It’s not very surprising, but Valve has denied Itch.io from appearing on the Steam Greenlight. For those who are unaware of what Ithc.io, this is another marketplace used by gamers to purchase a variety of video games. Essentially, it’s a marketplace just like Steam, one that attempted in being displayed under Steam.
While Itch may have failed at trying to get Itch.io as being featured within the Steam Greenlight, the reasoning behind the denied access was not because of competition according to Valve. Instead, it was stated that Steam only allowed certain types of software to be featured on the Steam Marketplace because the team lacks the necessary tools and processes to feature a large variety of non-video game software.
In fact, there is the official statement Itch received from Valve:
Hello, Thank you for your interest in Steam. We’d like to be able to continue supporting a variety of types of non-game software on Steam, but the reality is that were finding that we’re finding that we just don’t have the tools and processes to handle many types of non-gaming software very well right now. We made some recent changes to non-gaming software in Greenlight to focusing on a categories [sic] of software for game developers and content creators. These are the valid categories of software we are accepting for now: • Animation & Modeling • Audio Production • Design & Illustration • Photo Editing • Video Production We’d like to accept more kinds of software on Steam, but right now we need to focus on a smaller scope until we have better tools and processes in place.
While this may be the reasoning Itch received on the matter, gamers have chimed in on how the marketplace software wasn’t approved because of the competition between the two. Valve has yet to make any official statement on the speculation matter, as for now, if you wish to purchase something through Itch, you’ll have to visit Itch.io.
