Steam decrees that developers must tell players what anti-cheat their games use

Another update to store pages

Valve

Valve has been very active when it comes to updating Steam’s store pages this year and its latest decree will add yet more useful information for potential customers to the storefront – developers will need to disclose the type of anti-cheat provider they use for their games.

This is not only an initiative from Valve, though – apparently, studios themselves pushed for a better way to disclose this information on Steam. Players, too, want more transparency in this regard these days.

“We've heard from more and more developers recently that they're looking for the right way to share anti-cheat information about their game with players,” Valve wrote. “At the same time, players have been requesting more transparency around the anti-cheat services used in games, as well as the existence of any additional software that will be installed within the game.”

A new field on the store page will allow developers to provide this information. Crucially, this will enable players to see whether a game uses kernel level anti-cheat.

Although kernel level anti-cheat promises better protection against cheaters in online games, this type of software requires deep access to a user’s PC and could be used to spy on them, which has led to widespread criticism of its use among players.

“If your game contains a client or server based anti-cheat that is not kernel based, submitting the field is optional but we generally think that any game that makes use of anti-cheat technology would benefit from letting players know,” Valve added.

It will be a while before all games released before this change will have updated their pages with the relevant information, but titles launching on the platform in the future will have to fill in the relevant information as part of the approval process.

Earlier this year, Steam changed how demos work, added PlayStation controller support, and revamped its game-sharing system for families.