You may not be aware of this, but one thing that long-time gamers have come to realize throughout the years is that the review systems of many gaming websites are easy to manipulate. Let’s use Metacritic as an example—the overall ratings on sites like this are based on the amassed review scores of all users. Valve’s digital storefront, Steam, utilizes a similar review system as well.
In other words, if there’s a sufficient group of players who either love or hate a particular game, they can all work together to either pull down or bring up its overall rating. This act is also known as review bombing.
Review bombing is fairly common in recent years, with The Last of Us Part 2 being one of its victims. It can easily trick unsuspecting gamers who haven’t been keeping tabs on the gaming industry’s trends and updates. In cases like this, many gamers end up missing out on titles that they could have potentially enjoyed due to inaccurately low ratings. On the other end of the spectrum, players could be left disappointed by a game due to overenthusiastic fans positively review bombing it.
Outside of this, we also have the deceitful developers. Now, players have discovered that there’s one developer on Steam who is seemingly trying to trick users of the platform. The video game in question is called Emoji Evolution, and it appears that the creator of this alchemy-themed game has changed its developer and publisher names on the platform to “Very Positive.”
If a Steam user who isn’t paying that much attention to the game’s store page quickly glances at these names, they might mistakenly purchase the title, thinking that the names were the overall review ratings of the other users. What we’re trying to grasp is why the creator decided to make this misleading change.
For one thing, Emoji Evolution already has an overall rating of “Mostly Positive” on Steam, so there really was no need in trying to deceive the users. On the other hand, perhaps the developer was trying to be funny, and didn’t intend their actions to be viewed as being deceitful.
In fact, we can imagine that there would be some gamers out there who would probably commend the developer for its clever move. Another possibility is that the developer and publisher are genuinely named Very Positive, as even the title’s Metacritic page lists the same name as well.
That being said, it’s highly likely that many gamers in the Steam community won’t appreciate this—whether or not it’s a lighthearted joke. It could possibly even lead to Emoji Evolution getting review bombed instead, which is something that the developer must have wanted to avoid in the first place.
In any case, no matter what developer “Very Positive” wanted to achieve, Valve should do something about this so that other creators won’t follow in the same footsteps. After all, no one would like it if other developers think this kind of move is okay, and would find other ways to deceive gamers.