Steam cracks down on vague and unfulfilled DLCs and Season Passes

Steam, the world’s largest PC gaming platform, is truly a pioneer. It recently established new rules for age ratings in games and made it clear that you don’t own the games you buy. Now, the platform wants to crack down on misleading DLCs and Season Passes.

Specifically, the crackdown focuses on how developers communicate upcoming content for their games and what they’re allowed to promise. Failure to honor and deliver their advertised promises could have serious consequences for the games in question.

The new rules for DLCs and Season Passes

Many developers on Steam already utilize the option to expand game content via DLCs and Season Passes, and those usually cost money to unlock. Sometimes, you might even buy a DLC or Season Pass ahead of a game’s release to secure future promised content.

However, there are obvious risks to doing that. Some developers are deliberately vague about what exactly they’ll deliver, and others may never deliver at all.

Steam wants to change this via updated official guidelines. Games with additional content must fulfill the following requirements:

• A complete list of all DLC included in Season Passes
• A basic description of the content included in each DLC
• An expected release date for each DLC (listed as the year, quarter, or exact date if possible)

Furthermore, a Season Pass may not be released without at least one additional piece of content being made available.

According to Steam, it isn’t necessary to name all of the additional content exactly. However, the spirit here is to give buyers a rough idea of what they’re getting for their money.

What happens if devs don’t comply?

These new guidelines are good news for players. They provide more certainty about what you’ll get before you buy, and it’s especially nice that Steam now gives you the right to be compensated for missing content or unfulfilled promises.

However, non-compliance with these new guidelines can have other consequences for developers. They’re allowed to postpone the release of a DLC by up to three months, but it can only be done once. Steam can intervene in the event of further postponements:

“Even if there has not yet been a customer complaint, Valve may take action if you delay a DLC more than a quarter (3 months) beyond the release window you originally promised.

Actions include removing the Season Pass from sale on Steam, refunding all customers who purchased the Season Pass for the value of unreleased DLC, or allowing customers the option of refunding the entire Season Pass. For the purposes of refunds, the value of unreleased DLC will be decided in discussion with Valve.

Valve may also take action if your Season Pass content is not released after one year has passed. Actions may include refunds to customers and removing the Season Pass from sale on Steam.”

And if a developer ever cancels or fails to release a DLC in a Season Pass, you’ll be offered a refund for the value of that unreleased DLC.

Furthermore, Steam reserves the right to decide which developers are allowed to offer DLC content on Steam. Trusted partners can continue to monetize their content, but new or smaller developers could quickly run into problems if they fail to deliver on time.