When making recommendations, there are those that are paid and those that aren’t paid. Paid reviews can sometimes come off a bit biased which is why Steam has recently updated their subscriber agreement to include a provision that will force gamers to disclose whenever they are using the platform to promote a product, service, or an event.This is somewhat similar to last year’s Steam Curators where paid recommendations had to be disclosed, but now the updated subscriber event seems to apply to everyone. Presumably this might have something to do with the Steam Broadcasting platform in which we can only assume that companies such as developers and publishers might want to take advantage of it and promote their games/events.
According to the updated subscriber agreement it reads, “If you use Steam services (e.g. the Steam Curators’ Lists or the Steam Broadcasting service) to promote or endorse a product, service or event in return for any kind of consideration from a third party (including non-monetary rewards such as free games), you must clearly indicate the source of such consideration to your audience.”
As pointed out by PCGamer, this is an interesting conundrum for gamers who might have otherwise received a free game perhaps via their blog or maybe on YouTube, so does that mean even if they were to recommend it on Steam, they’d have to disclose it even though the free game code wasn’t intended for a Steam recommendation to begin with?
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