Wednesday, August 19th 2020
Valve Prohibits the Mention of "non-Steam versions" of Games
Valve has recently updated it's Steam Community Hub policies to prohibit the mentioning of non-Steam versions of games, this likely comes as competition increases in the largely stagnant PC gaming market from the likes of the Epic Games Store, and Xbox Game Pass for PC. This will mean that the Steam Community Hub will no longer include mentions to releases on other platforms. These new rules apply to both releases and DLC effectively stopping the promotion of other platforms on Steam.
Source:
Steam
SteamIn the game you ship via Steam, and in communications on Steam, you may only promote the Steam version and its availability via Steam, and not other distribution outlets. This applies both to full versions of your game and to content patches that change the existing version.
34 Comments on Valve Prohibits the Mention of "non-Steam versions" of Games
If anything they took too long to make a move against that.
that said, it makes sense that you dont want to advertice other platforms on your platform.
Idk, they need to find some middle ground somehow imo.
nice direction we are going - i think it is backwards
Is this banning all those things, since Discussions fall under Community Hub, or only devs/publishers mentioning other stores?
This is a dev/pub rule only, regular users are welcome to discuss whatever they want.
I expect them to start requiring any new game listings to come with a commitment to have their initial launch on Steam as well.
I cannot imagine being banned from mentioning other forms of the same game title. At least in this sort of context, ie, discussions within the specific games' forum
Where I could see this having any merit is if the dev is actually advertising a non Steam form of the game on Steam....such as blatantly posting a link in the main description section that says "DRM FREE GOG VERSION - CLICK HERE!"
Though this would give an advantage to the developer and publisher by making sure all potential users know of the various outlets they can acquire the game through, Valve/Steam would obviously be pissed about dev/pub actively advertising to purchase said game from another distributor. It would mean Valve/Steam could end up with less sales because users went to other outlets, hence they would be upset
So I think that is one of the few situations I could agree this new rule is justified. Otherwise it is heavy handed and will be difficult to enforce without employing moderators who specifically look for this stuff....especially if they are told to read deep into threads to find random mentionings and links of non steam versions.