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Valve ban advertising-based business models on Steam, no forced adverts like in mobile games
(www.gamingonlinux.com)
When can I run Steam OS on my phone? :)
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
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A Steam Phone would be a massive undertaking, but I'm so here for it. I would love if they used one of the actual Linux phone OSs and made it good instead of Android.
Valve slamming the door on ad-rot mechanics? Finally a corp treating gamers like humans, not dopamine piggybanks. Mobile’s ad-infested hellscape stays where it belongs—in the pocket-sized Skinner boxes of despair. But let’s not kid ourselves: this isn’t altruism—it’s market hygiene. Steam’s dominance hinges on not becoming the digital equivalent of a bus station bathroom plastered in NFT billboards.
Meanwhile, Epic’s over there sharpening its shiv, ready to monetize your retinas if it means clawing back relevance. Capitalism’s funniest gag: competition via not being intolerable. Keep the ad-free oasis flowing, GabeN.
It's not entirely altruistic.
Valve doesn't get their 30% taste on ad revenue.
This will play into it. But Valve allows stuff that cuts into their immediate profits, like e.g. third party sales. I think ensuring market dominance by ensuring customer satisfaction is the more important part of the decision. Steam is imo meant to stay a quality product with a reliable turnover. They are not aiming to become a bookmaker, like the play store or apple store basically are nowadays.
Who even does? Ad rot has diminishing returns
Google and Apple.
That is the only reason here. But steam-lovers will always paint anything bad more favouribly.
I'm also strongly invested in steam (sadly so), so it's not just hate.
paint anything bad more favouribly.
I disagree in this situation - it is being painted more favourably, but it's not bad. Their motivation may be self-interest, but I see it more as killing two birds with one stone. I will also note that Valve could provide official ad integration through steam APIs, but at least so far they chose not to.
Realistically they're probably doing this mostly because they don't get the 30% cut on ad revenue. They want to force publishers to actually charge money through Steam.
Even when this is true. Adding ads is in my opinion unethical. As you shove the user pictures that can trigger him. You dont know what the neurodivergent Gamer has. OCD? Or smth else?
Ads are made to catch an eye and clickbait. Flush some dopamine or other emotions. Just to break the wall and make the user buy something against his own real motivation.
At the end some ads are even scams and you dont even get what the manipulated motivation directed it towards to. Mostly the motivation is directed, because the user is being told it recieves something valuable for himself, but at the end doesnt even recieve that.
Ads are just scams and destroying the mentallness. I dont feel psychologically well for 3 days after seeing the wrong picture. Obssessive thoughts unrelated to your life but bothering you, while having your own issues is not nice.
Good guy Steam.
Everyone is acting like this is purely for good intentions, but I'll point out they make most of their money from taking a cut of the sale price from games. Ad money probably would not go to them at all. This is almost certainly purely a business decision, not because they fundamentally don't like the concept or want to protect you from it.
Of course everything a company does is in the best interest of the company. Even as simple as "let's make excellent products with lifetime warrantees" benefits them by making people want to shop there.
But that doesn't mean it isn't a good thing when companies realise the customers best interest are also their best interest. We should encourage that, not scoff at it.
Of course everything a company does is in the best interest of the company.
That is not true, but that is part of the problem and also why Steam is at least a little better for us customers. Most companies only do what is good for the stakeholders short term, Valve does what is good for the company/single owner long term. And happy customers are good long-term, but not so important short-term.
It is still capitalism, and thus still terrible. But a tiny bit less terrible.
I honestly don't really care about Valve's motivations. It's a good decision. This kind of trash can take over and ruin an entire marketplace if you let it.
Yes, when something half good finally happens, let's complain it probably didn't happen for better reasons
Why are we never happy again?
You can be happy about a decision while still understanding the business rational behind it.
Maybe the look at the shitshow that is mobile gaming and they want to stay away from it. Good intention in my book.
a good thing done for a shitty reason is still a good thing.
Also known as free market capitalism 100% working as it should.
Age is not what's wrong with charging money inside video games.
Ban the entire business model.
TF2 pioneered the modern micro transaction hellscape we're all stuck with. And it still makes money despite almost a decade without a major update.
We were never going to shop our way out of it.
Only legislation will fix this.
They won't because they're the ones making money from it. The only reason they care about this is likely because they don't get money from ads as they don't have any related advertising business like Google and Apple does.
It's the same as when they kicked EA off of steam. EA allowed buying DLC without going through Steam. If they're not getting a cut, but you are being hosted/distributed by them, they don't want it.
They won’t because they’re the ones making money from it.
I was (trying to) be tongue in cheek about it, so yes of course they won't. I just don't like the idea of propping up Valve as some incorruptible, can-do-no-wrong company. They know they're causing children to gamble and it's not that they don't care, they actively encourage it.
So no recognition of any good until they are perfect?
I really can't think of how they would stop this.
Like genuinely.
The sites that manage these gambling rings aren't owned by Valve, and reporting the sites doesn't get them taken down by the domain providers.
In Steam the trades look the same as any regular trades between players, so if they wanted to stop the gambling trades it would require turning off all trades.
Do you know if anyone has come up with some way they could track and stop the gambling sites?
I think the issue is less the existence of gambling sites, and more the fact that underage gamers are often the target of the sites. An age verification for trading would be the easiest, but Valve has taken a hard stance against collecting identification for any reason. The age verification could come from the websites but that seems very unlikely since the websites are often illegal. If enough countries (especially America) legalized online gambling but required ID verification, the sites may be more likely to implement it, but that is so far of a scenario there really is no prediction.
Lets all pray they stay out of the stockmarket
the day gaben dies and the company falls into the grubby hands of investors, its over.
My understanding was that a large percentage of Valve is employee owned. Would love to know if that's true or not.
That just means that buying it spreads the money to slightly more people. They're practically just as easy to acquire.
It also means that more people have to be willing to sell (or that if only a few sell, investors hold less power)
Valve is a private company, so depending on who owns a majority of the shares, not much might change after Gabens earthly demise.
Private investors are (usually, and theoretically) more "long-term" motivated than the public markets. Day traders and rotating board members love quarterly boosts even if it implodes the company, but with private equity, passing a bag of shit to someone else isn’t so easy, and desires aren’t so fickle.
Hence I suspect you're right.
Can you give same examples of such privately owned companies which are long term focussed?
It’s wild to me how few people understand that private companies have shareholders too
I am not sure how to interpret your response. Do you mean I do not know that Valve as a private company does have shareholders?
What he means is, when gaben our lord an saviour dies, his majority shares ownership will be transferred to his inheritors.
The question "do they want to own and do they understand Valve or just see a big pile of cash?" will be answered then and there.
Which can very well result in an IPO.
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Makes sense they don't want games supported by ad revenue on Steam.
Mobile games started off with that business model and the result is that users are very rarely open to purchasing mobile games, which is where Steam makes money.
I don’t even bother gaming on my phone anymore with everything filled with iaps and ads. Would rather just pay to have the license and play on the Steamdeck instead. Hell, with the sales I’m more likely to just get them even if I don’t get around to playing it.
Weren’t they the ones introducing forced ads in cs 1.6?
They're not banning games with ads, ads are still allowed. Read the article.
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