What about trailers? Does that also apply?

Cars 2 on Steam needs to do this asap. One of the most misleading screenshots for a game on Steam.

Good. One small blow to false advertising.

What about trailers? Does that also apply?

Baby steps.

Baby steps.

Unless they enforce trailers too, you know what will happen 10 CG rendered videos, 1 screenshot at the end

I hope they require final or close to final screenshots and not "vertical slices" the latest of which was no man's crap.

Great. I mean even that Battlefield 1 is not the real game - no reason why they couldn't have used ingame shots from Battlefield 1.

This is a guideline. Not a rule. No one is required to adhere to this. The title is wrong. It doesn't look like Steam will require in-game screenshots. It will simply suggest developers to use in-game screenshots.

^^ exactly. the "require" in the title should be changed to "request" or "ask".

I don't see anywhere in any article where it says they request it and not require it. Statement Hilbert posted has been the same everywhere else too, so sounds like they are forcing it.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/284639/Valve_cracks_down_on_Steam_store_screenshots_ahead_of_Discovery_20_update.php

Action required for upcoming store update A couple weeks ago, we announced some upcoming changes to the Steam store. For the sake of clarity, we’ll call this upcoming update the “Discovery Update 2.0”. Discovery Update 2.0 is still a couple weeks away from going live, but we are asking developers to take action—if applicable—to update your game store pages to take full advantage of the new store once it’s live. I’m going to use the term “game” here, but this call to action applies to all products on Steam whether game, software, video, DLC, or demo. There are two specific actions we’re asking for here, which may or may not apply to your game, as I’ll describe in detail below. The two actions are: 1. If you have a game that contains mature content, please indicate which of your screenshots (if any) are appropriate for a broader audience. 2. Regardless of the content in your game, please make sure that images uploaded to the ‘screenshot’ section of your store page are actually screenshots of your game. Request 1: Please flag appropriate screenshots The cornerstone of Discovery Update 2.0 is a new set of user preferences, allowing users to see more of what they like and less of what they are not interested in or find offensive. Steam is a global marketplace, serving customers with a wide variety of personal tastes, preferences, and their own set of objections to different kinds of content. For example, some users are more sensitive to nudity or sexual content. Other users are more sensitive to gore or excessive violence. Some users don’t care at all either way. We want to be able to respect all those tastes and objections. Discovery Update 2.0 will introduce ways of showing off games in interesting new ways to customers prominently on the home page. In some cases this will involve showing customers a few screenshots of the product on the Steam home page. This runs into an issue when screenshots contain potentially sensitive material such as excessive gore, nudity, or sexual themes. This content can be surprising and potentially offensive when shown to users without warning. So, we’d like a better idea of which screenshots you have of your content that can be shown to a broader audience, and which screenshots should just be visible on your store page for users that are interested in investigating further. For that reason, we’ve added a checkbox for you to indicate which of your screenshots are appropriate for a broader audience of a variety of ages. You can find this in the ‘edit store’ section of the Steamworks website for your game. You can have as many screenshots as you like on your store page, but please select this checkbox for at least four screenshots that are suitable for broad audiences so your game can appear to customers in the most possible ways. This action is crucial if your game has a 17+ age-gate applied, or is marked as containing mature content. If your game doesn’t meet that criteria, this action is not required. But setting this option will tell Steam to prefer showing those selected screenshots in some places. Request 2: Please use screenshots to show your game We haven’t been super crisp on guidelines for screenshots in the past, so we’d like to take this opportunity to clarify some rules in this space. When the ‘screenshot’ section of a store page is used for images other than screenshots that depict the game, it can make it harder for customers to understand what the product is that they are looking at. Additionally, we’re going to start showing game screenshots in more places as described above, and these images need to be able to represent the game. We ask that any images you upload to the ‘screenshot’ section of your store page should be screenshots that show your game. This means avoiding using concept art, pre-rendered cinematic stills, or images that contain awards, marketing copy, or written product descriptions. Please show customers what your game is actually like to play. For elements such as marketing copy, awards you’d like to show off, or descriptions of your Deluxe Edition, we ask that you use the specific spaces already available on your store page to put that content rather than including it in your screenshots. Dota 2 is an example of where we were doing it wrong ourselves. We’re now in the process of updating Dota 2 to use screenshots of the game rather than artwork. "

Full statement. 🙂 (And yeah, request 1 and request 2 but they'd like to see it followed.) (Whether that goes for indie developer #9001 or also oh I don't know, Codemasters? Ubisoft? well we'll see.)

I don't see anywhere in any article where it says they request it and not require it. Statement Hilbert posted has been the same everywhere else too, so sounds like they are forcing it.

"We ask that any images you upload to the 'screenshot' section of your store page should be screenshots that show your game." From the news item, is what I took to be a request...

What's the point of making a request if it's not reinforced? That's like saying to a criminal "please don't stab people for heroin". Game devs are out there to make money. Y'know why they use these "better-than-advertised" screenshots? Because they look nice, and will convince people to buy the game. They're already doing something somewhat dishonest to begin with, so do you really think they're going to listen to Valve because they asked? If this is enforced then that's fantastic. I have encountered way too many games on Steam where I'm like "I just want to see what the gameplay is like". But now that I really think about it, maybe those games really weren't worth buying if the devs had that hard of a time showing actual footage.

There's little use in asking them to use screenshots form the game when the game looks like crap after it's release, being downgraded in different ways. Until then the preorders will skyrocket with most of the hyped games, and what you get eventually doesn't live up to the screenshots still. I can't avoid to think about NMS, sorry to bring this up, but nothing in steam's requests would have helped in such a situation.

This is such a good thing. No wonder people pirate games. You see awesome breathtaking images of the game and once you spewed out the money, then you realize that it was all false images. Good work Steam.

um that should be given, no one care what the concept art looks like they want to know what games look like

this video about ubisoft E3 vs release says all about company marketing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNter0oEYxc

Good - sick and tired of seeing 3D graphics and then realising it's a 2D game...

"We ask that any images you upload to the 'screenshot' section of your store page should be screenshots that show your game." From the news item, is what I took to be a request...

Some gaming media (I think it was PC Gamer) raised this issue a just while a go about Valves "rules". There is simply no punishment when not following them. The only case where Valve has acted was the recent lawsuit case where Valve claimed to protect their customers but clearly kicked the publisher out because they worked against Valve. Those who work only against Valves end users are not punished for doing so :/

This is a guideline. Not a rule. No one is required to adhere to this. The title is wrong. It doesn't look like Steam will require in-game screenshots. It will simply suggest developers to use in-game screenshots.

Yup seems about right, guideline means that it comes down to the developer to adhere to the guideline and everyone else to report or pull them up if they aren't. If it's a hard and fast rule it means Valve have to police it and my god we know how much Valve don't want to have to do ANY sort of work when it comes to vetting what it puts on it's store front.

maybe the real problem here is people being conned into thinking they have to use the bloated vaporware that is steam. false advertising, and a broke ass rating system where games only elevate in rating because they're listed first, or get trolled to death in the woefully un moderated forums because of 1 trolling joke developers can suffer and die. it's no wonder the useless steam top 10 list is always full of crap first person shooters and random BS games no one would otherwise ever play (and don't get me wrong I do appreciate indie dev, which can survive w/o steam). here's an idea, if you don't like steam, don't use it. just google stuff on amazon to find what you like, buy the actual physical media which you can appreciate or resell instead of feeling like you're forced to install this utterly useless piece of crap software like a herd of cows following each other off a cliff. I have even googled 'what is the point of steam?' and have yet to find a valid answer. all I find are articles on steam causing the death of the PC gaming market and people desperately looking for solutions to yet another useless layer of software screwing things up and complaining about their complete lack of customer service because valve has a 'f off and do w/e you want just play all day' policy where their useless employees find new ways to bloat the UI and add features that nobody asked for instead of much needed customer service on basic features which no one wants to do or delegating the tiny fraction of people's hard earned money hiring people to do it... I never have, and I never will use steam. it has always reeked of scam and bloatware to me and everything my bf complains about and I have read on forums affirms this suspicion. steam reminds of those severely irritating pop ups you run into on dark corners of the internet that forcefully shove an ad in your face, beeping and screaming at you that you need to just click once and run a scan for viruses you don't have. they were probably forced to ask this of devs after being flooded with complaints and hopefully lawsuits for making a fortune on false advertising. yep. sure was a lawsuit. "Some screens shown on No Man’s Sky’s Steam page contained features players have yet to encounter in the game. In September, angered consumers successfully lobbied the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority to investigate Hello Games on grounds of false advertising." -from a polygon article the 6th comment in this very thread was complaining about this title lol. but yea Steam's all "let's deceive people into thinking that was a design decision. they'll eat that crap. they eat anything." like a typical greedy useless corporation exploiting other people's hard work and money and hiding/excusing their criminal offenses as if it's some bright idea of their own ...so dumb.