Billion-dollar company caught rigging Steam Reviews for its new game

Steam Reviews are renowned as one of the best ways to gauge if a game is worth purchasing or not, without looking at gameplay yourself (which you definitely should if you are on the fence about any game purchase), but what if the aggregate of those Steam Reviews didn't hold as much credibility as you once thought? What if they were slightly manipulated?

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Valve has explicit rules within its terms of service for developers uploading games to its platform that are designed to prevent any manipulation of the Review section of the game in order to maintain its credibility. Simply put, if the Review section can be manipulated, it instantly loses all credibility and becomes a new marketing tool for the developer/publisher of the game, not a place for gamers to leave critical feedback for other gamers to make informed purchasing decisions about a product.

Valve states in its rules that developers are unable to attempt to "abuse or artificially manipulate the review system," and "Don't solicit reviews in exchange for any games, DLC, money, or other rewards," and finally, "Don't ask customers to review your product from within your application." Blue Archive, a game that was recently released on Steam earlier this month, has violated these rules by announcing an event scheduled to run between July 4 and July 11, where players would receive in-game content if Blue Archive's Steam reviews reached the developer Nexon's goal of 10,000 in total.

Nexon, a company with a market cap of $14 billion, according to companiesmarketcap.com, was caught out by users that highlighted this violation of Steam's rules, which quickly resulted in the title gaining quite a lot of attention, and eventually the developer stepping in. In a post on July 11, Nexon Games announced the event was no longer taking place as it "we discovered that certain aspects could potentially conflict with platform policies. As a result, we have decided to terminate the event early."