Adverts on Steam? No thanks, says Valve

Valve’s PC platform Steam looks to remain out-of-bounds for advertising partners for the foreseeable future.

One of the key ways Steam differs from the likes of PSN and Xbox Live is that partners are not able to pay for advertising space within the interface. That seems unlikely to change, too.

"We don’t see a case for that ever getting user value," Valve’s Erik Johnson told GameSpot when asked if a product like Doritos might ever be advertised on Steam. "So we wouldn’t do it. I don’t think that those ever work, either. To take it a step further, I don’t think anybody buys Doritos as a result of that.

"It would be a bad business decision, let alone just dumb. Ads don’t serve any value to customers. We tend to focus on long-term relationships."

Johnson added that Valve’s current efforts are focused on improving game discovery for customers. With a library of over 6,000 titles currently on offer, and the rate of releases increasing all the time, the company is developing new algorithms to help users cut through the clutter.