Valve is banning Steam games with forced in-game advertisements

In new documentation, Valve has clarified a policy that prohibits games released on Steam from including mandatory in-game ads that players must watch or engage with.

A new Steamworks Documentation page has raised awareness about a certain Valve policy concerning advertising on Steam.

According to the page in question, developers who release projects on Steam “should not utilize paid advertising as a business model in their game.” In other words, gatekeeping gameplay behind must-watch advertisements or those that players must interact with is strictly forbidden.

The documentation further states if a game’s model relies on advertising on other platforms, developers must “remove those elements before shipping on Steam.”

Valve banning games with forced ads on Steam isn’t new

Long-time Steam users in the gaming subreddit note that Valve has had this policy in place for several years. Thus, it appears the company is merely clarifying its stance by creating a dedicated page in the Steamworks Documentation used for partners.

“It was actually policy for a few years. It’s just been more explicit now…” one person explained in the aforementioned Reddit thread.

As another user noted, details about the mandatory in-game ad ban were previously present in the document’s “Pricing” section and attached to an FAQ blurb concerning whether or not “Steam pricing support[s] games with paid ads.”

The new dedicated page offers more information and plainly details the types of advertisements that are and are not supported across the Steam platform.

Valve Corporation

In terms of what Steam’s policy does allow, players will find games on the storefront that feature product placement for real brands. So a racing game advertising, say, Red Bull energy drinks on an in-game billboard falls in line with Valve’s stated guidelines.

Problems would only arise in this situation if players had to watch an energy drink commercial to race on certain tracks.