Valve have updated the developer guidelines for releasing a game on Steam, making it clear that the scourge of mobile gaming advertising-based business models are not going to work on Steam.There's a new advertising page in the public Steamworks documentation that goes over what is and isn't allowed. What's allowed is as you might expect like games can have real-world product placement, cross-promotions with other games are fine and paid advertising outside of Steam is also fine.What they've done here is completely ban paid advertising getting in your way inside the games. As their rules state now:Not SupportedDevelopers 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).Developers 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.Developers should not charge other developers for access to Steam features. These include sale pages, bundles, store pages, franchise pages, etc.The onboarding page has also been updated to add "Applications with advertising-based business models" to the list, which also includes their previous ban on "blockchain technology that issue or allow exchange of cryptocurrencies or NFTs" that came in 2021.What this doesn't do is stop developers throwing up a big advert for another of their games, that's fine, this is specifically about the business model you often see on mobile platforms. Imagine when you go into a game, want to unlock a feature or do anything, but it tells you to watch an advert first before you can proceed. That's what Valve are putting a stop to here.I've never personally experienced a game that did that on Steam, although I'm sure some developers have tried it. But it's a huge and annoying thing in mobile games. Glad to see it just won't ever be a thing on Steam.Valve have done a lot of really consumer-positive changes over the last few years like making sure developers note kernel-level anti-cheat, a recent change of noting Early Access games that aren't being updated, a proper Season Pass system that includes more complete info and refunds for missing DLC content and more.Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.