Steam, feeling the heat from its rivals, has made significant investments in its development and instituted more stringent guidelines for game creators that are still actively publishing their wares on the Valve shop.
Now, another batch of additional restrictions has been released, the purpose of which is to improve the overall experience that we have while shopping at the Gabena store. Every game will, as of the 1st of September, have brand new miniatures that are devoid of any superfluous language. Miniatures are the small pictures that we notice when looking at the card of a certain production or the list on the store’s website. Valve has implemented a number of new regulations that, among other things, forbid game developers and publishers from advertising their own products, any awards they may have received, or any other games that are connected. The following is an image of the rules list that can be found on the Steam website.
- No ratings of any kind, including ratings on Steam or from external news sources.
- No prize names , symbols or logos.
- No marketing descriptions for discounts , such as “sale” or “up to 90% off”.
- No text or images promoting a different product . This also applies to the promotion of a sequel or other titles within the same series.
- No other unrelated text.
One more thing is that the rules for using temporary graphics have changed. Here are the new rules.
- Use temporary graphics – Graphic assets with text embedded on them MUST be uploaded as temporary graphics with a time limit of up to one month.
- All text must be localized – all text placed on the graphic resources MUST be localized to at least the same languages supported by the game.
- New Content Only Description – The only additional text allowed on the thumbnail is a description of a major game content update, new seasonal event, battle pass, DLC, or similar new game content.