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 can 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.
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 can 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.