Emoji Evolution is a puzzle game on Steam about combining strange symbols. Or so it was: Valve recently removed it from the storefront and banned its creator’s developer account after it apparently discovered how they exploited the Steam look. to try to fool people in Game.
“Valve banned my developer account due to ‘review manipulations.’ Emoji Evolution Very positive developer wrote on Twitter last Friday. “I do not agree with this accusation.” Very positive sounds pretty harmless in name, but in the context of the Steam store pages, it came to be easily confused with a real evaluation of Steam’s “Very Positive” review. The developer even made sure that the name matches the font and color of Valve’s official ratings. It was a nice prank and a funny riff about how the developers are trying to play the Steam market.
At least that’s what I thought. Valve? Not so much. In the an interview over Vice with Patrick Klepek, who was one of the first people to discover the trick, Very Positive initially said he didn’t think it would be a problem. “Valve fully understands how minor this trick is,” they said. “It’s more important to have a famous brand name there like Obsidian.” Apparently not.
Originally born from a conversation about the nature of online emojis and their continuous transformation and proliferation, Emoji Evolution it has become an interesting piece of art that highlights some of the absurdities and shortcomings of Steam. It remains to be seen if he will ever return or if he will inspire other small developers to try to take advantage of Steam’s laissez faire cleanup approach.
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“I played a very bad game – that’s the only thing I’m guilty of,” reads Very Positive’s latest tweet. “If terrible games are not allowed on Steam, why haven’t they already suspended the CDPR account?”