Steam calls External Ads “Dumb”

Steam calls External Ads “Dumb”

It has often been suggested that Valve could make a lot of money, at least on the short term, by selling and delivering external ads to steam users for products like Mountain Dew and other non-Steam products.

In an interview with GameSpot Valve’s Erik Johnson stated that Steam is not considering adding external ads to the service as it would do nothing to serve the consumer and simply irritate PC gamers. He said that building ads into Steam would cost money and create a big negative in the eyes of consumers, so it would ultimately lose Valve money in the long term. 

  “We don’t see a case for that ever getting user value, 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.”

“We tend to focus on long-term relationships. It would be a bad business decision, let alone just dumb.”

“Ads don’t serve any value to costumers.”

It is great that Valve is considering the long game when it comes to Steam, considering brand perception over easy short term money-grab.

You can join the discussion on Valve’s stance against in-Steam ads on the OC3D Forums.  

Valve has called adding external advertisements on steam “dumb”. http://t.co/Oc9x7XTv8U pic.twitter.com/ClmViyQWOv

— OC3D (@OC3D) October 17, 2015