Valve Closes ‘Upcoming Release’ Loophole on Steam

While many people at the moment are quite happily trying to find any flaw possible with the Epic Games Store (be they real or imagined) it still shouldn’t be forgotten that Steam, despite being around for over 15 years now, still is a long way from being perfect!

One such example of this is how Steam, for a very long time, would allow developers to summarily change the release date of their game. A factor which has been exploited by many. Albeit, mostly low-mid tier releases. In a report via Eurogamer, however, it has been confirmed that following many user requests, changing a games release date on their platform is now going to require a good reason!

Valve Closes Steam Release Date Loophole

So, you might at this point be wondering how this could’ve possibly been exploited? Well, Steam does have a list of all upcoming game releases on their platform. It was, however, found that many people were deliberately announcing a release date within a 4 week period to keep their game consistently towards the top of that list. When the date was about to expire, they’d simply change it again and repeat.

This could happen even if the game wasn’t officially due to release for many months (and possibly years).

What Has Valve done?

Valve has now changed this system on their Steam platform. Put simply, while developers can still change their release date, it will now have to be manually approved. In addition, they will also have to give a (presumably good) reason. This should, all going well, close off this loophole of regularly changing dates just to keep a title popular and relevant on the ‘coming soon’ list.

What do you think? Were you aware that this was a regularly held practice on Steam? Do you know of any good examples of games that were regularly delayed like this? – Let us know in the comments!