Steam Reviews should help players decide whether to buy a game. Positive reviews likely lead players to be more open towards the product. This thought, or at least a similar one, seems to have inspired a clever developer.
What is this about? When browsing through Steam, you encounter many different developer names displayed directly in the game listing. For example, there is Valve, Telltale Games, or Iron Gate AB – the developers behind the current Steam hit Valheim.
The blue developer name is always on the right edge, directly below the game description. Normally, as seen here with Valheim, this is easy to spot.
However, it is striking that the review display “Extremely Positive” is kept in the exact same color as the developer and publisher name. And it was this display form that another developer wanted to use for his game.
A very positive developer
The developers of the game “Emoji Evolution” – which is no longer available on Steam – named themselves “Very Positive”. Thus, they named themselves exactly like the English version of the “Very Positive” reviews on Steam.
You can see what that looked like roughly here on Twitter:
The idea behind this name was discussed by the developer, who wished to remain unnamed, in an interview with Vice:
I knew that reviews have a big impact on customer decisions. I noticed that the publisher/developer name is located right near the reviews and has the same color, so I decided to use it for my purposes.
He assumed that users wouldn’t pay so much attention and would simply see “Very Positive”.
In the meantime, he apparently doesn’t expect much from his game. On Twitter, he says that the developer and publisher name is actually the best part of the whole project. Later, he joked whether he should rename his studio to Overwhelmingly Positive.
In the interview, the developer states that he hardly expected it to be a major problem for Steam, he saw it more as a joke. However, the story took on a life of its own and now the developer account has been banned, as he explained on Twitter:
As a result, he continued to tweet that he wanted to get in touch with Steam support. Time and again, the developer posts about the unexpected attention and threw in a remark that he is actually only guilty of having released a bad game.
He then threw in a jab: “If it’s banned on Steam to make bad games, why haven’t they banned the CDPR account yet?”
In the end, the developer explained to Vice that the attention from people means more to him than a few potential thousands of dollars. Now he has somehow produced a hit but without profit for himself or his future products.
What do you think? A clever trick, a funny joke, or an action that should be avoided?
Also a strange story: A LoL pro was unexpectedly banned on Twitch – and everyone is wondering why.
