Too bad these particular indie devs aren't smart enough to do that. There's no way ONE negative review for a skin bundle was more damaging to them than this behavior has been.

This post alone already has more upvotes and comments than the review ever did.

Steam, too, can claim "accident" and be like "we'll use this to improve our moderation training" to look cool as ice. I would do that if I was Steam. That is how you do PR - deny nothing and claim that even mistakes will be used to improve the service. Now that is how Incorporating 101 tells you how to do it - let the faceless corp take the hit and prop up the products, services and improved personnel quality.

The review is back up now. Steam reviewed it and found that it was banned in error (I think someone at Steam was just too trusting the first time and the devs abused that trust.)

https://steamproxy.com/profiles/76561198041571110/recommended/1305040

You can only win at this and they can only dig themselves deeper, which seems to be their chosen path. Try contacting their email and SoMe accounts of the company and get their responses. The communications people are not obligated to defend anyone, especially with written evidence and concrete obstructive social actions such as banning. Give them a chance to resolve this early and as an "misunderstanding." If they try to stonewall your reasonable feedback process, you can hammer them for worse things (bad customer support).

It is a guaranteed win for you no matter what happens. They should cave in if they have a working brain cell because this kind of stuff is anti-consumerist and misleading marketing (by artificially making the reviews look better). You know, the explicitly illegal stuff.

I post this publicly, so that they know you know all this and do not try any more stupid stuff with you that is doomed to fail if a regulator takes a view of the situation. Use your advantage.

I recommend you to throw your weight around about this banning. This looks really bad for them. I and a lot of folks need to see one anti-consumerist case like this and there will be no purchases from anyone on the production-side after that. Think that if you do not, they will do this to other people too. To reference a control technique of police called "pain compliance", apply some pain until they stop. You are actually helping the company to stop the sales drain by pointing out a personnel misconduct for them so that they can get replace the idiots with competent people who do not lose the company sales and customers.

Be vocal. If the company culture is crap, it might take a long time for them to stop shielding the a-hole and start improving the person-to-person service standard. Eventually the marketing will notice and start complaining that some other department a-hole is making it harder for them to sell the products. I have backed up the screen cap.

If they do something, that is damage AKA 'injury' in legal terms and you can use that to pressure Valve and anyone the company has business arrangements with.

You can even threaten about filing a complaint in the jurisdiction you are in. There should be a gov department for it and it really bites because Valve is a global distributor and the company is selling the product globally through Steam, subjecting them to your local laws. Even if you did not buy anything.

If this gets too hot for the company, they will retract in a second and try to bribe you into silence, an offer you should take. I had a dude do a long, about 30 to 40 match long, super successful zoo deck experiment in Hearthstone. Blizzard's side flagged the dude for botting and when corrected about it, they offered him the expansion content for free (he did recommend them to give him something for him to not quit the game) and told him to not discuss the issue. These companies, man. You cannot make this stuff up.

Sure, corporations can theoretically ban who they want on their own or loaned platforms (e.g. game forums on Steam). The full power means full consequences such as bad PR. Ironically, the ban-hammerer is causing his party bad PR by removing opinions of other people that it finds to be bad PR. You should ignore the original issue and instead hammer them back with this much more grave and more interesting (to most of the public) issue of corporate power abuse and being general idiots.

In short, good job non-intentionally trolling them into making a very bad PR move. You should advertise this to everyone you know, the screen cap is great material. They cannot shut you up because they are the first-party in this case and you are the unilateral target, i.e. they brought this to themselves and you are simply documenting and informing the public about it. So legally, they can do nothing but toothlessly threat you.

Here's the link that SOMEONE who is obviously a dishonorable, entitled scumbag FALSELY flagged as advertising below.

https://www.thegamer.com/borderlands-3-microtransations-gearbox-ceo/

What link did you post? Send it to me as a message. SOMEONE falsely reported it as advertising so it was removed.

So they are trying to "removing misinformation" excuse of current day politics in a rules-lawyering fashion. Tl;dr - the Gearbox CEO is a liar and an idiot : {LINK REMOVED}https://www.thegamer.com/borderlands-3-microtransations-gearbox-ceo/ (title: Gearbox CEO Isn't Quite Sure What Microtransactions Are, But Says Borderlands 3 Won't Have Them , dated 2019/05/03 ). Cashing in on the micros has been a core part of how Gearbox makes money for a long time.