With new policies and changes coming to Steam, it seems that the platform is going to take some stern measures to provide the customers with exactly what they have seen in the trailers/pictures before they buy a game.
The upcoming “Discovery Update 2.0” for Steam will bring in a new policy according to which the publishers of a game will have to put up in-game screen shots and not concept art or pre-rendered materials.
According to a copy of update notes sent to Eurogamer, Polygon and other, Valve stated, “Regardless of the content in your game, please make sure that images uploaded to the ‘screenshot’ section of your store page are actually screenshots of your game,”
“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. 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,” Further adding, “Additionally, we’re going to start showing game screenshots in more places as described above, and these images need to be able to represent the game.
“We ask that any images you upload to the ‘screenshot’ section of your store page should be screenshots that show your game. This means avoiding using concept art, pre-rendered cinematic stills, or images that contain awards, marketing copy, or written product descriptions. Please show customers what your game is actually like to play.”
Even the hugely popular MOBA, Dota 2 was mentioned in the copy saying, “Dota 2 is an example of where we were doing it wrong ourselves. We’re now in the process of updating Dota 2 to use screenshots of the game rather than artwork.”
This might have something to do with the No Man’s Sky fiasco, wherein consumers claimed that the game did not meet up to their expectation as shown in the images and videos. The update is slated to roll out in a few weeks.