Keen Software House Is Horrible

I haven't spent a penny on their recent DLC. The ONLY DLC I ever bought from them was the decorative pack and the deluxe edition. I tried refunding the game while it was in beta because it wasn't fun and the game was more broken than it ever was; they declined my refund request. I've had a bone to pick with Steam and Keen since then. Keen more so because they're like the cousin of EA.

I've got a problem with the lack of quality for their Discord AND company. I was threatened and disrespected by a mod who was being biased against me with someone who had broken more rules in one sitting than I did. The PR for this company is just shit. 100% shit.

Whelp, fresh day, so time for some context.

I am (or likely was) a workshop content creator. Mostly BPs, but also some small mods (I liked to joke to myself that I was the least popular character modder).

The initial problem:I had a problem: someone was taking the time and effort to spam downvotes on all my content. Which I might've been able to handle, if I wasn't unpopular. But because I was unpopular, my content was getting less publicity than someone with 0 folowers. Why does this matter to me you might ask? Because I can't just push myself to cater to noone!

The solution:So out of desperation, I thought if I spam my I would lose the stalking spammer. I too was not happy with that solution. So I asked the discord community for another solution.

The result:-I was scalded for the only solution I myself could find and was told by moderation to stop.

-I was told by a popular modder that it is not a problem and to deal with it.

-When I disagreed with that modder, almost everyone at hand, including another dislike spammer, came to enforce his opinion upon me.

-I was literally called a baby for trying to literate my problem to the masses by a major community server admin (never mind that he had problems in the past he had to literate, but I never called him a baby).

-Finally, everyone ignored my plead for an alternative solution because they were too busy being a peanut gallery.

Hmm, can't edit anymore- I missed out the screenshot of that time he gave me a ban for trying to defend myself when the forum bullies didn't like my complaint about broken game features.

The TL;DR is that he kept telling me that I should stop posting my opinion, and insisted that I reported people if I didn't like their opinion- I pointed out I was reporting them for making abusive comments and insults, but that's A-OK in keen's book; if you have a complaint about something that is broken though then you'll just be banned to silence you ( because we can't have potential new players realising what an awful mess the game and dev studio is, can we... ).

That's the SAME MOD that threatened and disrespected me. Wow, this just proves how shitty Keen is.

Not just on Discord but on Steam too. Especially one Erin Truitt (Gwen).

Ban and fire Erin Truitt from the company | Space Engineers PC Support (keenswh.com)

Weird, they must've deleted whatever you linked because it would show how terrible they are.

@ButterToads Just got banned from their Discord for posting a giga chad gif and calling out the mods on over moderating. Then they proceeded to basically call me an idiot and then ban me. Lmao, Keen PR moment.

I linked Suicide Neil's image with Dan in it on an SE discussion page on Steam. Some new guy asked how the community was, someone brought up Dan as being a community "ambassador", so I linked the image and then they banned me for 7 days for "off topic" content LMFAO. What a joke.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/244850/discussions/0/3409804429015770880/

Had a conversation with Dan on his Steam profile. Went about how I expected it would:

Sent an EMail to SE about it. Got the response I expected I would:

KSH have proven long ago that if you have anything remotely negative or critical to say about them, their game, or their team, then... don't say it, or else, basically. The community is and was ran by bullies and sycophants, any dissenting voice is shouted down and / or banned. I gave up interacting with the community a long time ago- report bugs, occasionally make suggestions for improvements ( and pretend not to be surprised when they ignore them despite being very popular ), nothing more.

I believe the game is coming to the end of real development soon, just bug fixing to come now since they've scraped the workshop to the bone for 'content ideas'. Just enjoy playing, and forget about forums, discord & such...

Yeah. It's depressing that the base game itself even on its own is pretty lackluster. I'm half expecting the day Keen will show up and just delete this thread because it doesn't meet with their approval lmao

They've had two years to delete it, and haven't. Perhaps they're not quite that insecure, and posts like this just don't bother them.

Based on how I've seen Keen associates or employees interact with their consumers firsthand and with other people, that would not be consistent with their reputation. It's more likely they:

A. Have seen it and just don't give a fuck, which in itself is inherently bad which means they're unwilling to deal with any negative PR they get even if the backlash is valid.

B. Haven't seen it at all, hence why no one from Keen has actually shown up here.

We're talking about the company that'll kick your shit in for simply posting gifs, reporting spammers and trollers, and criticizing them or their employees/associates for making negative decisions rather than address issues people are having.

> kick your shit in for simply posting gifs

Heh, I see - you're salty about a Discord ban. Yeah, it's A.

> Heh, I see - you're salty about a Discord ban. Yeah, it's A.

Kind of a weird reason to support it being the first of the likely 2 options.

And, among other things, yeah I'm a bit salty over it. Not over being banned, but more disappointed that the Discord and forums are being run the way they are. The ban itself is only really a representation of the administration being overbearing, and bends the knee to anyone who cries "I'm offended" while simultaneously calling people idiots before and after banning them.

Keen's policy on community interaction is vague and subjective and depends entirely on the person, which is why you see similar policies in other companies, such as Mojang, getting extreme blowback when they actively try enforcing it as they're trying to do on 1.19.2 of Minecraft Java edition, as well as Bedrock edition. And like I mentioned before, the mods themselves don't even seem to follow their own policy.

By making a "safe space" for everyone, they're killing any kind of honest interaction or criticism between members of the community, while somehow also at the same time violating their own policies and then throw a tantrum when they get called out on it, like what they did in the Discord. A good example to follow would be 343 Industries or Black Lab Games. I get the need for having rules especially in an official server, but it gets to a point where people don't feel like interacting with the community when the administration is going to be like that. Their justification seems to be "we want to stop bad things before they happen", which is a serious red flag.

fully agree that the steam moderator is out of control, the discord mods are also out of control, and i only have one word to explain it all, communism, there practices are screaming how vividly communist they are, they try to extinguish freedom in any form, putting unfair punishments and reprimands on innocent players who have done little to nothing, anything they did do is comparable to knocking a glass of water off a table, which the moderators/devs respond to by dropping an anvil on you, and now they want to sell space engineers 2? not without a apology video, honestly

You cared enough to whine here about it lol. Play good games, and that wouldn't be SE.

I feel the same. I won't be buying SE2 either. They only listen to the praise and never criticism. It's all to drag out the earnings as long as possible. It's an absolutely scummy business model.

Except it is working for them. It's you that it's not working for, and you're not obliged in any way to purchase the sequel.

It really isn't. They have almost no active developers outside of the ones working on SE2 which will probably be almost as broken as the first game, and everyone I talk to with a mind of their own that doesn't just shill for KSH in their own Discord or on the Steam discussions page generally has the same opinion about KSH and Space Engineers. People just aren't saying it in the Discord or on the Steam page as much because Keen actively censors and punishes users for negative critique of their company, content, and practices, even when the critique is valid. This has resulted in people not wanting to give any negative feedback to Keen, because it is either ignored, downplayed, or gets the person giving the feedback punished or scolded.

Even their performance on the forums is abysmal. It takes them literal years to fix something any other studio with competent developers would have fixed in a week at the very least. Even aside from their clear inability to fix issues in a reasonable amount of time, their response time to even just acknowledge bug reports and forums posts is the worst I've seen from any company.

If it were "working", these issues wouldn't exist and there wouldn't be this much negative feedback. It's not like I don't want them to succeed either. They have a really good idea for Space Engineers and its sequel, but I can't really ignore the clear PR nightmare they've created on their own either. From my personal experience, it's gotten past the point where it can be excused as lack of resources. They just don't care anymore and want a cash cow that they know the shills will buy up because it comes from Keen, not necessarily because the game or company are any good themselves.