Steam has announced new rules from Valve headquarters regarding what developers can and cannot include in the description section of a game's store page. The new guidelines, which Valve will implement starting in early September, are intended to curb the recent trend of store page descriptions being bloated with links to other games and websites.

Starting in September, developers will no longer be able to put links to other websites or Steam game listings in most of their store page descriptions. In addition, embedding images that mimic parts of Steam's UI will be prohibited, so hilarious GIFs like clicking on a wish list button with a cursor will no longer be allowed.

In a blog post on Steamworks, Valve stated that “more and more store pages look like ads for other store pages on Steam. As a result, users who visit a game's store page and want to learn more about that game may be confused to find that they must first sort through links and banners to the publisher's other products. If there is a “related product, you can set up a bundle, franchise, or developer home page.

In conjunction with the July update on how demos are displayed on Steam, the new rule changes will also help address the recent “prologue game” phenomenon. Recently, some developers and publishers have been trying to raise their visibility by releasing demos of upcoming games as individual Steam game listings. On a personal note, if the day ever comes when I no longer have to wonder if the promising game I'm looking at is a demo in a trench coat, this change will be worth it.

The July change already allowed developers to post game demos on their own store pages. Now that store page descriptions can no longer link to other pages, publishing a prologue game would theoretically be more trouble than it is worth.

“We do not prohibit naming a product ‘prologue,’” Valve stated.

Fortunately, developers need not worry about facing some punishment from on high if they fail to extract the link from the page. When the rule goes into effect in early September, Valve will roll out an update to Steam that will automatically detect and hide links in the relevant sections.