Why Mahdi Bahrami believes his beautiful puzzle game ENGARE might be taken down from Steam any day
In October last year, Mahdi Bahrami released Engare, a beautiful puzzle game about mathematics and geometry. But he was afraid. He was worried that it would be removed from Steam the next day. “I worked on this game for a few years, and it would be so painful if that happened,” he says. What if he’d never get the proceeds from its sales? What if no one would be able to play it?
Bahrami is worried because he’s Iranian. He is technically unable to sell games on Steam because of trade sanctions the US has imposed on Iran since 1979. And he can’t officially be paid the money Engare has earned because most Iranian banks can’t interface with US ones. “The money is not directly coming to Iran, so from Steam’s point of view they are paying someone in the US,” Bahrami says. “I didn’t have any option, but I’m waiting for the day I receive an email saying that they discovered I’m in Iran and they remove it.”
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Special Report- Stacked Deck - Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big.
Monster Train, a deckbuilding roguelike that firmly entrenched itself as the crown prince to the kingly Slay the Spire back in 2020, was the kind of smash success you might call Champagne Big. Four years later, its successor Inkbound’s launch from Early Access was looking more like Sandwich Big.I’m not just saying that because of the mountain of lamb and eggplants I ate while meeting with developer Shiny Shoe over lunch, to feel out what the aftermath of releasing a game looks like in 2024. I mean, have I thought about that sandwich every day since? Yes. But also, the indie team talked frankly about the struggle of luring Monster Train’s audience on board for its next game.
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