Steam hands developers the power to ban cheaters

Cheating in multiplayer games isn't big or clever, but people still think they can successfully get away with it. That's a problem for the folks at Valve, who are constantly trying to ensure that Steam is a nice place to play. It's one of the reasons that the company has now revealed that it'll hand the power to police users straight to the developers behind each game on the service. Now, rather than Valve staff racing to deal with each incident, the teams that made the title can rule on what they consider to be fair and unfair practices.

The process of banning, itself, will remain in the hands of Valve staffers, but now all a developer has to do is say the word and it'll be done. Of course, a cursory glance at the responses to the announcement on Twitter has revealed that plenty of gamers are worried that developers will abuse this power.

For those who play within the rules, there are some perks, as Valve has also revealed that it's widening the number of people who can join in the testing on Steam Guard for mobile. Another 1,000 people will be asked to authenticate their Steam devices using their smartphone, and the app sign up process has been updated as well.