Tag Archives: business

Trick or Treat, Scammers!

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It’s that time of year again – the leaves are changing, the air is getting colder, and everyone is getting their costumes ready for Halloween!

But mischief is also in the air…

We’ve been enjoying watching Where Shadows Slumber take off on the App Store since we launched last month. However, not everyone is happy for our success. Some people have tried to scam us out of our hard-earned game by trying to get free promo codes even though they aren’t journalists, YouTubers, streamers, or influencers.

Apple doesn’t want us giving these codes out to regular customers! That’s why you only get 100 at a time. They even give you a massive contract that lays out what the codes are for, specifically so you don’t fall for people’s stories. And while I understand we’ll never be able to do anything about software piracy, there’s no reason I need to fall for cheap tricks…

So in the spirit of Halloween, here’s two ridiculous stories of would-be scammers attempting to pull one over on yours truly. Share this funny article with your friends, even if they’ve never heard of Where Shadows Slumber! I think anyone who works in customer service will find this hilarious.

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Scammer #1 – The $8.00 Heart Operation

Our first scam attempt comes from Salama Youssef, who emailed us at contact@GameRevenant.com with this touching copy/pasted tale:

Oct 8, 2018, 6:15 PM

Hello,

I always have an appreciation for Where Shadows Slumber application….

You can offer me a promo code for (Where Shadows Slumber for iphone) application because currently i have lost all my money on the Health of my family (my father suffered a heart operation that cost more than 8.0639 US Dollar (USD) so I am forced to tell your team that my situation finaciere can not allow me and my family pay the rent)

Sorry for the trouble I have caused for you, but, sincerely, I will be very happy if you discharge me from this sum.

God Bless You

Even if we believe this sob story about an $8.00 heart operation, can someone explain to me why this man needs a free copy of Where Shadows Slumber? As far as I’m aware, we don’t offer any of Apple’s new live-saving wearable functionality. It’s a puzzle game! Come on, dude. Also, the Google Translated English is a nice touch.

I didn’t even reply to this email, and he never followed up. It’s probably just an auto-generated email. Good for a chuckle, but time to move on.

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Scammer #2 – My Daughter Ate My Homework

Our next scam took much longer, because this person kept pestering me. Say what you will about Mr. Youssef, but he knew when to find a new mark. But “Zahid Aslan / The Sunflower” just wouldn’t leave me alone, so I had some fun with him. Here’s the initial scam email:

Sat, Oct 6, 4:16 PM

Hi! I’ve purchased Where Shadows Slumber in iOS and was adoring it, but it seems like my daughter accidentally deleted it and when I was planning to reinstall, the appstore didn’t allow me to redownload the game for free for some reason. (No idea why, nothing I did to fix it worked, I even contacted Apple but they weren’t much help) so I was wondering if it’s okay if you can send a redeem code so I can reinstall the game? Thanks! Great game and worth $5!

Sent from my iPad

Not bad. I’ll be honest, this seemed real at first. A+ on this first email. He complimented the game, blamed two other people (his daughter, and Apple) and made it seem like contacting me was a last resort. He even put in the “sent from my iPad” bit at the end. Is this a pro Genji?

I had to dig a little deeper though, because I know how the App Store works. The error he’s talking about is impossible – you can’t “delete” something from your library of purchased iOS apps. So I replied immediately, and nicely asked him for some proof.

Wow I’m sorry to hear that! That’s very strange – it should be tied to your App Store account forever once you purchase it. We used all of our promo codes already, but I can try to see what the problem is.

Do you have the receipt in your email from when you bought it? Send me a screenshot of it and I’ll see how I can direct you. Unless you requested a refund, they should have it in your library permanently from now on.

Apple is pretty strict about refunds, so they’re keeping your money unfortunately [ x_x] but I’ll see what I can do!

-Frank

We hadn’t actually used all of our promo codes… that was just a little lie to get him talking. Then, he blew his cover with one of the worst things you can ever do: fake graphics. Read on…

Yeah it’s strange, I think this is the first time I’ve experienced it, Apple actually told me this

SunflowerScam

But Apple does provide more codes after each update I think, so I guess I will wait for that, since the refunding system for me is a mess and I don’t want to risk it.

Thanks anyway!
Sent from my iPad

Oh, Zahid. You flew too close to the sun, my friend. This is clearly a conversation he had with himself or a friend over Twitter DMs, with their names cropped out. Two dead giveaways here:

  • How could there be a “new bug” with iOS 11 a few weeks after iOS 12 launched?
  • Apple never tells customers to ask developers for promo codes.

Besides, he followed Game Revenant’s Twitter account with his own “Sunflower” Twitter account a few days earlier. When I noticed the similarities between the avatars, I did some snooping and found this:

Scam-Tweet

He must be some kind of weird man that emails developers for keys, and then hands them out on Twitter to boost his popularity. Not today, kid.

Here’s where I stopped responding. His game was up. I knew he was lying to me, and I didn’t have to call him on it. I planned to just ignore him.

But he wouldn’t stop.

If At First You Don’t Zahid…

As it turns out, we actually did update the game around October 7th for unrelated reasons. He apparently caught wind of this. Two days after the first email, he’s back in my Inbox:

Mon, Oct 8, 6:25 PM

Hi, I’ve seen you updated the game a day ago. Do you have a code now? Apple usually refreshes them after each update.

Sent from my iPad

I couldn’t believe he was still trying this! But I didn’t reply. Surely he’d go away, right?

Wrong!

Oct 9, 2018, 12:10 PM

Hello?

Not cool, man. You don’t get to flood my Inbox with annoying messages when you’re trying to scam me. And where’s the “Sent from my iPad” signature? Sloppy. That’s when I decided it was time for an early Halloween trick.

Apple promo codes are 12 digits long, and highly specific. All I had to do was create some random ones and make sure I didn’t accidentally give him real codes.

Sorry Zahid, I took off for Columbus Day! Here’s two codes, one for you and one for your daughter:
U1R7MR99G4Y0
G3TR3KT7N3RD
Have fun!!
-Frank

Apparently he didn’t notice that the second code is “GET REKT NERD” with numbers instead of vowels. These are totally fake! He tried them, and of course they didn’t work.

Oct 9, 2018, 5:12 PM

These are both invalid? Can you double check?

Sent from my iPad

Happy Halloween!

Oct 10, 2018, 5:37 PM

Hello? The codes you sent are not valid.

Sent from my iPad

LOL

Oct 11, 2018, 10:42 AM

Hi?

Man, he never gives up! He probably thought he had me, and got so close but lost out in the end due to chance. It was time for a Twitter conversation over DMs, apparently.

Once More, With Trolling

The Sunflower gives up on email, and decides to try Twitter. Mind you, this is the same Twitter account that has a picture from August where he’s handing out codes! It’s easier to just post the images of our conversation:

Sunflower-DM-0

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The last code I sent him? Read it again – it spells “NICE TRY BUDDY.”

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He says he’ll check, but we both know the truth – there is no receipt. There never was a receipt. There never was a daughter. There never was an iPad, either.

I haven’t heard from him since, but I hope he reads this blog post!

 

Why Did You Do This, Frank?

Listen, if you think I just did this because I’m a petty artist with too much time on my hands, you’re absolutely correct. Although in my defense, I normally don’t go out of my way to troll people – “The Sunflower” just kept pestering me and I wanted to get him to go away!

The reason I wrote this blog post is to warn indie developers, not just troll people. It’s very easy to fall for these scams when your game first launches – you’re excited that it’s on the store, but there are unexpected bugs all over the place, too. People are reaching out to you for help with issues, puzzles, or writing articles. There’s no time to really tell what’s what, and it’s easy to fall for a sob story about heart surgery or a dastardly daughter.

Customer service will be a new experience for you when you first put your game on the store, but the customer isn’t always right. Sometimes, there never was a customer.

Happy Halloween, scammers!

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Where Shadows Slumber is now available on the App Store! bit.ly/WSS-iOS

Find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, ask us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, or Twitch, and feel free to email us directly at contact@GameRevenant.com.

Frank DiCola is the founder of Game Revenant and the artist for Where Shadows Slumber.

The Long Climb Ahead

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Now that our game Where Shadows Slumber has been on the App Store for nearly two weeks, I’m getting a better sense of how things work on the platform. The team was very excited to see our game near the “big boys and girls” of the App Store during our launch weekend. However, since then, our ranking in the Puzzle section has dropped. Where we were once #3, we are now only #196 as of this writing. It changes every day!

Apple’s algorithm for displaying these games is likely based on sales figures and the app’s rating – a combination of quality and popularity. Our rating is 4.2 out of 5 as of this writing, and it also changes every day as more reviews trickle in. This blog post is about our struggles this past week to keep our rating in the golden zone.

 

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Mark Cuban always says “treat your customers like they own you – because they do.”

I’m Now A Customer Service Agent!

I did not expect this unlikely transition, but I’ve gone from head artist on Where Shadows Slumber to Game Revenant’s sole customer service rep. Between responding to reviews on our app page through App Store Connect, fielding questions over email, chatting with people through the Game Revenant Facebook Page, and even responding to bug-report tweets (!) most of my time is spent communicating with customers.

That’s a lot better than not communicating with customers of course, but I still wish I had more time to dedicate to promotion. For example, I’ve been dragging my feet releasing a full 1 minute long trailer. It still hasn’t gone live! I also planned to sign up for physical events where I can go to hawk our product in front of real customers, but I haven’t prepared as much of that as I would have liked.

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Even so, responding to customers is my number 1 priority. We want our rating (4.2) to be as close to 5.0 as possible. You’ll never get a perfect 5.0, so the question becomes “how do we get our average rating as high as possible?” Most of our friends and family probably already reviewed our game at this point, so we can only get new 5 star reviews from new fans. But my strategy is to be super nice to everyone who left a 1-star review, in the hopes that they change their mind. This has already happened once, so the plan is working! (See above – this user experienced crashes and left a 1-star review. After some compassionate understanding and furious debugging, they changed their mind!)

 

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Furious Debugging and Patching

Speaking of furious debugging, if you read Jack’s post last week, you’re aware that some players have encountered serious bugs with our game. Those problems are gone now, but it’s a shame so much of our launch week was spent focusing on these issues. I’ve learned a valuable lesson about Static Objects and the Memory readout in Xcode – one I shall not soon forget! I had a feeling our first few weeks would be focused on debugging, but I was hoping the errors would not be so widespread.

This caused a delay in responding to customers as well, because I didn’t want to reply to them before the issue was fixed. I’m happy to say that we’re mostly good now, at least on Apple devices from the last three years. If you’ve encountered any serious errors your first time playing our game, please download the most recent version of Where Shadows Slumber from the App Store and you’ll find it good as new!

 

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Help Us Out!

Don’t forget to pick up your copy of Where Shadows Slumber on iOS and leave a 5-star rating. I’m going to ask for that every single time I make a blog post from this point on! It’s super useful and it helps us climb back up to the top of the chart where this game belongs. The higher we are on the chart, the more people will see our game. That means a higher potential for sales, which is money in the pockets of everyone who worked so hard on the game.

And if you’re waiting for Android… just wait longer! We’re ramping up Android testing as we speak. I hope to have more details for you next week.

 

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Where Shadows Slumber is available on the App Store ==> bit.ly/WSS-iOS

Find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, ask us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, or Twitch, and feel free to email us directly at contact@GameRevenant.com.

Frank DiCola is the founder of Game Revenant and the artist for Where Shadows Slumber.

In The News

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Things are crazy over here at Where Shadows Slumber HQ right now. We’ll tell you all about it in a future blog post, because a lot of what’s happening is confidential. For now, here’s a roundup of all of the news organizations that have written about our game so far!

Apologies if you’ve read some of these already – part of the reason we do this is to aggregate them and make sure we don’t lose track of the articles. You may have seen some of these on our social feed throughout the week. If you have, you don’t need to read them again… share them with your friends instead!

Shameless reminder that you can still pre-order the game on iOS if you act now:

bit.ly/WSS-iOS

Okay, on to the articles!

 

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The team nervously reads what everyone thinks about our game. (Dramatization)

 

Pre-Order Reactions

When we launched as a pre-order on the App Store, many in the news media were pleasantly surprised to see our game. Others had been waiting for it patiently. Below, you’ll find some of the coverage people wrote before they got a chance to play our game. (Some had already experienced our free 2016 demo, which they mention in their articles.)

“It’s like someone took the ingenious shadow manipulation of Helsing’s Fire ($0.99) and mixed it with the hypnotizing isometric puzzling of Monument Valley ($3.99), which is a mashup made in heaven if I’ve ever heard one.”

-Jared Nelson, TouchArcade

Stunning Puzzle Adventure ‘Where Shadows Slumber’ Finally Arrives September 20th

 

“Personally, I’m excited to get my hands on the game at last and hope there’s a good chunk of content to dig into.”

-Emily Sowden, PocketGamer

The curious puzzler Where Shadows Slumber is finally up for pre-order on iOS

 

TouchArcade and PocketGamer are two of the biggest and most influential websites in the mobile game industry, so it’s nice to see how interested they are in our game! But it wasn’t just English speaking sites that noticed us, we also got some attention from other countries…

 

“Where Doze the Shadows is a colorful puzzle where you have to control the shadows and solve difficult tasks with their help.”

–Alexander Yarovoy, App-S.ru

“Where Shadows Slumber”: the Wanderings of a Lonely Old Man [Pre-order]

OK, that one had to be fed through a translator to actually read it. You can’t control shadows in our game, so Google Translate probably messed this one up. But we like the idea of referring to our game as a “colorful puzzle.” Incidentally, “the wanderings of a lonely old man” would be an excellent title for my future autobiography one day.

Finally, here’s an interview I did with Megan Meehan over at Blasting News.

“For as long as the game will run on existing hardware, it will be an enduring cultural artifact that people will enjoy for generations.”

-Frank, the guy writing this blog post

Where Shadows Slumber: Interview with Game Designer Frank DiCola

 

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Our First Review: AppUnwrapper

We sent Lisa of AppUnwrapper a promo code last week once we went live on the App Store. Apparently she knew about our game even before we reached out to her, but I never directly asked her how. (The demo, probably) That in itself is cool enough, but she also decided to review it and posted the article today! I don’t want to give away her reaction, because then you won’t click the link. So go read it!

‘Where Shadows Slumber’ Review: One Lantern to Rule Them All

It’s so strange to read reviews of our work. The feeling hasn’t really sunk in yet. I wonder when it will?

One more thing: our Metacritic page has been automatically generated by their system, but it’s looking a little empty right about now. Let’s hope it gets filled up with 5 and 10 star reviews in the coming weeks!

 

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Want a promo code? Email us with proof that you create content for a website or YouTube channel and we’ll send it right over! For everyone else, find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, ask us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, or Twitch, and feel free to email us directly at contact@GameRevenant.com.

Frank DiCola is the founder of Game Revenant and the artist for Where Shadows Slumber.

Pre-order Where Shadows Slumber on the App Store Today!

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Starting today, Where Shadows Slumber is available for pre-order on the App Store! This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

Click here to be taken to our App Store Page!

And share the shortened link with your friends: bit.ly/WSS-iOS

If you’re not sure what “pre-ordering” means, read on…

 

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What Is A Pre-Order?

When a game is available for pre-order, it’s very close to launching on the App Store. So close in fact, that you can tell Apple you want to download the game the instant it becomes available on the App Store! Because Apple knows our game is launching so soon, they may place Where Shadows Slumber on a special “Coming Soon” section of the App Store to advertise it to their customers.

You can’t play it until the game is really available on September 20th, but you can share it with all of your friends! If you pre-order the game, you’ll be charged $4.99 USD on September 20th and the game will load on your device that day.

Tired of waiting for the game to launch? Sorry… we couldn’t pass up this marketing opportunity. Getting the game on App Store’s “Coming Soon” list is a huge boost for a small studio like ours! Besides, it ensures that we can spend the next two weeks marketing and talking to journalists before players get their hands on the game. When people start playing, I’m sure I’ll have to be glued to Twitter and Gmail answering people’s questions and giving them cryptic hints. It’s nice to have a reprieve… this is the calm before the storm.

 

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Do I Have To Buy The Game Right Now?

Yes, you do.

…

Ok, not really. You can wait until the game launches for real on September 20th before committing to a purchase. Some people like to wait until reviews come out from other customers or game journalists – that’s fine with us. (I do that, too) Chances are that if you follow this blog, you’ve already decided that you’re buying the game. If that’s not the case, just wait a few weeks! We’re confident that Where Shadows Slumber will be a critical success. We’ve put years of work into this game, and we know you’ll be impressed with the final product.

 

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Find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, ask us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, or Twitch, and feel free to email us directly at contact@GameRevenant.com.

Frank DiCola is the founder of Game Revenant and the artist for Where Shadows Slumber.