New Steam Changes Improve the Season Pass Model

At this point, Steam has become synonymous with PC. More often than not, any new game, both indie or AAA, will use Valve's storefront to find their customers.

Steam's momentum and dominance are such that it's not rare to hear people accuse Valve of having a monopoly. Critics will cite their steep 30% cut as deeply harmful, while others tend to highlight the amount of features and services that this cut offers.

Today, the argument sways towards the latter once again. On bsky, Pavel "xPaw" Djundik, the creator of steamdb, has posted about Valve's new guidelines for Season Pass content.

There's a lot to go over, but here are a few features that are worth highlighting:

• All DLCs must be listed in advance
• Said DLCs must include a short description of what they will include
• DLCs must have a rough release date
• If the company fails to deliver, or cancels one of the DLCs, the price for that piece of content will be refunded

Some have already expressed a concern that this could take away the "surprise" for fighting game season passes. However, checking the guidelines in more detail, developers wouldn't necessarily need to disclose which character is coming. In theory, they could simply have a temporary DLC name, rough release date, and a description that is as vague as "adds a new character."

But to be honest, do people actually want the surprise in their season passes? Just my two cents here, but it sure seems more consumer-friendly to actually know what you spend money on before it actually releases. Seems to work just fine for Arc System Works.