Valve forbids external links in Steam pages
pcgamesinsider.bizGames firm Valve is changing how Steam store pages operate.
In a post on its website, the company said that developers and publishers will no longer be able to have external links in store descriptions. This includes social media pages and links to other games on Steam. Furthermore, companies will no longer be able to have embedded imagery that imitates store UI or buttons such as wishlist buttons.
These new limitations apply to the 'About the game', 'Short description', 'Special announcements' and 'Awards' sections of the store page.
These changes come into effect in early September.
"We didn't like the trend of store pages linking prominently off to other store pages," Valve wrote.
"We have been seeing more and more store pages that are effectively advertisements for other store pages on Steam. This meant that on some game pages in the Steam store, you would find lists of 2, 3, or even 8 other games before you even got to read the description of the game you were looking at. We don't think that's great for customers trying to learn about a game on Steam and so we wanted to update the rules to prohibit games from using the written description area for linking to other games on Steam.
"However, there is one particular interesting use case of this cross linking that we wanted to continue supporting, which is the 'prologue' scenario. So that leads us to point number 2. (Sequels and franchises are also an interesting use of cross-linking, but Steam already has other features such as bundles or franchise pages to address that need)."
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