The last time we talked about Steam was its new warning banner that preemptively pings users about games not getting updates from its devs for a long time, yet today a new pro-consumer win has been delivered with the banning of games that abuse any sort of advertisement on its platform.
According to Eurogamer’s follow-up report on the official announcement, the updated rules have more lines and clarifications regarding product placement and cross-promotions, yet there’s one bottom line that devs cannot touch – forcing players to engage with ads in order to play at the most basic level.
Additionally, developers are prohibited from using ads as a means to provide in-game value, such as rewarding players for watching advertisements. Personally, I have felt the disparity in platform policies regarding Steam and Android as games like Atelier Resleriana (EoS on March this year just after 1st year anniversary by the way, RIP) take away the “watch ads to get gems” option for the former while maintaining it for the latter.
Regarding the explanation for the new and cleanly written rules, Valve stated that “Developers should not utilize paid advertising as a business model in their game, such as requiring players to watch or otherwise engage with advertising in order to play, or gating gameplay behind advertising,”.
Aside from the mandatory removal of ads-related elements before launching games on Steam, devs have been recommended to explore other monetization models, such as offering a one-time purchase or a free-to-play approach with optional microtransactions or DLC.
This comes at a “late but never absent” timing as since last year, more cross-platform games especially Unity-built titles that are compatible with both mobile and PC platforms have since launched to various degrees of success. With a better guideline on how to conform to business practices that suits Steam’s policy in treating players right, this is a great step in cleaning up as much grey area as possible to avoid any sort of legal troubles later on.
