Emoji Evolution is a puzzle game on Steam about combining weird symbols. Or at least it was: Valve recently removed it from the storefront and banned the creator’s developer account after apparently figuring out how they exploited Steam’s layout to try to deceive people in playing the game.
“Valve has blocked my developer account because of the ‘rating manipulations’,” Emoji Evolution developer Very positive wrote on Twitter last Friday. “Absolutely disagree with this accusation.” Very positive if a name sounds harmless enough, but in the context of the Steam store pages it was easily mistaken for a genuine Steam review of “Very Positive”. The developer even made sure that the name matched the font and color of Valve’s official ratings. It was a fun joke and a funny riff about the ways developers try to play Steam’s marketplace.
At least I thought so. Valve? Not so much. In an interview over Vice with Patrick Klepek, who was one of the first to discover the deception, Very Positive originally said they didn’t think it would be a problem. “Valve fully understands how small this trick is,” they said. “It’s more important to have a well-known brand name like Obsidian there.” Apparently not.
Originally born from a conversation about the nature of emoji online and their ongoing transformation and spread, Emoji Evolution eventually became an interesting work of art that highlighted some of Steam’s absurdities and shortcomings. It remains to be seen if it will ever return, or inspire other small developers to try and take advantage of Steam’s laissez faire approach to curation.
G / O Media can receive a commission
“I made a really bad game – this is the only thing I’m guilty of,” said Very Positive’s latest tweet. “If making terrible games is not allowed on Steam, why haven’t they already suspended the CDPR account?”