‘A violation is upon you’: Valve called out for breaking its own rules with Deadlock’s Steam store page

After months of horsing around, Valve finally made Deadlock official last week: You still can’t play it without an invitation, but at least now you can look at it on Steam. But that’s raised complaints from some quarters because it appears that Valve is rather blatantly breaking its own rules on what you can and cannot do with Steam store pages.

Okay, it’s not really “some quarters” so much as it is this one guy, but he’s putting enough effort into it to count for at least three or four guys:

“I AM NOT LAUGHING AND THIS IS NOT A JOKE,” 3DGlyptics tweeted in response to someone who said the complaint was funny—and for the record we don’t normally do all-caps quotations, but I’m rolling with it here because, well, it’s funny. “VALVE SOFTWARE IS ACTIVELY VIOLATING THEIR OWN RULES – STORE PAGE SUBMISSIONS REQUIRE A MINIMUM OF 5 SCREENSHOTS – REVIEW PROCESS HAS BEEN INTENTIONALLY BYPASSED – I AM NOT LAUGHING.”

I am laughing, frankly, but the complaint is actually legit: The Steamworks documentation states plain as day that developers “must provide at least five screenshots of your product” on Steam store pages. The Deadlock Steam page has no screens at all, just a single, 22-second teaser—a clear violation of Valve’s own rules.

Now, you might be saying to yourself that Valve can get away with this because, obviously, Valve owns Steam and so it can do whatever the hell it wants. But 3DGlyptics is already ahead of you on that one, arguing that Valve has been established by precedent as a Steamworks Partner, and is thus subject to the Steamworks rules. That novel argument arises from a March 2024 sale on The Orange Box, during which Valve added a “winner of over 100 awards” sticker to the header art on its Steam page.

This too is against Valve’s rules for Steam, which forbids review scores, award names, and “discount marketing copy” on graphical asset capsules. And in this case, Valve employee Tom Giardino copped to the mistake and Valve fixed it quickly, ensuring that it was in full compliance with the rules.

(Image credit: cs_deathmatch/tomgvalve (Twitter))

What’s great here is that 3DGlyptics is at least technically correct, which as we all know is the best kind of correct: Valve, having previously indicated that it is subject to Steam’s rules just like everyone else, is now blatantly ignoring Steam’s rules. Can anything be done about it? Probably not. But even if Valve considers itself above the petty consideration of rules—bah!—we can all hold ourselves to a higher standard—much like 3DGlyptics is doing:

For the record, 3DGlyptics’ in-the-works game BC Piezophile, a “first-person action horror game set deep underwater,” looks intensely weird and possibly very cool: It doesn’t have a release date yet but it’s up for wishlisting now, and in full accordance with the rules, on Steam.

I’ve reached out to Valve for comment on Deadlock’s blatant store page violations and will update if I receive a reply.

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