Steam Bans Forced In-Game Ads and Ad-Watching Incentives In New Policy

Steam has quietly slipped in another consumer-friendly policy to ensure games aren’t abusing player trust. The game platform’s latest update comes in a Steamworks documentation change that explicitly states that games can’t force players to watch ads, nor especially reward players for doing so. 

“Developers should not utilize paid advertising as a business model in their game, such as requiring players to watch or otherwise engage with advertising in order to play, or gating gameplay behind advertising,” the policy explains. “If your game's business model relies on advertising on other platforms, you will need to remove those elements before shipping on Steam.” 

Steam says that these developers should also “not use advertising as a way to provide value to players, such as giving players a reward for watching or engaging with advertising in their game.” 

These techniques described are most commonly seen in free-to-play mobile games. In order for free-to-play games to make revenue, developers typically make players pick one of two options: watch ads to continue through, or pay to skip ads. (Ironically, these ads often link out to other games, which, also often, don’t look as advertised. In PC and console gamer words: shovelware.) Plus, as the other policy implies, some games offer perks for watching ads or paying. 

Steam does offer the usual revenues of DLC, microtransactions, and just outright asking players to buy the game, which further cements that this targets free-to-play games infamous for ad practices. 

While this is aggressively pro-consumer, it’s equally likely that Steam wants to streamline revenue in order to ensure these ad systems aren’t getting around income sharing. Frankly, as someone who very recently paid to skip ads for the adorable Cats & Soup idler game, at least ads are still a better system than gacha, but it’s all quite predatory in the end. 

This isn’t even the first change this month spotted by sharp-eyed developers and users, as Steam has started placing automated warnings about Early Access games that haven’t been updated in a year (or more). In the wake of California regulations, too, the platform now explicitly explains that a “purchase” is actually for a license to the game.