Valve have updated the developer guidelines for releasing a game on Steam, making it clear that the scourge of mobile gaming advertising-based business models are not going to work on Steam.
Damn, I was coming here to say this is a meaningful curation step and I couldn’t give Steam my usual cynical reality check, but you found the angle and now I can’t unsee it.
I don’t think it’s cynical. Their review model would make it very hard to make payment fair (we call always argue about whether Steam overcharges for its services) since it would be a pain in the butt to track income from advertisement.
But the advertisement business model makes for worse games. I think it makes great sense for Steam to ban them. And if games on Steam are better then that’s good for game developers that use their platform.
It can be both. Steam wants their cut, but they also don’t want consumers seeing a free game on Steam, downloading it, and then complaining to Steam because it’s not actually free, it’s just riddled with ads.
Damn, I was coming here to say this is a meaningful curation step and I couldn’t give Steam my usual cynical reality check, but you found the angle and now I can’t unsee it.
I don’t think it’s cynical. Their review model would make it very hard to make payment fair (we call always argue about whether Steam overcharges for its services) since it would be a pain in the butt to track income from advertisement.
But the advertisement business model makes for worse games. I think it makes great sense for Steam to ban them. And if games on Steam are better then that’s good for game developers that use their platform.
It can be both. Steam wants their cut, but they also don’t want consumers seeing a free game on Steam, downloading it, and then complaining to Steam because it’s not actually free, it’s just riddled with ads.
It can be both.