If the first thing you look at on a game’s Steam page is the aggregate rating of the rating, you may want to check that rating a little more closely. A Steam developer has found that the “developer” and “editor” fields can easily mask themselves as review scores if their studio name is “Very positive”.
The developer’s peculiar name was taken from the GameDiscoverCo newsletter and later tweeted by Patrick Klepek, with a screenshot showing the game Emoji Evolution from the developer Very Positive.
Although the game itself has mixed recent reviews and positive general reviews, you can be tricked into seeing “Very positive” ratings for both at first glance. “Emoji Evolution is a new look at the alchemy game where you have to combine different elements to find a new one,” says the description. “Find all the recipes and solve humanity’s main dilemma.”
This appears to be the only game developed or published by Very Positive, and it doesn’t appear that any other studio has accepted the sassy strategy – no one is using the most impressive “Incredibly Positive” rating as a developer name yet, for example.
It will be interesting to see if Steam thinks it is worth doing something about this cheeky little solution, whether it means taking action against the very positive developer individually or simply changing the way developer names are displayed. Since this trick would not change the way games are rated or displayed on the store page, it is probably not giving Emoji Evolution too unfair an advantage.
