Taxi Simulator Reviews

Not a game

10/10

Very Nice Driving Game

The game has a lot of bugs

cant do anything,fix the car,get into car,its upside down,on its side,cant drive them sort of cars

[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b] Taxi Simulator is a Digital Homicide style asset flip, or what Valve calls a "Fake Game". The "developer" paid for/pirated a few Unity asset store packs, dumped them all in a blender, and submitted it to Valve as if they're real game developers.[/quote] Two notable criteria for what makes an asset flip instead of legitimate use of stock assets are whether those assets comprise the majority of the game, and whether the "developer" properly credited the people who created most of the assets in the game. This game fails both of those tests. The "developers" here didn't credit any of the artists and real, actual game developers who created the assets here, so this is plagiarism, as well as cash grab shovelware. In this case, the asset flipper took a basic Unity survival/crafting/mining game pack and changed it so it has a bunch of taxis and other urban stuff in it (also asset flipped, like the Walking Street asset and so on). It looks like they started to try to add a "business tycoon" element to the assets they stole but then gave up and abandoned the asset flip. While quickly pushing it into game bundles and trying to sell their incomplete product to as many people as possible. This is the kind of thing that gives indie devs such a bad name. It has no value or merit as a real game. The game was abandoned roughly 4 days after launch and hasn't been updated in over 2 years. It blew past the developers commitment to complete the game without any notification or admission of failure from the developer. The game will never be completed. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 9 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. Unethically, the developer sold keys to this abandoned Early Access game into cheap, nasty game bundles, where they knew it would be advertised and sold as a complete PC game. This seems to have been done in an attempt to mislead gamers into buying a knowingly faulty, defective and incomplete product. When a developer does this for a game they have zero practical intention of completing, this is essentially a scam, an intention to get paid for a broken/unfinished product. Often this is done as an exit strategy, as the developer takes the money and runs. No refunds have been given, the developer kept all the money they took from gamers. Another unethical act of this developer, knowing full well that this game is abandoned and they will never complete it, they are deliberately trying to scam gamers into buying it by offering it on discount and selling keys to the game from third party key resellers. It's impossible to "accidentally" discount a game. The developer looked at their abandoned game, and instead of doing the right thing and removing it from Steam, they instead doubled-down and tried to scam even more people into paying for it. Greedy, and completely unethical. Doing the wrong thing, on purpose, for money. This is not okay. Furthering the unethical nature of this developer, while they are selling this incomplete game under Valve's failed Early Access program, they're abusing that program, and not working on this game full time, as they have other projects in the works. That means there's ZERO confidence anyone who buys this in Early Access will receive a complete game, and it's possible that they're being scammed. This kind of asset flipping isn't harmless. It makes it harder for gamers to find genuinely made games from ethical developers. It makes it harder for genuine indie developers, who put hard work into trying to make real games, to find an audience for their products. It gives indie developers a bad name. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? Taxi Simulator is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, and the questionable ethical nature of the developer and/or their associates (as outlined above), this is impossible to recommend. Remember that if you buy a game from an unethical developer, you're putting your money at risk.

Game would of had a LOT of potential if the developer didn't go M.I.A. Don't buy because they haven't done anything with this game. If they reappear and update the people who play (or try to) then I will update my review. Tired of developers quitting when people buy a game.