We might never have heard about it if it hadn't leaked on Reddit, where someone shared a screengrab of an email sent by the someone senior at the company encouraging employees to add positive reviews to its games on Steam in order to boost sales and ultimately let them keep their jobs:
"Neglecting the importance of reviews will ultimately cost jobs," the message said.
Valve was subsequently quick to check this information and take action, as they confirmed in the following statement:
"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."
Ironically, by trying to secure positive review scores in an underhand manner, it could mean the end of Insel Games, as the company has lost access to the biggest PC platform for selling games. There's a cautionary tale if ever we've seen one.