Cheery mom-and-pop computer game business Valve have created a new Steamworks page for their policy about in-game adverts and advertising in general, with a troubleshooter’s list of dos and don’ts for developers.
As Graham pointed out to me just now, Valve’s handling of such things hasn’t really changed over the past few years, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to chew the fat a little about the intriguingly murky, slippery-slope business of turning your virtual world into an ad platform. Also, I had already written this article by the time he pointed that out to me, and I can’t bear to send all my precious words to the abyss.
Briefly, Valve say it’s fine to feature ads inside games if it’s “appropriate within the context of the game”. Not fine: the use of paid advertising as a business model, as with ports of mobile games that make you watch an advert to unlock stuff, or that dole out rewards for willingly filling your eyes with footage of, say, crypto investors pitching a new wellness diet. If your game makes use of such strategies on other platforms, explain Valve, you will need to strip them out before selling them on Steam. They suggest switching to a single-purchase model or free-to-play with microtransactions instead.
The Steamworks Documentation post in question – spotted by GamingOnLinux – is quite cut-and-dried on the surface, but ambiguity predictably sneaks in as you start to thrash out the use-case scenarios for a store that gets thousands of new releases a year. Here’s what it says about in-game ads being fine as long as they fit the context.
“Games may contain real brands, products, personalities, etc as part of gameplay, provided such portrayals are not disruptive and are appropriate within the context of the game. For example, a racing game might feature real life sponsor logos on its race cars, or a skateboard game might include characters wearing real-world brands. Note that all developers must obtain the relevant permission and/or licenses for any copyrighted content contained in their games.”
There’s an interesting tradition of product placement within games, ranging from signboards for pirate sim Overboard! in the otherwise galleon-deficient G-Police, to Obama campaign ads in Burnout Paradise. You can definitely make the case for ads forming a believable aspect of the setting, but even when it’s credible, I can’t help but ponder what might have been sacrificed in order to meet the client spec. Publishers have, unsurprisingly, expressed qualified approval for the idea. Last year, EA’s Andrew Wilson promised that any such future measures undertaken by the Battlefield publisher would be “very thoughtful”.
Among the more egregious examples of noxious in-game advertising is the original Alan Wake, would you believe. Alan might sporadically style himself an arthouse novelist, but he’s not above flying the flag for Verizon and Energizer. Examples of doing it right include the recent reality TV sim The Crush House, in which you play both the producer and target audience of adverts for other Devolver games.
The Steamworks page adds that “cross-promotional activities on Steam, such as bundles, sale events, and more” are OK-dokey as well. Under what’s not allowed, meanwhile, we find the following:
“Developers should not utilize paid advertising as a business model in their game, such as requiring players to watch or otherwise engage with advertising in order to play, or gating gameplay behind advertising. If your game’s business model relies on advertising on other platforms, you will need to remove those elements before shipping on Steam. Some options you could consider include switching to a single purchase “paid app,” or making your game free to play with optional upgrades sold via Microtransactions or Downloadable Content (DLC).”
While mandatory ad-watching tends to be associated with mobile, console and PC publishers have tried it too. 2K once added unskippable ads to NBA 2K21, for instance, rolling them back after an outcry.
The post further comments that devs “should not use advertising as a way to provide value to players, such as giving players a reward for watching or engaging with advertising in their game”.
With my shitpost hat firmly jammed down around my devil’s advocate horns, I feel that weaving an advert into a setting that absolutely doesn’t support adverts would be a thrilling designer’s challenge. “Perhaps it deserves a gamejam”, I impishly say aloud to myself, smiling at the torch-waving hordes of Steam users outside my window. Here’s some homework for the comments: how would you advertise, say, Papa Johns in The Lord Of The Rings? It shouldn’t be that tricky, really, given that the Orcs are already familiar with the concept of menus.