Steam Cracks Down on False Advertising

Steam, the #1 digital marketplace for PC gaming, is a perfect example of the well-intentioned but ultimately flawed economic models proposed by François Quesnay: laissez-faire economics in the wild west of the online world. While Steam is able to provide discounts, sales, and a platform from developers from every walk of life, it's also swamped in a mire of shovel-ware, misleading business practices, and outright scams. Great for smart buyers, but if you're an uninformed or just daring individual, you can find your game library overwhelmed by unplayable messes.

Now, Steam has made an effort in recent months to be more customer-friendly, idiot-proofing things so even the most casual PC gamer could at the very least return a game if it proved to be unplayable, but now, Valve is taking things one step further, and is now cracking down on unrepresentative marketing materials on Steam Pages.

Reported by Kotaku, this update to the rules comes as part of a giant restructuring Steam will be undergoing in the next few weeks, and it's fairly straightforward: any pictures used on the Steam Page for a game must be screenshots taken DIRECTLY from in-game: you cannot use promotional art or pre-rendered shots. Additionally, developers have to flag any screenshots that contain 'mature content.'

“We ask that any images you upload to the ‘screenshot’ section of your store page should be screenshots that show your game. This means avoiding using concept art, pre-rendered cinematic stills, or images that contain awards, marketing copy, or written product descriptions. Please show customers what your game is actually like to play.”

Valve itself is guilty of this crime, DOTA 2's steam page once being host to a handful of concept art, which don't really have anything to do with the gameplay of the world-famous MOBA.

Still, I can get behind something like this. Developers have used pre-rendered or unrepresentative artwork for too long to sucker gamers out of their hard-earned cash, and it'd be nice if we could put a stop to that for good. It's only a matter of time before some unscrupulous developer finds a way to work around these guidelines (like putting pre-rendered pictures in the game and taking a screencap of that), but it's still a step in the right direction.

Hopefully, all the changes coming to Steam will be this welcome.