Steam games that force players to watch advertisements are banned, Valve emphasises
www.eurogamer.net
Valve has emphasised its rules around advertising, explicitly prohibiting games that force players to watch in-game ads.
  • inlandempire@jlai.luEnglish
    921·
    2 days ago

    Steamdb mentioned it’s not a recent ban :

    Valve has created a dedicated page describing that in-game ads or ad-based revenue models are not allowed in Steam games.

    This has been reported as a new policy, but this has been the case for at least 5 years as seen on the pricing page, there just wasn’t a separate page.

    https://bsky.app/profile/steamdb.info/post/3lhsxkmaj7c2c

  • unautrenom@jlai.luEnglish
    63·
    2 days ago

    Makes sense. They don’t get money from ads, so they have little to loose by banning them apart from annoying some publishers, but from what we saw in the past, what will they do? Leave Steam?

    Classic killing two birds with one stone: get more revenue from sales, and make customers happier.

  • Linktank@lemmy.todayEnglish
    12·
    2 days ago

    So does Battlebit Remastered still have advertisements for the armed forces in it? Sounds like they should either be forced to remove those or lose their platform on steam.

  • mhague@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3218·
    2 days ago

    Valve will let players (including kids) gamble on skins because it boosts player count. According to them.

    Big publishers will still give you rewards for signing up somewhere, entering something, going to an arbitrary website and watching their stream, etc.

    But for the small devs: you’re not allowed to even give a player a reward for watching an ad. The choice doesn’t even matter. It just can’t be done.

    It’s a private corporation so Valve can do whatever they want though.

    • Panamalt@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      32·
      2 days ago

      Would much rather pay a small developer directly than be force-fed ads, even if the excuse is that the ads pay the bills. I don’t think this is a particularly unique sentiment and there are plenty of less scummy ways to generate funding than by running advertisements.

      • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
        171·
        2 days ago

        Arguably, the whole mobile app store ecosystem became a shithole because we weren’t willing to pay a buck or two for a an app. It led to an environment where alternative forms of monetization are so common that a lot of devs don’t even bother making a premium, ad-free version.

        • Draconic NEO@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          4 hours ago

          I wouldn’t entirely agree, it’s shit because Google and Apple enable the practice by providing app Advertising frameworks and fighting back against people working against those systems (i.e. mobile ad blocking and app firewalls, either through store policy or public discouragement).

          Developers are incentivised because advertising both:

          1. Gives reoccurring revenue, beyond what a purchase would give.
          2. It makes people more likely to pick them up since people easily pick things up that are cheap or even free.

          Advertising basically takes away the need to sell stuff and allows poaching revenue from people even if they don’t want to support the app. I’ve known many Devs who will try to eek out more revenue by click fraud (auto clicking their own ads).

          So I’m not really a fan of implying this is our fault or “devs gotta eat too”. This practice is very much corporate greed.

  • spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    141·
    2 days ago

    Inb4 Epic advertising hosting ad laden games just to show how much they value customers money “choice”.