Developers are free to sell merchandise as long as it fits in the guidelines provided by Valve.

You should be reporting any which do not fit your personal criteria of acceptable.

And finally tags are user generated.

Originally posted by Nx :

[...] tags are user generated.

Not in the news feed.

Originally posted by Sentient Entropy:

Not in the news feed.

They would not be as it news about a product.

Tags are associated and linked with the store page, hence why if you start tagging it may catch on and you can start blocking the undesirables.

Personally they can show me additional items because purchasing is voluntary not mandatory, hence why i ignore Amazon suggestions.

Originally posted by Nx Machina:

Originally posted by Sentient Entropy:

Not in the news feed.

They would not be as it news about a product.

Tags are associated and linked with the store page, hence why if you start tagging it may catch on and you can start blocking the undesirables.

Personally they can show me additional items because purchasing is voluntary not mandatory, hence why i ignore Amazon suggestions.

It seems like you are confused. In the news feed, all tags are 100% chosen by the developers, from tags such as "Major Update", "Minor Update", "Event" and "News." This has absolutely nothing to do with store tags. There is no way to for users to tag posts from the developers. You can only block the category of the post from showing up in your feed. Currently "News" is being used to announce plushies at an increasing rate. I don't want to see these announcements, they are merely space-occupying noise to me. But if I block "News," I also lose out on actual game development updates. I don't want that.

So the obvious solution is that posts selling plushes ought to be marked as "Merch" or something similar and be easily muted, just like all the other categories in the news feed.

To any Steam dev reading this, I'd like "Merch" and "Media" added as categories. Personally, I'd block "Merch" but keep "Media." If it was just under a larger "Merchandise" category I probably wouldn't have seen the Guilty Gear Strive vinyl box set.

Originally posted by Sentient Entropy:

Devs are increasingly trying to sell non-game merchandise on Steam. I don't care about plush toys in the slightest, but given how the announcements are labeled "news" the only way to nuke those posts would be to banish ALL game news from my feed.

There needs to be a "merch" tag or "plushies" tag or something, so users can block seeing it without missing out on actual news.

Are devs not considered "steam subscribers"?

Online code of conduct says very clearly we can't

Engage in commercial activity
Examples of such prohibited behavior include: posting advertisements; running contests; gambling; buying or selling Steam accounts; selling content, gift cards, or other items; and begging.

If not, what is the online code of conduct for devs?

The closest category I can find on the announcement creator page is "Announcement / News". Speaking as a game dev who will probably never release physical merch, I can definitely see the benefit of having a dedicated "Physical Merchandise" category just like there are dedicated categories for "Attending a Convention" and "XP Boost".

Originally posted by Chronocide:

Originally posted by Sentient Entropy:

Devs are increasingly trying to sell non-game merchandise on Steam. I don't care about plush toys in the slightest, but given how the announcements are labeled "news" the only way to nuke those posts would be to banish ALL game news from my feed.

There needs to be a "merch" tag or "plushies" tag or something, so users can block seeing it without missing out on actual news.

Are devs not considered "steam subscribers"?

Online code of conduct says very clearly we can't

Engage in commercial activity
Examples of such prohibited behavior include: posting advertisements; running contests; gambling; buying or selling Steam accounts; selling content, gift cards, or other items; and begging.

If not, what is the online code of conduct for devs?

I believe that rule is about trying to sell things on the Steam Community website. Linking to a store that sells a product is generally fine as long as you're not spamming. There are additional rules related to when a developer can link to a store if that store sells games - for example, an announcement that is primarily about a different game on Steam or a different game store must be in the Cross-Promotion category.

Originally posted by Chronocide:

Originally posted by Sentient Entropy:

Devs are increasingly trying to sell non-game merchandise on Steam. I don't care about plush toys in the slightest, but given how the announcements are labeled "news" the only way to nuke those posts would be to banish ALL game news from my feed.

There needs to be a "merch" tag or "plushies" tag or something, so users can block seeing it without missing out on actual news.

Are devs not considered "steam subscribers"?

Online code of conduct says very clearly we can't

Engage in commercial activity
Examples of such prohibited behavior include: posting advertisements; running contests; gambling; buying or selling Steam accounts; selling content, gift cards, or other items; and begging.

If not, what is the online code of conduct for devs?

Game developers are not the same as regular users, no.

Originally posted by Chronocide:

Originally posted by Sentient Entropy:

Devs are increasingly trying to sell non-game merchandise on Steam. I don't care about plush toys in the slightest, but given how the announcements are labeled "news" the only way to nuke those posts would be to banish ALL game news from my feed.

There needs to be a "merch" tag or "plushies" tag or something, so users can block seeing it without missing out on actual news.

Are devs not considered "steam subscribers"?

Online code of conduct says very clearly we can't

Engage in commercial activity
Examples of such prohibited behavior include: posting advertisements; running contests; gambling; buying or selling Steam accounts; selling content, gift cards, or other items; and begging.

If not, what is the online code of conduct for devs?

Game devs are not subject to the Steam rules.

I mean, literally, they are here to sell games to you. Obviously that would be contradictory. But them using the update news path to attempt to upsell you off-site things does seem to be another instance of companies thinking they are more clever than they actually are, turning every single useful venue into an endless fire hose of spam (See what happened to phone calls, mail, and the little red notification number previously.), thereby ensuring no user will ever value that feed in the future.

We're on a game store. I think we have as much of a fat chance of being able to block merchandise marketing as we are of stop seeing funkos in a gamestop store.

Yeah, I've experienced that a lot. Even when removing all options I'm able to. I'd really like to hide the entire shelf. I often feel like games spoil too much, I don't want to see a boss of the game on the thumbnail of the path-notes, or have some text say "fixed super-rare-gun-you-get-from-boss" as those things are stuff I don't want spoiled. I don't want to even know that there's some gun from some boss, I want to find out myself.

It went so far that I need to squint my eyes when going to my Library Tab to launch a game as to not get spoiled.

All I want is to have a toggle.

But back to the topic, yes, I know what you mean, and I agree.

Originally posted by Sentient Entropy:

Originally posted by Nx Machina:

They would not be as it news about a product.

Tags are associated and linked with the store page, hence why if you start tagging it may catch on and you can start blocking the undesirables.

Personally they can show me additional items because purchasing is voluntary not mandatory, hence why i ignore Amazon suggestions.

It seems like you are confused. In the news feed, all tags are 100% chosen by the developers, from tags such as "Major Update", "Minor Update", "Event" and "News." This has absolutely nothing to do with store tags. There is no way to for users to tag posts from the developers. You can only block the category of the post from showing up in your feed. Currently "News" is being used to announce plushies at an increasing rate. I don't want to see these announcements, they are merely space-occupying noise to me. But if I block "News," I also lose out on actual game development updates. I don't want that.

So the obvious solution is that posts selling plushes ought to be marked as "Merch" or something similar and be easily muted, just like all the other categories in the news feed.

To any Steam dev reading this, I'd like "Merch" and "Media" added as categories. Personally, I'd block "Merch" but keep "Media." If it was just under a larger "Merchandise" category I probably wouldn't have seen the Guilty Gear Strive vinyl box set.

I find it weird people are so confused about the tag system you are talking about. They even just kinda ignore the correct information too.

It is certainly within the purview of what Steam can do to make a new tag for these sorts of posts. They put the award nomination requests on their own tag.

Originally posted by William Shakesman:

Originally posted by Chronocide:

Are devs not considered "steam subscribers"?

Online code of conduct says very clearly we can't

If not, what is the online code of conduct for devs?

Game devs are not subject to the Steam rules.

I mean, literally, they are here to sell games to you. Obviously that would be contradictory. But them using the update news path to attempt to upsell you off-site things does seem to be another instance of companies thinking they are more clever than they actually are, turning every single useful venue into an endless fire hose of spam (See what happened to phone calls, mail, and the little red notification number previously.), thereby ensuring no user will ever value that feed in the future.

If not subject to the steam subscriber rules, then they must be subject to other steam rules, I mean they legally represent steam when they post, so steam needs some form of moderation otherwise steam is liable for whatever the devs post. They'd only not represent steam if there was some rule that said they didn't, so they must have rules about what they can and can't do.

Originally posted by Chronocide:

Originally posted by William Shakesman:

Game devs are not subject to the Steam rules.

I mean, literally, they are here to sell games to you. Obviously that would be contradictory. But them using the update news path to attempt to upsell you off-site things does seem to be another instance of companies thinking they are more clever than they actually are, turning every single useful venue into an endless fire hose of spam (See what happened to phone calls, mail, and the little red notification number previously.), thereby ensuring no user will ever value that feed in the future.

If not subject to the steam subscriber rules, then they must be subject to other steam rules, I mean they legally represent steam when they post, so steam needs some form of moderation otherwise steam is liable for whatever the devs post. They'd only not represent steam if there was some rule that said they didn't, so they must have rules about what they can and can't do.

Game developers are Steam Subscribers and are therefore affected by the Steam Subscriber Agreement.

If you have an account on Steam, you follow Steam's rules for people who have accounts on Steam.