My take on Valves Changes (around the start of Steam Direct)

Steam Direct, Valve strikes back against bad actors

Changes to Steam Trading Cards

Changes to Steam Key Generations

Changes to the Gifting System

Changes to Limited User Accounts

Removing the barrier to Steam’s Storefront

The Effects of the Changes

The Positive

The Negative

Conclusion: My Theory on how Valve Operates

Note: This will be lengthy but I have provided TL;DRs for each section inMy belief is that once Greenlight had been corrupted beyond the point of it being worth saving, Valve decided to look deeper into their platform and find what made scammers profitable. What Valve discovered were several things: trading cards, massive steam keys being generated, the gifting system, bot accounts, and the barrier to the Steam store itself. I will explain each of these and point out how Valve decided to counter it.So during Greenlights run, developers could give any game that got greenlit having trading cards on release. Some developers would make arrangements (either for profit or in exchange for being greenlit) with giveaway groups or bot farmers, where they would give them a massive amount of steam keys. The games being greenlit typically had trading cards enabled, which gave the games an added value where the trading cards could be farmed and then turned into profit through various methods (which despite an effort or two from Valve still persist today). Valve at some point probably realized that some of the low effort games being put on greenlight were for the sole purpose of turning them into trading card farms. This led to Valve’s decision to change the way that trading cards get enabled for new games on Steam (they also explained this in their blog post on it). Note how this change was implemented before Steam Direct launched. This change wouldn’t completely deter scammers, but it would severely hinder their efforts and make it difficult to be profitable. That being said the influx of hentai puzzle games (that require little effort to make) shows how these people adapted, which in turn made Valve make another change (their stance on adult games and making an integrated system for that).In August of 2017 (a few months into Steam Direct) it was leaked that Valve were cracking down on developers that were requesting massive amounts of Steam keys, out of line with their sales. This new policy being initiated not too long after the switch to Steam Direct (the Steamworks comment was in August 2017, Steam Direct launched in June/July 2017), I feel shows Valve’s commitment to staying on top of their new system and making sure they limit any opportunities for abuse and manipulation as much as possible. I feel that this goes especially for any greenlight titles that were grandfathered in to being allowed to have Steam trading Cards. Valve either saw or knew that because of the new restrictions Steam Direct titles have on their ability to enable trading cards, bad actors on Steam would then continually keep generating keys for their older titles that have trading cards enabled.Another change that valve made before or around Steam directs launch was changing the way the gifting system worked on. The old gifting system had three options: you could buy the game then send it directly to your friends inventory (they could choose to redeem it or just keep it there), buy the game and send the key via email, or buy the game and keep it in your inventory to be later given out. While all of these options were great for consumers, they were unfortunately abused by scammers. Basically, what would happen is that people would buy popular games for extremely cheap during a sale and stock up on them, then sell them later which is operating a steam key reselling business on the steam platform (and insult to Valve) and that’s biting the hand that feeds. I also suspect (cant confirm) that the steam keys bought and stocked up on during those sales (perhaps through the email method) could also be sold on G2A, another thing that Valve wants no part in enabling. Valve changed the gifting system completely in May of 2017 by making it to where when you gift a game to someone it sends the game to them and they can either accept it into their library or reject it, rejection of the gift will result in a refund for the purchaser. Notice that this change was implemented before Steam Directs launch (in May of 2017 the same month as other another change).One subtle changed not announced by Valve was fixing what I presume was an exploit/loophole that card farmers used for their bot accounts. In June of 2017 Valve reimplemented/fixed/updated their system which led to card farmers suddenly finding their bot farms being unable to drop trading cards anymore without each account spending $5. While Valve had always put accounts that didn’t spend $5 on into limited account status (which limits the accounts from things like trading card drops among other things), trading card farmers had found a way to bypass that restriction by using old steam user accounts which didn’t have the $5 restriction apply to it until Valve implemented a change that seemed to patch the exploit, forcing card farms to pay $5 per bot account in order to gain access to trading card drops. This also affected legitimate Steam users as well who buy games with the money they made selling items on the Steam market. Despite Valves patch, trading card farming is still somewhat profitable, but thanks to Valves patch, it is less so.The biggest blow to some of the bad actors (which also affected everyone else) was Valve removing the barrier to entry for the Steam store front, which ultimately made the bad actors who played the role as artificial gatekeepers useless as their sole existence up to that point was guaranteeing developers to help their game pass steam greenlight, but now developers could do it themselves at the cost of $100 (per game). As I mentioned before, think of the prohibition era, and all that it entailed, such as the rise of mobsters and their control over a substance that was made illegal, and how once that substance was legalized, they couldn’t make much profit off of it anymore. The same basic principle applies the Steam Greenlight and Steam Direct. Remove the barrier to entry, and you put the people who made a business of passing people through it, out of business.As I look back, now two years later, I have seen effects of the changes they made. The number of cheap steam key stores whose sole existence was to sell to card farmers has dropped immensely. Most have shut down with the exception of a few of the more successful ones. The number of websites that sell steam key and steam key bundles have also dropped as well, sites like indie game stand and otaku maker bundle have gone out of business. The sites like star bundle (now Fanatical) and IndieGala work directly with publishers and developers. The “publishers” and extortionists have nothing to offer indie devs other than false and (hopefully) obvious BS advertising schemes that by now are known to be BS. Giveaway groups still exist but most of them have had their activity die down, (they still do giveaways but nothing like key for votes). It becomes harder for card farmers to be more profitable (they still are just requires more work and effort).Of course the changes Valve made didn’t only just affect the bad actors. The most obvious effect felt by indie devs is a flooded market, asset flippers can clog up the new release queue, it is difficult for indie devs with no marketing budget or knowledge to gain traction on Steam. Thanks to the trading card changes bad actors have found somewhat of a work around that being simple hentai puzzle games (because sex sells). In turn Valve had to update their system with an Adults Only tag/age gate section. Of course Valve it would be an expensive and complicated task of curating the store, Valve rely on the community and algorithms to do so, which means controversial games like Rape Day end up with store pages visible for the public to see and for a media outrage to happen (understandably so).Valve are more reactive than proactive (Damnit Mellow, I coined that phrase!). They will continue to work on their own projects that involve updating, improving, and, maintenance of the Steam store. They will only make a quick move if an issue becomes a public outcry (the controversial game titles) or an outcry from developers (SteamDB complimentary package activations, adult visual novel games, etc). They also react to the outcry of AAA companies (the changes to the steam reviews, new platform sales cut, off topic review bombing). Other than that, Valve move at their own pace, I suspect they have a list of bad actors that during an off day they address a few of them, (hence multiple games/developers being banned on the same day). They put out new systems then wait until they have enough data to change or improve it (the discovery and recommendation methods, steam curator changes). In the case of Steam Greenlight and Steam Direct they took the lessons they learned from Greenlight and applied that to Steam Direct. Valve sometimes seems to be Smaug, sleeping on their dragon horde’s pile of gold, occasionally going out and burning bandit camps or making improvements to its kingdom every 6 months (not always successful improvements).