'No Man's Sky' Investigation Prompts Change In Steam's Marketing Guidelines; 'Dota 2,' Other Games Affected
J RoseValve will be making changes to its marketing policies on Steam, following the controversy surrounding Hello Games' open world space game "No Man's Sky."
According to Polygon, Valve has announced that all developers and publishers must use actual, in-game screenshots to promote and market their games once their "Discovery Update 2.0" goes live.
"We haven't been super crisp on guidelines for screenshots in the past, so we'd like to take this opportunity to clarify some rules in this space," Valve's UI designer Alden Kroll. "When the 'screenshot' section of a store page is used for images other than screenshots that depict the game, it can make it harder for customers to understand what the product is that they are looking at."
As per this new guideline, in-game screenshots will now be prioritized over concept art and other screenshots which are not representative of the final game. To show that they will be following this new set of guidelines as well, Valve went ahead and removed all artworks on the "DOTA 2" Steam page and replaced them with actual game footage instead.
Krol further clarified that the new policy is more on encouraging developers to show people what they can actually expect from the game, and Steam will not go through the thousands of screenshots on the site, according to IB Times.
Some speculated that this move was made in the wake of "No Man's Sky"'s current issue. The game is currently being investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority for false advertising, following a report.
AzzerUK, the Reddit user who brought his concerns about "No Man's Sky" to the regulatory board in the UK, said that his intention is not to spread hate for both the game and the developers.
"But I did feel personally misled", he said. "The marketing of the game was very different to the end game. The end game is a shallow screenshot generator, and in some ways it reminded me of 'Spore'."
AzzerUK also included Valve in the investigation. "I figured that if we want Steam store pages for games to start falling in-line and stop misleading consumers, then it would take consumers to point these problems out to the ASA, rather than all sit around on Reddit complaining to each other but assuming that it'll all get sorted by itself eventually." the Reddit user said.
Stay tuned for more "No Man's Sky" updates.
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