Starsand Island is out, and the developers have made several announcements related to the games EULA which was worrying players, future content updates and fixes, as well as a strange case of waves of positive reviews the developers suspect may “some kind of overpraise as an attack”.
Starting with the EULA, the community was initially concerned that Starsand Island’s EULA’s mention of “virtual goods” indicated future microtransactions were coming to the game. The original EULA stated under section 4: “You can obtain different Virtual Goods in various ways in the Game, and we may allow you to “purchase” some Virtual Goods with “real money” or virtual currencies (including any type of digital currency). Certain Virtual Goods in the Game may be unavailable if not purchased.”
This has now been changed, with the developers writing on the Starsand Island Discord server: “Starsand Island [does] not have in-game purchases system, please enjoy the game with confidence.”
In addition, the developers addressed reactive sections in the old EULA and its impact on community mods: “All unreasonable or overly restrictive clauses in the user agreement have been removed. We will never restrict players from using mods or other custom content. After the full release, Steam Workshop will also be opened to allow everyone to freely create and share their ideas.”
When it comes to criticisms around the gameplay, the post also noted a continual effort by the developers to improve the game over time. “As for issues such as model clipping and stiff controls, we have received your reports and will continue to optimize the game. Update logs will be provided so that everyone can follow our progress on fixes and improvements.
“Starsand Island is not perfect, and we will continue to listen carefully to the voices from our players while constantly improving and refining the game. We firmly believe that only through the joint efforts of both developers and players can we create a positive community environment. Once again, we sincerely thank you for your feedback and continued support.”
This all, so far, sounds like a reasonable update to the Starsand Island community. What’s particularly strange is a separate post made to the Discord server alongside the aforementioned one. This post focuses on a wave of positive reviews which the developers believe aren’t as they seem, and may even be AI generated.
“At first, we believed this meant our game was being recognized and appreciated. However, we soon noticed something unusual on Steam: some comments were posted after very short playtime, were released at nearly the same time (appeared to be AI-generated).
“This made us realize that something might not be right. Is this some kind of overpraise as an attack? We have no concrete evidence, but it does feel as though someone may be doing this intentionally. What makes it even more puzzling is that this approach is not cheap, since leaving a review requires purchasing the game. (We later discovered that some of these accounts refunded the game after posting their reviews.)
“We would like to say this clearly: making an indie game is not easy. We simply want to focus on building a good product and giving the players who truly like our game a better experience. So, to whoever may be behind this, we kindly ask you to stop. Please let us focus on making our game in peace. We pose no threat to anyone.”
Starsand Island otherwise is a charming indie life simulator, which has gone down well in Early Access on Steam. If you’re thinking about picking it up, you can check out Eurogamer’s Starsand island codes page for a little boost to your relaxing adventure.
