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It could take a while to get your game on Steam for the next few months

It could take a while to get your game on Steam for the next few months

Despite Valve's 'anything goes' policy on Steam, some developers are still having a hard time getting on the platform.

The developer behind adult visual novels Highschool Romance, Negligee and Beauty Bounce Dharker Studios posted on the Steam forums saying that it was taking a long time to submit one of its projects.

As captured by GamaSutra, the game maker said that this was the 18th title it had tried to get onto Steam but this time around it's taking much longer than normal.

This project has failed Valve's automated test, despite Dharker's insistence that there is nothing wrong with the submitted build.

“We’re right in the middle of building some features into Steam for customers to be able to choose the type of products they see in the store,” said Valve rep Sean Jenkin.

“Your game has content in it that needs these features to be completed and shipped first. You’ll have to do some additional store page workaround describing the content in your game once we have completed those features. We don’t have an exact timeline for those features though, so please be patient as we complete the work.”

Pressed for a more definitive timeframe, Jenkin continued saying: "Assume months at this point. The work is progressing, but not close enough to give a time frame."

Back in July, Steam was blocking adult games from launching on the platform. That followed Valve pulling a number of adult-themed visual novels from Steam in May, around the time that users could purchase a school shooting game.

In the aftermath of that mess, Valve announced that it was adopting a more laissez-faire approach to its platform, allowing anything that was not illegal or "trolling", whatever the hell that means.

Probably inadvertently, this move to further open up the Steam platform has made it a more inhospitable place for game developers - studios now need to fight that bit harder to get attention.

Speaking to PCGamesInsider.biz recently, Devolver Digital's Andrew Parsons said that Steam was a harder nut to crack, but that quality games would have their time to shine even if that isn't on Day One.

Sergey Galyonkin also told PCGamesInsider.biz that letting anything onto the platform was fine - but Valve needs to give better tools for users to control what users see.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.