Valve Strikes Down On Developers By Banning Steam Games Making Use Of In-Game Ads

In-game advertising or the practice of in-game ads is a widely prevalent practice we've seen mainly in free-to-play (F2P) and mobile games over the last few years. This eventually found its way to more mainstream games, especially F2P games on the PC platform, and Valve is combatting this practice by revising its guidelines and banning certain aspects of in-game ads on Steam.

Valve has released a new set of guidelines that will strike down developers who use in-game advertisements in their games that are part of their "business model." This was detailed in a brand-new Steamworks post in which Valve has restrategized its approach to advertising on its platform as a means to safeguard its users and give them the best experience possible on Steam.

According to the Steamworks post that Valve published, they've outlined that specific rules will support in-game ads like cross-promotions like bundles, sale events, and products outside the Steam ecosystem. However, they iterated, "Under no circumstances is it okay to charge other developers to participate in a bundle or to sell access to a sale page or other page on Steam."

Another supported rule is doing paid ads outside the Steam ecosystem in which developers can potentially use paid campaigns "to drive traffic to their Steam product pages" by using their available features like Store Widgets and UTM Analytics. Product placements are also allowed on Steam, especially in gaming titles that feature real-world "brands, products, personalities," and more that are central to gameplay, as long as the provided portrayals "are not disruptive and are appropriate within the context of the game."

Valve further detailed that they are using in-game ads as part of their "business model" in which developers that require players "to watch or otherwise engage with advertising in order to play, or gating gameplay behind advertising" will be disallowed. If this model relies on ads on platforms outside of Steam, Valve will demand developers to remove these elements before releasing the game on Steam.

Developers can also consider alternative options such as shifting the game to a "single purchase paid app" or making their games an F2P release with these elements packaged as additional purchasable content like DLCs or microtransactions. Lastly, Valve also highlighted that developers "should not charge other developers for access to Steam features," which include game bundles, gaming franchises, store pages, and sale promotional pages on Steam.