hat Box / Old Uncle Anime - Con Artist, Abuser, Sexual Harasser, Drove Alec Holowka to Suicide.

[proteus4994]

Wasn't Sunset the game where, right after they launched it, one of the two devs posted something on Twitter along the lines of "LOL FUCK GAMERS I'M FINALLY OUT OF GAMING FUCK GAMERS FOREVER!!!!" and then wondered why his game sold worse than Walmart shovelware?

I mean, I thought Gone Home was the most overrated pretentious garbage ever, but at least Fullbright isn't out there screaming about how much they hate gamers.

 

[Fernando Vidal]

I remember one comment about Sunset that stuck: 'Why not have the maid get directly involved with the revolution or something? Why are we fucking bystanders to this?'

To add to this: How the hell can an African American maid in the 70s afford a trip outside the country? Why the fuck would a rich and powerful dictator not already have an entire crew of servants and instead hire a black woman who doesn't even speak the language? It makes zero sense.

 

[Sissy Galvez]

There are a lot of soy boys and women willing to stan for her because they’re idiots.

 

[Racist Trash]

This is how I'll always remember Sunset.

"This shit is so pretentious, it just gave me a fucking film school degree." Nothing more can be said.

Watching this stream live was amazing just the book prediction being that perfect just absolutely destroyed him.

 

[Judge Dredd]

These two beautiful people.

Spoiler: I'll never get tired of posting this

View attachment 634750

I don't have the link, but they started a Patreon where they demanded to be paid to NOT write articles condemning the games industry, as if they had enough influence to destroy it with criticism.

 

[Safir]

I remember one comment about Sunset that stuck: 'Why not have the maid get directly involved with the revolution or something? Why are we fucking bystanders to this?'

This really rustles my jimmies, because Papers, Please came out in 2013, two years before Sunset, got all of the money and all of the awards, and actually showed how to make a game about a menial laborer getting indirectly involved with something big. They're all from the same community, TIGSource, probably even followed each other on livejournal back in 2009. But Lucas Pope is a hardcore "true indie" dev who never compromised his vision (and had a day job before striking gold), while the Sunset devs (I know their names but I can't diacritics, also fuck them for trying to hitch a free ride on Norstein's genius) were art grant hogs who sold out to the abstract concept of Capitalism anyway - he doesn't like first-person 3d and she's extremely motion-sick.

What sort of 5-dimensional twister game the indie scene had to play sucking each other's ladydicks that no one could honestly tell Sunset's devs, as a friend, that their game stank and they should be tightening belts and seeking real jobs? Or perhaps gave constructive feedback? Like, "Make a pinkwashed Papers, Please, all soft power and feminine wiles, have the maid place a news paper here, a book there, steal a document, forge a document, close the curtains just so, put the guy's estranged child's photo on his work table, change the light bulbs to a less flattering hue, leave the gun drawer unlocked". Instead, it was a bad walking sim that one had to replay 44 times to see the (allegedly terrible) ending.

Choice quote:

Scouring forums and blogs and reviews, one thing became abundantly clear to us: if a game doesn’t focus on action or competition, it needs a compelling story. This might seem obvious to most of you but we were quite astounded by this discovery

Then they bought the writing aid Contour, played madlibs with it, and hired an external writer to polish up the result.
Sunset was a soulless, stillborn thing through and through. I'm glad it crashed.

 

[AnOminous]

I don't have the link, but they started a Patreon where they demanded to be paid to NOT write articles condemning the games industry, as if they had enough influence to destroy it with criticism.

That may be the most pathetic attempt at extortion in history.

 

[Jaimas]

That may be the most pathetic attempt at extortion in history.

Please, there's way more pathetic.

 

[RodgerDodger]

That may be the most pathetic attempt at extortion in history.

Keep in mind that up until the point when they released Sunset Tale of Tales existed solely as a scam to bilk money from the Belgium taxpayers via "artistic subsidies for videogames". The Belgium Government finally wised up and cancelled this little grift factory, thus causing the parade of spergouts you documented. So up until that point their approach of "FUCK YOU! Give me money!" Had amazingly always worked. They are a textbook example of why Government has no business subsidizing art. Pay for art classes in school by all means. But let nature take its course and let starving artists starve. They are starving for a reason. The reason quite simply is their "art" is shit. And paying money for shit is almost never a good value unless you seek fertilizer.

 

[Jaimas]

Keep in mind that up until the point when they released Sunset Tale of Tales existed solely as a scam to bilk money from the Belgium taxpayers via "artistic subsidies for videogames". The Belgium Government finally wised up and cancelled this little grift factory, thus causing the parade of spergouts you documented. So up until that point their approach of "FUCK YOU! Give me money!" Had amazingly always worked. They are a textbook example of why Government has no business subsidizing art. Pay for art classes in school by all means. But let nature take its course and let starving artists starve. They are starving for a reason. The reason quite simply is their "art" is shit. And paying money for shit is almost never a good value unless you seek fertilizer.

We call the other one Uwe Boll.

 

[RodgerDodger]

We call the other one Uwe Boll.

At least Uwe Boll displays and produced some real compelling art!

(I refer of course to his creative accounting. Which is like a Byzantine Tapestry in it's intricacy and subtle shadings. The movies, those are crap! But his ledgers and tax filings? Bravisimo!)

 

[AnOminous]

At least Uwe Boll displays and produced some real compelling art!

At least Uwe Boll beat the shit out of Lowtax.

 

[Frosted Snowflakes]

You hit the nail on the head. Chelsea had so many connections that she used to snag prime opportunities, but then once the novelty wore off and there was actual hard work to be done, she just moved onto the next thing like a child with ADHD chasing the newest shiny trinket that got their attention.

Games: The only one she even came close to finishing was Depression Quest, and that's because other people did most of the work. Her FMV game was promised 2 YEARS AGO, and once the "fun" part of filming was done and the actual work of programming the thing had to be done, Chelsea decided that making good on something she was paid $85,000 for wasn't worth her time anymore. She also had a small voice role in some indie game along with her fellow NPC cronies like Jim Sterling, but her VO skills are non-existent as her programming ability.

Wrestling: Pro wrestler Joey Ryan cameoed on her unfinished game, so she decided to use that connection to insert herself into wrestling. Quinn started yammering on Twitter about the wrestling classes she was taking and the kewl wrestling stuff she was going to do. Then Chelsea realized she had to that dreaded "Work" stuff and noped out.

Grifts: Chelsea decided to take a page from fellow waste of oxygen Anita $camkessian, and try to make a grab for those sweet NPC dollars, with nowhere close to the success that Ms. Hoop Earrings did. Using her ex cuckboi Alex's connections to rub elbows with politicians garnered her nothing more than a few lame photo ops. Teaming up with Anita to whine about "muh cyber horse mint!" in front of the UN resulted in an embarrassment that both have yet to live down. Finally, the closest that Zoe got to pulling off a successful grift was CON. Assemble a bunch of troons, soyboys, and pathetic shut-ins, promise them them world (and access to her cooch), get her cronies to get the word out on the usual sites, then sit back and watch the cash roll in - but she couldn't even do that right. All she ended up doing was derailing the gravy train by reneging on her promises to troons, thus earning her the enmity of a large section of SJW circles.

Game jams: After screwing up a Pepsi game jam on purpose , sabotaging TFYC's jam, and getting her cuckboi Nathan Grayson to spin the "oh poor put upon Zoe!" narrative on Kucktaku, she was poised to launch her own Rebel Jam (IT'S COMING!). Too bad Chelsea was too lazy to do anything but create a shit page for it that linked to her personal PayPal account, only to let the page lapse last year.

Books: Yes, her "book" got nominated for a Hugo, but considering that they already nominated a book called "SLAMMED IN THE BUTT BY DINOSAURS", a Hugo award is about as meaningful now as a Grammy for "Best New Artist". Even Milo Y's book sold more than her, and he didn't need his mommy to post a fake review on Amazon to do it.

Comics: Her latest grift. So far, only one issue has hit the stands, and estimates don't look good. It was clear that she was hired for the novelty value, and not her writing skills. If things go as predicted, her next issue will run late, the series' numbers will drop further with each issue, end up cancelled within 6 to 8 issues, and then Chelsea will never get asked to write another comic again.

So you can see that Chelsea has a pattern of being an impatient little shit who doesn't think of the long game. She keeps being gifted golden geese, and instead of caring for them so that they keep producing valuable golden eggs for years, Zoe just slaughters them for a quick meal of foie gras.

You forgot to add her past careers where she was a stripper, a nude model, a married woman, etc.

 

[Stock Photo James]

Depends on who you ask.

Soret and Wardell both are saying that it isn't the reason - but no actual evidence on what it's actually been has been provided beyond the interviews provided, and you don't exactly need to be a psychic to see dozens of the usual suspects fucking gravedancing the project on Twitter and congratulating whatever nebulous party was responsible for the project failing for a week now.

Which are we to believe?

We've seen the likes of NeoGAF push for deplatformings in the industry before (Remember Jontron getting pulled from Yooka-Laylee), and they've shown the ability to sperg for years over the most vindictive, petty trash. And it's not limited to vidya; we've seen countless people on Youtube, in legitimate journalism, and more all get targeted by activists seeking to have them shut down. We've even had that done against the Farms by the likes of Vordy. In the absence of evidence, I err on the side of past experience.

Gravedancing nobodies are just that, and it's rather culty and conspiratorial to dismiss project's problems as created by some single cabal.

The truth is that its likely Soret highly underestimated development time of Last Night, and now that he realized his prognosis was too optimistic, the publisher is unsatisfied and they're not getting more funding.

Meanwhile, Star Control Origins is not the only game to get DMCA'd on Steam over bogus claims just to return soon after, most legal services are very DMCA-compliant and will take down a thing as soon as a legible request is sent, and only sort it out later. Not to mention, the original series devs have posted a whole chart, Brad Wardell shared it multiple times, and their accusations are laughable things like "Origins hyperspace is also red" or "there's a minimap and coordinates like in our game".

Wasn't Sunset the game where, right after they launched it, one of the two devs posted something on Twitter along the lines of "LOL FUCK GAMERS I'M FINALLY OUT OF GAMING FUCK GAMERS FOREVER!!!!" and then wondered why his game sold worse than Walmart shovelware?

I mean, I thought Gone Home was the most overrated pretentious garbage ever, but at least Fullbright isn't out there screaming about how much they hate gamers.

Yeah they said it because the game bombed because it was a kinda pretty but absolutely dull game where nothing happens but you also have to walk and wait a lot for that nothing to happen. Most of their previous titles were like that too, but shorter, and even more pretentious. I guess with the growth of pretentious nongame community they lost their monopoly on weird nongames.

 

[Brain Problems]

The Witness was shilled to hell and back by all the major gaming sites, similar to Depression Quest and another giant fucking piece of shit game, everyone's favourite lesbian filled 90's soaked nostalgia simulator, Gone Home. I still recall being sort of excited to play it when it came out because I was under the impression it was a horror game or something but when I finally got to "play" it I realised I had been lied to by every thirsty art-school drop out and not only was it shit, I apparently hated women and gays because of it. As far as I'm concerned major gaming site's refusal to acknowledge shitty indie games as being shit was one of the biggest contributors to the tinder house that was the Autism Holy War.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

The Witness was shilled to hell and back by all the major gaming sites, similar to Depression Quest and another giant fucking piece of shit game, everyone's favourite lesbian filled 90's soaked nostalgia simulator, Gone Home. I still recall being sort of excited to play it when it came out because I was under the impression it was a horror game or something but when I finally got to "play" it I realised I had been lied to by every thirsty art-school drop out and not only was it shit, I apparently hated women and gays because of it. As far as I'm concerned major gaming site's refusal to acknowledge shitty indie games as being shit was one of the biggest contributors to the tinder house that was the Autism Holy War.

Yup. I got taken in by Gone Home as well, my friend. You're not alone.

Pissed me off too. I was expecting a creepy adventure/puzzle game, and got a lesbian love story walking simulator. The nicest thing I could say about it was that it was neat being able to interact with damn near every object in the house, but still...

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I remember when some indie developer paid Leigh $20,000 to promote their walking simulator, and they only ended up selling 3,000 copies. As a result they had to shut down their company and sperged about it all over Twitter.

Leigh Alexander did not understand that she was paid to run promotion for it though, she thought they paid her to consult on the game. That's... I mean at some point she must have wondered WHY she got 20k despite not doing any kind of work, I know that I have nightmares where I find myself getting paychecks for work that I can't do because I don't know what my job is, but with Patreons and the entitled "PAY ME FOR BEING ME" mentality it's maybe not that big of a mystery why she cashed the check and never looked back.

 

[proteus4994]

The Witness was shilled to hell and back by all the major gaming sites, similar to Depression Quest and another giant fucking piece of shit game, everyone's favourite lesbian filled 90's soaked nostalgia simulator, Gone Home. I still recall being sort of excited to play it when it came out because I was under the impression it was a horror game or something but when I finally got to "play" it I realised I had been lied to by every thirsty art-school drop out and not only was it shit, I apparently hated women and gays because of it. As far as I'm concerned major gaming site's refusal to acknowledge shitty indie games as being shit was one of the biggest contributors to the tinder house that was the Autism Holy War.

To be fair, most of the excitement about The Witness was because it was Jon Blow's most recent game after Braid. Unlike Gone Home and Sunset, Jon had actually managed to put out an entertaining game before.

(Note: Personally I didn't like Braid and think that Soulja Boy had the best take on the game, but it WAS a game and not a walking simulator so props to him for that)

 

[Sissy Galvez]

Gaming bloggers (they’re not journalists) got easy access to indie game devs and became friends with them. Often times living in the same city, attending the same events, etc because real game devs at big studios weren’t as accessible.

Yup. I got taken in by Gone Home as well, my friend. You're not alone.

Pissed me off too. I was expecting a creepy adventure/puzzle game, and got a lesbian love story walking simulator. The nicest thing I could say about it was that it was neat being able to interact with damn near every object in the house, but still...

I don’t think people fell for it again with Tacoma. I haven’t seen any discussion or shit talking on Tacoma that people did with Gone Home so it’s pretty obvious it didn’t sell.

It also didn’t receive the same glowing praise Gone Home did. Who cares, fuck Steve Gaynor and fullbright.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

Gaming bloggers (they’re not journalists) got easy access to indie game devs and became friends with them. Often times living in the same city, attending the same events, etc because real game devs at big studios weren’t as accessible.

I don’t think people fell for it again with Tacoma. I haven’t seen any discussion or shit talking on Tacoma that people did with Gone Home so it’s pretty obvious it didn’t sell.

It also didn’t receive the same glowing praise Gone Home did. Who cares, fuck Steve Gaynor and fullbright.

If I recall correctly, Gone Home also dropped before Steam instituted their refund policy. It wouldn't surprise me if GH's blatant false advertising was one more thing pushing Valve to adopt refunds.