Lots of folks use Steam and lots of developers release their games on Steam. Thanks to the Steam Community in the Steam store, it’s also a handy way for developers to let players know about upcoming updates or development progress on games that haven’t released yet. Steam’s new guidance to developers dictates that their Steam communication with players shouldn’t mention availability anywhere else. The Community Hub for Steam games is actually pretty broad, encompassing the News posts functionality that developers often use to distribute patch notes or development updates. It also includes the forum-style Discussions section where some developers run Q&A sessions with players. The language in the new rule is pretty broad. This will almost certainly affect game News posts promoting secondary launches on new stores after a Steam launch. It could also impact smaller offenses like including links to all available storefronts for a game in a news post. The new rule also specifically calls out content patches that might exist off of Steam’s store. It’s not clear just yet where Valve’s enforcement focus will be.
