Valve’s deadlock appears to have violated the rules of its own Steam store page.
After weeks of not talking about Deadlock, despite attracting tens of thousands of players at the same time, Valve finally officially announced Deadlock last week. As first reported by PC GamerThe following tweet states that Valve violated the Steam store page rules it created by not submitting five in-game screenshots of Deadlock for its own store page.
ATTENTION, VALVE SOFTWARE. YOU ARE VIOLATING YOUR OWN DEADLOCK STORE PAGE RULES. ATTENTION, VALVE SOFTWARE. ATTENTION, VALVE SOFTWARE. ATTENTION, VALVE SOFTWARE. ATTENTION, VALVE SOFTWARE. ATTENTION, VALVE SOFTWARE. ATTENTION, VALVE SOFTWARE. ATTENTION, VALVE SOFTWARE. ATTENTION, VALVE SOFTWARE. pic.twitter.com/jb73cqYyG224 August 2024
This is pretty funny, even if the Twitter user is “NOT LAUGHING,” and even if the whole thing is technically correct. “Screenshots will appear on your store page and other pages where your game may be featured, such as the Steam homepage. You must provide at least 5 screenshots of your product,” Valve’s own terms in the Steamworks documentation state.
Well, yes, it’s worth noting that these rules technically apply to Steamworks partners. Is Valve actually a Steamworks partner if it owns the entire platform? Well, it’s also worth noting that Valve previously violated its own terms by using an award sticker on an image for The Orange Box, and summarily removed said award sticker for violating the rules.
This precedent, which Valve itself has set, assumes that Valve is technically a Steamworks partner and therefore must abide by Steamworks’ rules. The funny thing about this whole situation is that we all rely on Valve to, well, police Valve.
Although Deadlock’s player base was “limited to friend invites from our playtesters” at the time of writing, it was able to climb to 64,000 concurrent players on Steam in the last few days. Sony’s new Concord, on the other hand, was unable to reach 700 concurrent players on PC, showing the ups and downs of live service games.
Check out our best MOBAs Guide to seeing the all-time classics Valve is taking on in its brand new hero shooter.
