Valve has banned a developer called Very Positive from Steam.

The news was broken in a tweet last week, in which the studio said that it had been booted for "review manipulations" due to its name. Naturally, the developer isn't happy. 

"Absolutely disagree with the accusation," they wrote.

The reason seems to be that Valve presumes Very Positive is trying to trick people visiting the page for its game, Emoji Evolution, into thinking it has very positive reviews. This ploy was first spotted by the GamesDiscoverCo newsletter.

By Very Positive's own admission, Emoji Evolution is not a great game, but the developer wanted "something cheap and attractive." For marketing, the studio realised that people don't really read the words on a game page, aside from the reviews.

"I knew that reviews have a huge impact on the customer's decision," said the developer in an email to Vice.

"I noticed that the publisher/developer name is located really close to the reviews and has the same color, and I decided to use it for my purposes."

They continued: "I don't think this will be an issue with Steam. Valve fully understands how minor this trick is. It's more important to have a famous brand name like Obsidian there."