Valve stopped juggling release dates on Steam. Now game developers will not be able to postpone the release of the game in the store without Valve’s approval.
An employee of an unnamed indie publisher HeadlessIvan shared on Reddit a screenshot of the message he received when trying to change the release date on Steam:
“If you want to change the [release] date, please tell Valve the reason for the postponement and the new desired date. You have to be sure that you will release the game on the specified day.”
As Gamesindustry writes.biz, the explanation for this step by Valve may be as follows. Developers on Steam often postpone the release dates of their games so that the store system automatically places them in the “Popular future Products” section on the main page. They do this in order to attract users’ attention to their games. Meanwhile, games whose release is really on the nose are lost in the general flow.
The head of No More Robots, Mike Rose, previously drew attention to this problem. Then he described the situation as a “manipulative mess” and said that the developers were abusing the system.
But perhaps Valve has another reason to tighten the rules. Recently, a number of developers have signed contracts for the temporary exclusivity of their games in the Epic Games Store. At the same time, they transfer releases to Steam for six months or a year (depending on the period specified in the contract with epics). Valve hardly likes the situation, and therefore it could prohibit unauthorized date transfers.
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