Valve bans all Steam games that force players to watch advertisements [edit: Not a new policy, see comments]
Valve bans all Steam games that force players to watch advertisements [edit: Not a new policy, see comments]
Valve has emphasised its rules around advertising, explicitly prohibiting games that force players to watch in-game ads.
Late edit:
per https://sopuli.xyz/comment/14584874 & https://bsky.app/profile/steamdb.info/post/3lhsxkmaj7c2c this is not a new policy.
Awesome, another win for steam
They should do the same on the Play and App Store.
There’s even games where you can pay to remove ads, but it will still ask you if you wanna watch an ad to get a bonus or some shit. Fuck that.
They should do the same on the Play and App Store.
95% of "games" removed
I feel like spotify does a similar thing. Even if you have premium, sometimes i just get random ads and it's like oh no what a glitch in the system.
Been a paying Spotify customer for 16 years, never got an ad.
I've been using Premium for 2+ years now and not once did that happen. Maybe something with cache?
This is exactly why I don't play games on mobile.
I absolutely don't have the time to wade through that shit.
about a year ago, I was like, "It'd be nice to have a few mindless games on my phone"... tried like four... just ADS ADS ADS...
Even the ones where I liked the game, and wanted to just remove the ad bullshit for a price... nothing...
On my phone, I have two games:
- PySolFC - FOSS collection of a bunch of solitaire-like games, with varying levels of attention required
- Lichess - FOSS chess game, with puzzles, bots, and MP
The first is available on F-Droid, not sure about other stores, and the second is probably available everywhere (I got it on Google Play).
I, too, got tired of sifting through ad-riddled BS and just didn't play games on my phone for years.
GooglePlay search favors popular trash, but there and on F-Droid you can still find some fun ones without ads. Searching from outside, like on a regular web search engine or lemmy\reddit subs for free games may help. I don't mind piracy but I was glad to obtain Antimine and Mindustry. Also, there are ways to block internet or patch apps, but they usually imply you have root and may break things if not careful.
Idk about iPhone apps, but I'm sure the first solution would work too and the second means jailbreaking thus cutting off most of their praised ecosystem.
Yeah, there is a tiny amount of good mobile games, like oceanhorn or world of goo. You're better off just sticking to emulating console games on mobile, than playing native mobile games
Yeah it's really hard to find the few normal ones.
I don't like promoting Netflix but I was surprised how many good phone games you can get with your subscription, like Hades, Civilization 6 or Rise of the golden idol. Doesn't seem to me like phone games are a good match for Netflix but hey these good games are free now for me.
Also Balatro is great on the phone
Mobile game subscriptions (like apple) is good. Every once in a while I’ll find a great game with no ads. Just dlc. I usually try to support them. I’ve been playing unnamed space idle for months, and it’s a great example of a game of a developer that respects its players.
I don't mind the fact that apps on Android show ads. I mind the terrible inconsistency of those ads. Some have an X button at the top left, some at the top right. I've seen "mute" buttons in at least three different quadrants, plus some are within a small landscape window rather than taking up the full portrait-held phone. And some don't have mute at all.
And then some have a fake-out X button that actually clicks on the ad if you try to use it.
And a couple of times I've gotten an ad that I literally couldn't exit. Had to force quit the app to get back to it.
If the ads were a consistent experience, I would have a much less intensely negative opinion of them.
The difference is that google directly gets money from those ads. Not sure if apple also uses the same ad system but I would assume it is.
Yes, that's yet another dark pattern.
You can use this site to help with your game choices.
Steamdb mentioned it's not a recent ban :
Valve has created a dedicated page describing that in-game ads or ad-based revenue models are not allowed in Steam games.
This has been reported as a new policy, but this has been the case for at least 5 years as seen on the pricing page, there just wasn't a separate page.
Thanks, I updated the title but will leave the post up so that people who saw the original have a chance to see it.
All good!
Makes sense. They don't get money from ads, so they have little to loose by banning them apart from annoying some publishers, but from what we saw in the past, what will they do? Leave Steam?
Classic killing two birds with one stone: get more revenue from sales, and make customers happier.
Valve will let players (including kids) gamble on skins because it boosts player count. According to them.
Big publishers will still give you rewards for signing up somewhere, entering something, going to an arbitrary website and watching their stream, etc.
But for the small devs: you're not allowed to even give a player a reward for watching an ad. The choice doesn't even matter. It just can't be done.
It's a private corporation so Valve can do whatever they want though.
Would much rather pay a small developer directly than be force-fed ads, even if the excuse is that the ads pay the bills. I don't think this is a particularly unique sentiment and there are plenty of less scummy ways to generate funding than by running advertisements.
Common Valve W
Inb4 Epic advertising hosting ad laden games just to show how much they value customers
money"choice".