Earlier this week, an email surfaced over on Reddit by Insel Games’ CEO that purported to show him telling employees to purchase Wild Buster, a game the studio worked on, and leave positive reviews for it on Steam. The email goes on to state that the first few days on Steam are the most important, and that employees should leave positive reviews or the studio would not survive into the future.
At the time of the original email, the game only had six reviews on Steam. Insel Games’ CEO made it clear that the studio was much bigger than that (about 20 people) and was disappointed that some staff made it clear they did not want to buy the game themselves and leave a review. He reiterated the importance of the success of Wild Buster for the studio and once again directed staff to buy the game.
What makes things worse is the fact that he told employees to provide receipts of the purchases made, so that staff could be reimbursed for their positive review. If employees still did not want to participate in this very shady practice, that is against Steam rules, those employees could “privately” discuss it with the CEO.
Once Valve became aware of the situation they took swift and decisive action by removing all the games from Insel Games that were on the Steam marketplace.
“It has been recently reported on Reddit that the publisher for this game, Insel Games Ltd., have been attempting to manipulate the user review score for their titles on Steam. We have investigated these claims, and have identified unacceptable behavior involving multiple Steam accounts controlled by the publisher of this game. The publisher appears to have used multiple Steam accounts to post positive reviews for their own games. This is a clear violation of our review policy and something we take very seriously.”
“For these reasons, we are ending our business relationship with Insel Games Ltd. and removing their games from our store. If you have previously purchased this game, it will remain accessible in your Steam library.”
Insel Games responded to their shady practices by stating that the email sent out to staff was only meant as a rallying cry to let everyone know how important reviews are within the Steam ecosystem. They went on to say “It was meant to rally people’s support, including advertising the game to their family and friends, in the hope to simply get more reviews.”
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