Players of Steam games now have to be a bit more careful and courteous when it comes to playing or else they might face some unexpected bans coming straight from game developers. The new banning mechanic is one of the recent changes coming to Steam, and it is expected to facilitate a more orderly and harmonious online environment for players.
In the past, Steam mainly relied on its built-in anti-cheating software to determine which gamers were not following the rules and were thus deserving of bans, according to Gamespot.
Usually, the software would catch players who were cheating as they were playing multplayer games, but for as effective as the anti-cheating measures in place, they were also still limited. This is because the multiplayer experience could also be affected by players who were simply being disruptive or just plain rude as they remained online, but with the change now in place, those players can now be banned as well.
Developers can even choose to install their own anti-cheating measures to curb problems for their games, but they can only do so by first informing Valve. It's worth noting that developers can choose to ban a player for any reason they may choose, and it's currently unclear whether a specific developer will even have to provide any kind of evidence indicating that a player was indeed cheating or being disruptive, according to Gamespresso.
Understandably, this is causing some gamers to grow concerned over developers possibly abusing their newfound powers to effectively pick and choose who may be able to play their games. This concern grows doubly so since players who actually do get banned via direct requests from developers can also only be reinstated by approaching the developers themselves instead of Valve, according to PC Gamer.
The only saving grace is that Valve does hold the right to strip a developer of its banning privileges if they see them being abusive.
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