Emoji Evolution is a puzzle game on Steam about combining weird symbols. Or so it was: Valve recently removed it from the storefront and banned its creator’s developer account after apparently discovering how they exploited Steam’s design. try to fool people to play the game.
“Valve has banned my developer account due to ‘revision manipulations’. Emoji Evolution Very positive developer wrote on Twitter last Friday. “I absolutely disagree with that accusation.” Very positive sounds harmless enough as a name, but in the context of the Steam store pages, it ended up easily confused with the actual rating of Steam’s review of “Very Positive.” The developer even made sure the name matched the font and color of Valve’s official ratings. It was a nice joke and a fun riff about the ways developers try to play in the Steam marketplace.
At least I thought so. Valve? Not so much. In an interview ahead Vici with Patrick Klepek, who was one of the first people to discover the trick, Very Positive originally said they 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 like Obsidian on it.” Apparently not.
Originally born from a conversation about the nature of online emojis and their continuous transformation and proliferation, Emoji Evolution it ended up being an interesting piece of art that highlighted some of Steam’s absurdities and flaws. It remains to be seen if he will ever return or inspire other small developers to try to take advantage of Steam’s laissez faire approach to healing.
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“I’ve played a really bad game – that’s the only one I’m to blame,” Very Positive’s latest tweet says. “If horrible games are not allowed on Steam, why haven’t they suspended the CDPR account?”