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Steam curators must now disclose they get paid for endorsements

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

Valve recently introduced its Steam Curators, a new discovery service where gamers can publish recommendations on what games to buy. But to ensure no one abuses the system, the digital-distribution and publishing giant is now asking its Curators to disclose if a company paid them to make any recommendations.

The move is aimed at avoid the controversy that YouTube ran into when it was disclosed that prominent site personalities were being paid by developers and publishers to make enthusiastic videos about games. The potential for corruption in that system has led to talk about full disclosure.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.