Hello everyone… I want to share my story here because everythig started here.
Fruad company profile site: www.stepico.com
I was looking for a gaming development company to make my dream game… I found company called Stepico… I have invested over 1million dollar and they just scammed my project, and uploaded it to their webpage without my knowledge
I have end up without source code without nothing on my hand, even the game is so bad the gameplay is like 1970, and they proudly on it on their site just to scam more people and I don’t give it hand!! So be careful when touching this company. Here url:
By the way they leaked my source code to other people that’s what they will do with your project.
After I asked to remove this materials here is the reply I got from stepico:
Hello X
According to our agreement, we can use any assets that were not paid for in full.
Currently, we have outstanding invoices not paid by your side. As such, we retain our ability to use assets for marketing and brand purposes to help us offset our investment in this project.
If you wish to pay all our outstanding invoices, we will honor your request and remove any assets you want to remain undisclosed from our public pages.
We are also open to discussing the reason behind your dissatisfaction with our services and working together to remedy these if you are open to further cooperation on our previous or any new gaming projects.
We count on your understanding.
My review for stepico.com just stay away from this company.
By the way there no outstanding payments I was know about, nor they asked me if they can upload or use the materials, I have contact law enforcement on my country and they asked my to contact lawyer to ask for copyright, il keep you posted on the case but guys stay away from this company is my recommendation
By the way if you found HoverWorld looks good? Its only photoshop you should play the build to see the true…
The arts look pretty good, if the implementation is as bad as you say you probably shouldn’t care about them releasing half-baked code. It would be too risky for them to invest from their own pockets to complete your idea, they seem to be compelling you to pay some invoices. I’m not a lawyer, but it’s probably better to move on and be more careful with the contracts next time, make sure you get copies of the code that you can compile and test.
It looks to me that you paid them an advance, they did their research and created concept art, you approved and they moved to build a gameplay prototype or mvp, you hated the game doesn’t look any similar to what you expected and stoped paying invoices. There seems to be quite a bit of work on research, the game reminds me of Subway Surfers which was pretty addictive. Maybe you spent too much on research and conception, or maybe not. But I can tell you some artists can continue from what is there, and if the agreement allows you can take that with you to another team. If you plan to keep the name of the game just trademark it, and then you can ask their web host to take it down.
Considering they’re making the statement that outstanding agreements haven’t been settled I’m going to assume that you haven’t actually shared everything of importance.
I’ve been in that situation myself. I contracted with a team that was hired to make a game by a company that then refused to pay us at a certain point in the project’s development. We continued development on the promise that it would eventually be settled and it was simply never settled.
Since we never received the final payments we didn’t deliver the final product. If the game hadn’t been based off of the company’s IP we likely would have gone to market with it ourselves to recoup our loses.
Same. In fact we were developing this company’s game for less than that.
Btw. if OP has $1M sunk into the project, he wouldn’t just post on this forum. He would spent a bit more, lawyered up and take them to courts to resolve that matter. Right now it sounds more like slander.
Well, surely there was a contract. Firstly it only shows artwork, which likely it has some clause in the contract saying we reserve right to show artwork on our website, second, were you expecting them to make the whole game? They dont mention unity, only unreal, but, its not likel they put a link to source on here… nor are there in fact videos of gameplay. They also mention they were doing it for a client… so… from this? I dont see a reason to be bitter.
