!You may recognize the title. My Midnight Works editorial is named “Midnight Works and the Degradation of the eShop.” Originally, this was going to be a review of a game called Warring Universe, I decided to make it an editorial about its “publisher” Artem Kritinin. You see, Artem vomited over a dozen games onto the eShop this week:
How did Artem Kritinin do it? Well, search for “Warring Universe Unity Pack” and you get this page. Warring Universe is a paid unity asset pack that Artem bought and flipped to the eShop, he didn’t even bother changing the name. Same with things like Bottle Tap. So Artem is taking essentially taking demo games and flipping them for $4. And he’s not alone. Kanuni Games does(link to Internet Cafe Mini-Games) as well as Entity3 (link to Radio Cars), and Max Interactive Studio(link to Kubic). These are all what are known as Asset Flippers. While all games from indies to AAA can and do use paid assets, asset flip games make almost no attempt to change the assets in any way.
The problem with Artem Kritinin
It’s not that these games are necessarily terrible. but that it that clogs up the eShop. Again, Artem Kritinin put up 16 games in a little over a week and more are on the way. He is buying Unity test games and flipping them for $4. It pushes out real indies and makes it harder to find them. Nintendo needs to fix the eShop. They need to essentially curate it more than they do. While they do with “featured games”, look at new releases, its the wild west, where anything goes. They need to Allow better filtering and the ability to exclude publishers. Maybe even allow refunds, which would also get rid of people like Midnight Works. Will they do any of this? Maybe with the Switch 2, if we’re lucky. However, that’s probably a year off, I’d be shocked if it were any sooner. As it stands Artem Kritinin can shit out 16 games in a week and Nintendo does nothing. People complain but it falls on deaf ears.
I hope that when people search for Artem Kritinin, this editorial comes up and people understand: Do not buy his games!
P.S Read about Pakotime’s shady business here!
