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Valve is changing the way developers view release dates on Steam, and while this marks the end of the fun text used in many games, it will also make the date display more consistent and less confusing.
Starting January 1st, every release date you see on Steam will fall into one of five categories:
- Exact date. “August 24, 2023”.
- Month and year. August 2023.
- quarter of the calendar year. “Third quarter 2023”.
- Year. “2023”.
- Undated. “Out soon.”
Developers will need to enter a specific date in the Steam backend, but they can change it at any time until the game is released. They will then select one of these five options from a drop-down menu.
A quick look page upcoming versions of Steam will likely tell you why this is happening. Games coming out soon have dates like “October 28, 2022”, “10/28/22 ab 6:30 pm”, “2022 年 10 月 28 日” and “VerY SOOn”.
The current situation with the way the game’s release dates are displayed leaves a lot to be desired. Some information may be missing or incomplete, but the worst part is that there is no way to locate your text, which sometimes confuses players all over the world. It is not always possible to translate a pun or a reference and date formats vary from country to country.
The unfortunate consequence of all this is that the funny release date text that often appears on the Steam store will have disappeared. Sadly, starting January 1, Dwarf Fortress will no longer remind us that “time is subjective” – although since the developers have hinted that the new version of Dwarf Fortress will arrive “sooner than you think”, it might as well they don’t have to face this problem.
