Valve makes its stance clear on in-game advertisements on Steam games

In-game advertisements are one of the ways game developers monetize their games, especially the ones that are free to play. However, this is widely common across mobile devices and while some mobile ports of PC games do have this feature, Valve has made it very clear that these games are not allowed on Steam.

As reported by Gaming on Linux, Valve added new guidelines regarding advertising on Steam and has made it clear that paid advertising as a business model in a game is not allowed. This was further expanded on by SteamDB revealing that this requirement was available for a long time on the pricing page, but has now been moved to the Sales and Marketing section.

“If your game's business model relies on advertising on other platforms, you will need to remove those elements before shipping on Steam. Some options you could consider include switching to a single purchase ‘paid app,’ or making your game free to play with optional upgrades sold via Microtransactions or Downloadable Content (DLC),” the Steam guidelines state.

Product Placements are allowed on Steam

As brutal as it may sound, it’s not all doom for game developers. In fact, product placements are allowed on Steam as long as they do not disrupt the gameplay. Valve also provided examples like racing games or skateboard games that contain sponsored logos of real-world brands are allowed as long as they have permission.

Valve also does not allow any form of NFT or Web3-based games on Steam which uses cryptocurrency for transactions. This was likely due to any scams or fraudulent transactions being hard to reverse or track down with these games.

Also Read: Steam adds a new feature to let players know about abandoned early-access games

Why does Valve not allow advertising-based business models?

There’s a lot to go on with advertising-based monetization and Valve is known to be much more user experience-focused in terms of gaming. Things like player privacy are a huge concern, and developers will also focus on the quality of video games to make them profitable.

Another great argument is that advertising-based business models can likely bypass revenue distribution which is how Valve makes money. Using in-game adverts, developers can simply put low-quality slop on Steam for a one-time fee and show in-game ads to earn revenue directly from advertisers.