Emoji Evolution is a puzzle game on Steam about combining strange symbols. Or at least it was: Valve recently removed it from the store window and banned the creator’s developer account after apparently discovering how they were using Steam’s layout to try to deceive people to play the game.
“Valve has banned my developer account due to the ‘revision manipulations’,” Emoji Evolution developer Very positive posted on Twitter last Friday. “Strongly disagree with this accusation.” Very positive sounds insensitive enough as a name, but in the context of Steam store pages it is easily mistaken for a real steam rating of “Very positive” The developer even made sure the name matched the font and color of the official ratings of Valve. It was a cute prank and a funny fight over the way developers are trying to play Steam’s market.
At least I thought so. Valve? Not so much. In an interview about Under with Patrick Klepek, who was one of the first people to discover the fraudster, Very Positive originally said that they did not 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 like Obsidian there.” Apparently not.
Originally born out of a conversation about the nature of emoji online and their ongoing transformation and distribution, Emoji Evolution was finally an interesting piece of art that highlights some of Steam’s absurdities and shortcomings. It remains to be seen if it will ever return, or inspire other small developers to take advantage of Steam’s laissez faire approach to curation.
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“I played really bad – that’s the only thing I’m guilty of,” reads Very Positive’s latest tweet. “If terrible games can not be made on Steam, why did they not suspend the CDPR account?”