If you don’t know who Alva Majo is, it’s right to start with an introduction: we’re talking about young independent game developer, which has recently become famous first as a youtuber and later as a streamer on Twitch. His sour and disrespectful personality combines in its content (which in my opinion is a very positive point, because the result is really fun and honest), revealing the development of the game, which plays with aspects of his personal life, reflections, current state of development of their projects, etc. .

In other words, Alva Majo’s content design opens the door to the world and life of an independent developer, and so does sincerity. They are not in its content, and this is something we can be very grateful, dull and easy formulas, on the contrary, it always proves it a pragmatic view of the world of independent game developmentproviding a special sense of common sense to an audience, mostly very young, with a very idealized picture of the world, which is in fact much more complex.

If I speak this way, it’s because, as can be easily imagined, I’ve been watching Alva Maja for a long time (I think I remembered searching for Unity’s guide on YouTube, but I’m not sure) and at this time I’m its content he watched as well, of course, the games he published on Steam and other platforms, some of which I bought over time. And I think along with other creators on the contemporary indie scene, such as Guinxu and HeyNau, who are also content creators as well as developers, it opens the door to such a complex and at the same time prosperous world.

I emphasize sincerity because it is closely linked to what has happened recently, and that is It seems to me as an example of something that fails on the Internet. Recently published by Alva Majo, Whoever Draws a Sword will be crowned King, a free game with easy gameplay and a global leaderboard that gathers the names of the last players able to draw a sword from a rock. The game, as I say, is free, so its only way to generate revenue is through Steam DLC, which gives us access to its soundtrack.

On the day of its release, Alva Majo broadcast directly on Twitch, in which you could see some flaw in the game, specifically in the global scoreboard, and far from hiding it, later recorded a video summary of what happened. And the same thing, when he found out shortly afterwards that someone was breaking down the scoreboard. He may have hidden it because he eventually pointed out possible flaws in its development, but instead documented the process and published what we are unfortunately not used to.

One of the first pieces of advice I remember hearing in your videos was that it was necessary to set an FPS limit for games, something that is normally done using vertical synchronization. And it’s because a title without limits will pull the GPU to 100% performance in this regard, and it will require much more from the rest of the components. The problem is that setting the maximum vertical sync in the game configuration settings may not be enough, and that’s what happened in this case.

So when the One who draws the sword is crowned king (the “game”), he has been on Steam for several weeks, there have been several negative reviews that without providing any evidence in this regard, they claimed that Alva Majo’s game was in fact a cryptocurrency minerto the conclusion they came to after seeing that it uses GPU significantly beyond what would be expected from a title with this.

After seeing this criticism, the developer analyzed the situation and concluded that under certain circumstances vertical sync has been turned off and since then the game has demanded as many fps as possible from the PC. He therefore proceeded to add a strict restriction in this regard to the game code and immediately published an update with that correction. Until then, four negative reviews with this allegation have been published. At that moment, Alva Majo thought the problem was solved.

Big mistake. When I contacted him to ask what happened next, he told me after solving the problem, there were still another 20 new negative reviews, with the same unsubstantiated accusation. This is despite the fact that the already published update solved the problem of unlimited fps and therefore used the GPU. And that’s not something Alva Majo told me, it’s something I’ve personally verified:

In addition, to make the situation even more complicated, despite the huge number of positive reviews of the game, Steam rated these unsubstantiated negative reviews particularly well.. However, the peak of the range is found when we know that in the face of the initial lack of response from Alva Majo, this was interpreted as confirmation of the allegations, but when the developer began to respond by explaining the real reason for GPU overuse … the allegations returned to “If so many that the thing with the miner is true. ” Unhappy but real as life itself.

The problem, the real problem with all this is that whether this criticism comes from stupidity or evil, they can have very real and very damaging effects on what they are talking about. Alva, for example, comments that he saw a streamer with about 5,000 spectators show the game in one of his live performances, but when he saw the negative reviews, he stepped back and decided not to. An audience of 5,000 people who have left a taste in the mouth that the game is a miner.

We live in a complicated time in which it is better to be careful, that is indisputable. However, we need to be much clearer the difference between protecting ourselves and bringing public charges without any evidencesince we can “play” (in the worst sense) with the work of man, as happened in this case Alva Majo.

If we look at the negative reviews of the game now, we see that the accusations have disappeared, although I don’t know if their authors removed them or after verifying that they weren’t true, they removed or hid Steam. And given Alva Majo’s public profile, the impact of this attack (because I personally think of it as an attack) was not very high. What would happen if you couldn’t solve the problem as quickly as you did? What would happen if the game continued to squeeze the maximum possible GPU of some systems to this day? The impact could have been much greater.

When asked about my thoughts, Alva Majo shared the following:

«I find it worrying that one or more malicious users could easily harm an independent developer. In my case, I have the means to defend myself, and even though it’s a huge inconvenience, it’s nothing that would ruin my life, but if I had to suffer something like that, when I started throwing my first game, it would destroy me. I am afraid that something like this could become a recurring thing, given its effectiveness and lack of consequences.»

And I couldn’t agree with him anymore. As I said at the beginning, we are talking about a person who has managed to create a public image, who has an important community of followers and who, as he says, it has everything it takes to build an event of this type. What if Alva Majo’s place was Bocata Games, the studio responsible for my beloved Puerto Viejo, for example?

In general, user reviews and comments have become a key resource in deciding whether to buy / rent something, and this is logical and understandable because this information, if true, is of great value. The problem is that opinions on the Internet have been distorted for many reasons. Until now, there have been major misconceptions about improving the image, but now, with the case of Alva Majo and the One who draws the sword, he will be crowned king, we see another reason to watch them with even greater reservations.

I have spoken of honesty as one of the values ​​I feel most strongly about Alva Majo, and another example is that I am far from trying to cover up everything that has happened, he decided to give him as much visibility as possible through your channel. Video that, if you are interested, I recommend watching:

I have already expressed my opinion quite clearly and you will find the opinion of Alva Majo both in his reflection on the matter and in the video. Now I want to know yours. What do you think about these types of events? Do you usually trust feedback on Steam and other platforms? What do you attribute such actions to?