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If the first thing you look at on a game’s Steam page is the aggregated review rating, you might want to check that rating a little closer. One Steam developer has discovered that the “developer” and “publisher” fields can easily masquerade as review scores if your studio’s name is “Very Positive.”
The quirky developer name was picked up on the GameDiscoverCo newsletter and later tweeted by Patrick Klepek, with a screenshot showing the game Emoji Evolution by developer Very Positive.
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While the actual game has mixed recent reviews and mostly positive overall reviews, you could be fooled into seeing “Very Positive” ratings for both at a glance. “Emoji Evolution is a new look at the alchemy game where you have to combine different elements to find a new one,” the description reads. “Find all recipes and solve the main dilemma of humanity.”
This seems to be the only game developed or published by Very Positive, and it doesn’t look like any other studios have cottoned onto the cheeky strategy–no one is using the more impressive “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating as a developer name yet, for example. However, the studio joked on its Twitter account that it could change its name. You have to respect it, to a certain extent.
It’ll be interesting to see if Steam thinks this cheeky little workaround is worth doing something about, whether that means taking action against developer Very Positive individually or simply changing the way developer names are displayed. Given this trick wouldn’t change the way games are ranked or displayed from the store page however, it’s probably not giving Emoji Evolution too much of an unfair advantage.
