Steam makes its ban on in-game ads explicit | Hacker News Reader

Steam makes its ban on in-game ads explicit

pcgamer.com

84 pointsnabla953 comments

As a gamedev who absolutely need to monetize its game, I think it's a great move from steam.

In-game ads are a cancer, breaking the immersion and the game flow.

That's part of why I don't wanna work on mobile gaming anymore, monetization is parasital to the experience or simply abusive thanks to the worst cognitive manipulations. https://www.deceptive.design/types

The other reason I don't want to work on mobile is the dependance (read no choice) to apple and google, see what happens to Fortnite.

On PC, you can distribute yourself and still be extremely successful (kudos to Vintage Story team).

Players prooved countless times that they will buy and even fund experiences they enjoy or are promised to enjoy (which can lead to another set of problems but it's not the topic). So I prefer to rely on gamers buying my game.

Very rare to see Vintage Story mentioned in the wild. It's tied with Project Zomboid for my favorite survival game. I wish more people knew about it.

Me Big PZ player, hugely influencial reference to my creative brain!

> So I prefer to rely on gamers buying my game.

So why use "monetize" in the beginning of your post then? The term brings up IAPs, ads and deceptive subscriptions, not selling games.

First, I use Cambridge definition, which makes the usage of monetization correct. "to make money from something"

Second, not all IAP are abusive, I didn't said nor meant that.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/monetize

I don't know about that. As an old school gamer, I notice that the second IAPs show up the design of the game changes to accomodate them, and that is always hostile to the player's time if not wallet.

I don't have any recent examples because I'm simply avoiding anything with IAPs but look at Guild Wars 2 and Path of Exile.

Even if you sell "extra content" (not game expansions) as IAPs you end up with 20 extra leaders at $5 each for Civilization, or whatever Paradox is adding to all their games.

This is true to a certain extent but like anything, the industry also has differing opinions on it. Indie developers in the "idle" gaming space have been slowly abandoning the idea of locking progression behind IAP which has been nice to see. These "games" are very unique though in that part of the entire appeal is that you don't need to do much. Rushing through an idle game as fast as possible kind of defeats the purpose. Sure, the devs will gladly sell you some in-game currency so you can unlock everything in a week instead of 4 months, but those players are the minority.

My "favorite" way to interact with a mobile game developer is an IAP that replaces optional ads. If your game has forced ads, I will not play it. I also will not play games with "optional" ads that aren't really optional in practice. For the few developers who respect my time, I'm content to throw them $5 or whatever to disable the ads when I interact with an optional part of the game, or as a thank you for not over monetizing their game when I reach the end.

That's a form of sale, if it's only one IAP.

Selling your game for money is one way of monetizing your game, out of many. Parent says they want to monetize the game, and then outlines in what ways they find it acceptable to do so. "Monetization" isn't strictly about IAPs, ads and deceptive subscriptions, although many developers seem to default to monetizing games in those ways.

To, the term 'monetization' is associated with all shady practices, except for selling the game. I can't recall the last time I heard or saw someone mention it in a that sounded positive to me.

I dunno, I've heard it in the "How the thing makes money" context for both games and startups, where a common question to someone who just built a MVP could be "How are you planning to monetize it?", even thought shady ads/practices isn't on anyones mind.

"IAPs" = in-app purchases, I think

I currently work on a B2B SaaS company (not gaming) where we have quite the interesting problem:

We want to move clients onto our cheaper plans.

The profit margin on our cheaper offerings is higher (because of licensing agreements), so we have an incentive to try to get people to cheaper plans. It is the first time where monetization-maximization efforts align with user's best interests I ever worked on.

The users who don't need the extra features need to be informed they are not using them and the ones who do use those features extensively should be left alone.

Sounds motivating to both have better margins while serving customers. It's the kind of tasks without downside: satiasfying.

My biggest problem with games ads and ads in software/apps in general is that devs nowadays will add them even when you are paying for the product/game. So the old say that if you not paying then you are the product is no longer valid. Because in many scenarios now you are paying and are the product at the same time. The traditional arguments about monetization is now hard to swallow from consumer perspective because of the tendency to think, why not on adding ads.

It's easy. Just skip the games with IAPs and ads. Doesn't matter if they're free or for pay, just skip them.

That's what I do regarding games (I don't play that much anyway and tend to stick to few) but the trend is going in this direction for everything. And what does not have ads/IAPs where you purchase doesn't mean they will not include some down the line.

On the app side they seem to be trying for subscriptions first.

In a few years some "solo founder" will post something insightful about being able to sell offline applications as a one time purchase instead of trying to convince or trick people into subscribing. And they'll present it as a new discovery that will "revolutionize the software market".

Problem is that you don't know this until you've bought the game, and that creates incentive for the developer to only include them after the refund period.

Umm aren't the IAPs clearly marked? On the ios app store at least.

On Steam I only buy based on 3rd party mentions/reviews so I don't really know what's written on the storefront if it's a free to play game because I've never been to the storefront of a free to play game.

I never preorder btw. Okay, with two exceptions: FromSoft single player games (not getting the new multiplayer thingy) and Kojima. Until they burn me too.

No, not at all. I have several games on my "I Wasted My Money" pile where IAPs or in-game advertisements were added in patches well after release.

Edit: This practice is why policies such as this one being enacted are now necessary. Were it not for policies preventing these sort of practices, they would be far more common.

Hmm it only happened to me once. When EA bought popcap and the turned my plants vs zombies for iOS into an IAP fest. That made me notice that most mobile games have turned free to play and I simply stopped looking for them. No more gaming on my iPad.

Would you mind naming and shaming your own "I Wasted My Money" pile if it's PC titles?

The problem is that I would have to remember them all; It's a metaphorical pile, not a literal one. A large majority are games where the DRM no longer works for whatever reason (Silent Hunter 3 and 4 come to mind), but games where malware/microtransactions/etc. were added after release or not disclosed prior to release included Civilization 6 and Red Orchestra 2. IIRC the latter game specifically is why Valve added the ability to read the EULA prior to purchase, as the ads were only disclosed in the EULA and the EULA was available only after purchase.

(Edit: I don't consider piracy/cracks a solution to DRM. Solutions solve problems. Piracy and cracks are workarounds at best. The problem is still there.)

With updates you actually never know. They can add them to what you purchased at any time. They can even turn your purchased product into a F2P crapfest.

With the modern trend of continuous updating of software, how can you expect MBAs to leave money on the table and not add ads after the fact?

Easy enough, I skip certain game development companies by default. At the start because they insisted on having an account with them to play single player, but I think they've evolved into predatory IAPs while i wasn't looking at their titles. Talking about EA, Ubisoft and Rockstar here.

It helps that the same MBAs do design by commitee to appeal to the largest audience possible and end up with a boring soup. Maybe not Rockstar, but they managed to wean me off GTA with all that pushing for GTA online.

Gotta say Valve is as close to a benevolent monopoly as I can think of. Great to see this.

No shareholders!

well, there's one.

Oh no! How will they create value on the Free Market(TM)?

Large part of the benevolency is a direct result of losing court cases.

Forcing the user to watch video ads is a blight. Half of the time, the video ad is just being dumped onto game players because there's no relevant audience for it. Applause to Steam for stopping this.

I think Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition Enhanced violates this ban, then.

There's an ad for Borderlands 4 when you start up the game, and you have to start up the game in order to play.

and before the Borderlands 4 ad, it was an ad for BL 3

so as Final Fantasy XV or Alan Wake. There are countless singleplayer AAA games with in-game ads not just gacha, fp2, and mobile games.

Cross-promotions are permitted.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/advertising

I think that section only covers promotions on the Steam platform itself, or other platforms, not in-game advertising content.

That policy covers in-game content too - the same page mentions:

"Steam does not contain any paid advertising, nor are advertising models supported in games distributed on Steam. There are varying interpretations for what constitutes ‘advertising’ in a game, so the examples below are meant to help guide developers as to what is and is not supported on Steam."

Under not supported: "Developers should not utilize paid advertising as a business model in their game"

The Borderlands 4 adverts in BL3 are not paid adverts, and they don't advertise anything other than their own games.

Yep, the page does, but the specific section you named, suggesting it was an answer, does not. At least it does not alone address the issue.

But leaving that section aside, I'll say that these ads are paid. They're paid by the company to itself, with the intent of future monetary gain. Now, if you think that's too much of a technicality, which I would understand, I'll say this: would it be a violation of the policy to show unskippable first-party advertisements repeatedly during gameplay? I think most people would agree that it would be a violation of the intention of the policy.

I don't think the specific section needs to mention it - the entire page is about Advertising on Steam, which according to the opening paragraph, includes in-game adverts. The rest of the page elaborates with examples of things they do and don't condone.

These ads are indeed paid for by the company itself, but seem to be permitted by the policy. The intent/spirit of the policy seems to be to prevent games showing ads for arbitrary other games/things, for example BL3 showing ads for Candy Crush Saga - this isn't allowed by this policy, i.e. games that are paid to show other people's ads.

Gearbox showing BL4 ads in BL3 etc, it seems to count as cross promotion, they're not being paid for the act of showing the ad and is OK according to Steam - "These types of promotions are encouraged and many customers find value in them."

Perhaps the wording of the policy could use some work to make things clearer.

Cynical side of me say that they are doing this because they are not getting their cut... On other hand I do support it. Although it seems to miss some weirder advertising models.

Still, I don't think PC and Steam should be like mobile app stores.

I understand the intention of the rule, but here is an interesting problem:

I make a racing game, a realistic racing game, with real life tracks.

Those tracks are laser scanned and officially licensed from the people who own the branding of the tracks.

As part of the licensing deal, we cannot alter anything to do with advertising on the track. This has already caused some issues with, for example, Hockenheim where they have beer commercials on track, Which affects our age rating - and console submission.

Functionally, we have no control over these advertisements, do you think we would be in violation of the rule? They say not right now, but the specific carve out is "if it seems out of place", which is vague enough to cause my "lawyers spend a lot of time on uncertainty" sense to tingle.

These kinds of “sounds reasonable” rules are really cumbersome and bureaucratic when they face reality.

They literally cover racing games in the article but the money quote is:

> Product placement is still in, so long as "such portrayals are not disruptive and are appropriate within the context of the game."

It also notes that these rules are not new and merely the page is.

I take it you did not click on the article at all before commenting.

Racing games with real advertisements on the cars are explicitly given as an example as the type of thing that is fine in the article.

> Product placement is still in, so long as "such portrayals are not disruptive and are appropriate within the context of the game." Valve gives a racing game with real life sponsors on the cars as one example of what's okay […]

There is your answer, right in the article.

Of course, as a developer dealing with licensing issues you should ask for explicit clarification, but that's to be expected.

And yeah, the age rating going up because you choose to show beer ads makes complete sense. That's not about advertising, but about the fact that you are including adult themes (like drinking alcohol) in a game. Even fictional beer like Duff or Pißwasser will trigger that.

Did you really write this whole post without reading the article?

Sounds like you could even be selling ad space in the game on those cars/tracks and its totally fine because its not out of place. Same if you had a game set in a city with a billboard that some corporation paid to advertise on. Its not out of place.

This is pretty clearly written as a ban against mobile game style ads where it "gates" gameplay.

Dont break the flow, make the ad into embedded part of the flow. create interactive objects that project ads, but are part of the game.

e.g. TV, phones, vendingmachines, environmental noise, etc.

The people buying your ads want to know how many people saw them. If your ad is embedded in 3D space, when did someone “see” it? If they were standing at a 10 degree angle for 6 seconds does that count? 11 degrees and 5 seconds?

With video ads they want completion rates. With all ads they like people to be able to click through and engage further with the product. None of these questions have satisfying answers with embedded ads. That’s why they never took off.

But how will I know when to drink Nuka-Cola?

When the console tells you to drink another verification can.

I'm so happy this is a thing!

> watch this ad to keep playing

I've seen this model so much in android apps, it's disgusting. I'm glad they're banning it on steam.

Give F-Droid a try! There aren't quite so many games but all of them are Open Source and none contain ads. App quality skyrockets when you only download FOSS Android software instead of the Play Store garbage.

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