If you're the type of person to get most of your gaming experiences from Steam, you're surely familiar with the ratings on Valve's storefront. These are often the best way to work out what you're going to like on the platform as users constantly review games in their current state. Just ask No Man Sky's reviews and players will tell you that although a few years ago it wasn't the game they wanted, today the reviews are 'Very Positive' - and that's where this story comes in.
Steam has booted developer Very Positive off of the platform for trying to trick players into thinking the name was in fact the status of the game reviews. Very Positive recently released game Emoji Evolution which was also pulled from the store with the banning of the developer.
The aforementioned No Man's Sky is a good example here where you can see the developer Hello Games, and the review status, 'Very Positive' are both written in the same font. At first glance, if the developer was called Very Positive, gamers might not realise this is the dev name and not the review status. Sneaky.
The situation was first spotted by The GameDiscoverCo newsletter which also raised some suspicion related to the amount of interest it was getting on Steam. After some weird spurts in gaining followers, Emoji Evolution ended up high on the unreleased charts for Steam, and although it's not proven that Very Positive botted these followers, it's "statistically improbable" that these numbers happened naturally.
Advert
A conversation between Vice and Very Positive says that the developers realised that "reviews have a huge impact on the customer's decision. I noticed that the publisher/developer name is located really close to the reviews and has the same colour, and I decided to use it for my purposes." If it wasn't so misleading and shady, it would have almost been a good idea. It's a wonder no one has thought to try this before.
Well, now Very Positive and its game Emoji Evolution are no longer on Steam so the team will have to come up with a new project that's equally as cheery.
Featured Image Credit: