Valve Opens Up About Banning Devs on Steam, “Happens All the Time”

Developers manipulating reviews and false hype is nothing new, but the Steam community does get hit with this less than honest surge of feedback quite a bit. Though the reasoning behind this move is pretty straight forward, it turns out that it really doesn’t do anything to boost sales and can actually result in a permanent ban. Valve recently opened up about their policy regarding this practice, even mentioning that it happens “all the time.”

The impromptu public statement actually resulted from a Twitter interaction when Steam Business Team member Tom Giardino repsonded to Cliff Harris, the founder of Gratuitous Space Battles:

“I would never do this, but I’m not sure everyone is as honest. In all products/stores (not just Steam), review scores cannot be taken seriously without some heavy duty verification they are not shills.” To which Giardinoresponded that it’s “really easy” for them to see which developers try to manipulate the system, even providing bullet point responses for ease of access:

• We ban games and partners all the time for this
• It’s really easy for us to see it when you do, even if you do it slowly
• User reviews don’t broadly correlate to sales or visibility the way developers assume they do

We’ve reported several review manipulation stories in the past with developers and it really does seem like it would be easy to spot. With Steam having such a huge indie market, it is understandable why some developers would feel the need to do this – especially when game visibility is low. That being said, it is good to see that Valve is keeping a close eye on this, given that it is ultimately dishonest to the consumer base and does not provide an accurate gauge regarding what a player can expect when purchasing a digital title.

What are your thoughts on Valve’s policy? Good thinking, or not needed? Sound off below!