Valve is doing right by fans by telling developers to remove bullshots from their store pages. Only screenshots that show a game's content exactly as it is will be allowed on a game's page, which is a huge win for gamers, who are often misled by the bullshot practice.
The most egregious example of this no longer belongs to Ubisoft, instead going to Hello Games' No Man's Sky. The steam page makes use of footage and screenshots from past E3 trailers showing off features that have never been in the real game. Such as: The promised space battles, strafing runs in your spaceship, factions, dense foliage, and intricate ecosystems. Fans are justifiably angry that none of these features (Plus multiplatyer!) ever made the game, but are still being used to advertise No Man's Sky on store pages.
Thankfully, Valve is taking steps to squash the bullshot practice on their digital distribution platform. On top of that, Valve has stepped up and admitted to the fault of using misleading screenshots in the past, while promising to make changes to their pages in accordance with the new gameplay-only rule being implemented in the Discovery Update 2.0:
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.
With the Discovery Update 2.0 coming in "a few weeks," perhaps Sean Murray's lies are going to change the industry after all.
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