Take a big old sip of coffee. Universal Conquest, a space grand strategy game "based on personal interviews with alien abductees" and allegedly in development for over a decade, has been voluntarily de-listed from Steam by its solo dev, following what they describe as "an offer we couldn't refuse".
And breathe. Universal Conquest first appeared on Steam in June last year, promising a 4X/RTS hybrid set in the far-flung space future where you "carve your empire out of the cosmos". It was nothing if not ambitious, featuring land, air, sea and space combat, over 5000 different units, a procgen universe, species customisation, and then of course that special sauce: "Developed through the consultancy of alien abductees and their contacts."
The developer of Universal Conquest is listed as Reptilian Games, which will interest David Icke, alongside Darkweb Warlocks. They also seem to go by the name "Dan" and, when replying to negative comments on Steam, "Big Chungus."
So are you ready to "Strech [sic] your mighty hands across the vast reaches of space and dominate the universe"? Tough luck:
"We're being forced to take the game offline," begins a new Steam announcement, which appeared as all previous developer blogs on the game were deleted. "We can't answer too many questions, but law enforcement knows. And that's part of the problem."
The developer claims "we received a threat that wasn't entirely lawful in nature to shut down the game and remove it from sale. Because the threat was a real, valid threat—and we have indirectly reported it to law enforcement already—we felt that it was wise to not allow the product to be sold anymore for the physical protection of our users and staff and relations."
Universal Conquest is no longer available for purchase on Steam. But things don't stop there. The developer says they don't have the money "to fight something this large in court," before adding that "we probably couldn't fight it in court regardless."
Here come the Men in Black? Apparently so, because "there's bigger fish in the sea than us" and now we get to the real problem: "Some of the information we made the game with wasn't supposed to be shared with the public [...] I will say that it was for entirely good reasons that this information wasn't being shared, and that the 'disclosure' scenario has a happy ending. Regrettably, this game did not."
So a game made in consultancy with alien abductees is here implying that some of the information the game contained was of such Earth-shattering significance that dark forces have conspired to shut it down. Forces beyond the law!
It was all too much for one player, who took to the game's review page to share his own experience with Universal Conquest. "This game is a scam, the vast majority of the developer's claims are false, and I was banned from discussions for questioning him," says Wyxian. "He claims to have gotten a bomb threat and 'an offer he can't refuse, but cannot substantiate either of these claims and is being extremely vague about them which makes him look like a liar."
Wyxian goes on to drop further bombs, claiming that the game "is not made with any actual information from real aliens" and the developer "takes Internet larpers calling themselves aliens on random forums at face value". They call on the developer to prove their various claims and that they're in contact with them aliens, before accusing them of fabricating reasons to abandon the game.
Amazingly enough, developer Big Chungus responds to say "we did receive a bomb threat", before accusing Wyxian of "talk[ing] smack" and in fact being emblematic of the "miserable" reviews and posts "that killed this project". Wait, I thought it was the Feds?
Big Chungus graciously concedes that "Star Wars: Total War or whatever can have the limelight" now, and they want nothing more to do with videogames. "I spent 15 years on video games, built the game everyone wanted to play, and this was the feedback I got. Meditate on that." They end by offering a "word scabble [sic]" to Wyxian: "kFcu Ouy."
I'm not sure we need the NASA codebreakers for that one. You can no longer buy Universal Conquest and the Discord has disappeared, though the official website remains live. Because the internet is the internet, some are already spreading the rumour that this was taken down by shadowy figures for containing real information about aliens.
That could possibly be the case. Or this could all have been one man's fever dream. All I can say for sure is… the truth is out there.
