Corporations are not our friends, even when they seem friendly, like Steam. However, they can be useful allies, so I’m glad to see this response from Steam.
Consumers have a right to be informed of information relevant to them making purchasing decisions. AI is obviously relevant to the consumer and should be disclosed.
Man I use AI a lot and I’m not even going to dispute that lol. It’s absolutely true.
Yah the more I use AI the more I can detect the absolute bullshit people on both sides spew.
It’s the most amazingly complicated averaging machine we’ve ever invented. It will take the most interesting source materials, the most unique ideas of other people, the most creative materials, and it will find a way to find the safest, most average common qualities between those things. This isn’t a model problem or input problem, it’s fundamental to how generative AI works.
It helps with searching for things online, it helps create guide plans for taking on new tasks like learning some new skill. It’s far better at teaching how to do something like coding than it is left to just code on its own and you copy and paste. It can certainly do that, but you spend so much time correcting it and fixing it that you do far better learning the code yourself and how it works.
Same with art, the people who are using it to best effect are themselves already artists and they use AI to thumbnail compositions or rough layouts, color tests and such, and then just do the work themselves but faster because they already know roughly what direction they’re going.
But using it to write your scripts, to copy/paste code, to generate works of art… it’s literally just giving you other people’s ideas mashed together and unseasoned.
I’m not even opposed to AI in games. I’d love to see more granulated disclosures, but Steam-style disclosure should be the bare minimum.
How would the computer controlled enemies work in a 100% AI free videogame?
I mean, the term “AI” as it’s used in this context refers to output from Large Language Models (or whatever other complex machine learning systems) that scrape the content of the internet and produce images, text, etc. based on the collective artistic/linguistic work of innumerable uncompensated, unaware human contributors.
Algorithms written by programmers that interpret internal variables and react based on that aren’t the kind of “AI” in question.
“Calls to scrap” the disclosures make it sound like a societal movement, when in fact it’s just two people with obvious bias: Tim Sweeney and some guy who promotes Tim Sweeney’s products on youtube.
I don’t give a flying frog what they think. When I allow someone to sell me something, I like to know what’s in it.
…what calls? No one is calling for this. One dude said it was unnecessary. That’s not a call, it’s an opinion. He’s not out picketing for the end of fucking AI labels.
whether he is or isn’t, they saw a chance to create a huge amount of good PR for Valve while doing and spending absolutely nothing. I mean, look at the amount of upvotes this post has. all they had to do is take what appears to be a principled stand.
I’m glad for those disclosures (because I’m not touching AI games), but tons of devs don’t disclose their AI usage, even in obvious cases, leaving us to guessing :/
There’s also the massive gray area of “what do YOU define AI to mean?”
There are legitimate use cases for machine learning and neural networks besides LLMs and “art” vomit. Like, what AI used to mean to gamers: how the computer plays the game against you. That probably isn’t going to upset many people.
(IIRC, Steam’s AI disclosure is specifically about AI-generated graphics and music so that ambiguity might be settled here)
Not voices, too?
If “everyone will be using AI” and it’s not a bad thing, then these big companies should wear it as a badge of honor. The rest of us will buy accordingly.
I wish they’d replace Tim Sweeney with AI. Would genuinely have better takes on most topics, too. Sigh.
Can we get AI version of the old burnout Tim Sweeney? He was as least unintentionally funny.
If “everyone will be using AI”, AI will turn to shit.
They can’t create originality, they’re only recycling and recontextualising existing information. But if you recycle and recontextualise the same information over and over again, it keeps degrading more and more.
It’s ironic that the very people who advocate for AI everywhere, fail to realise just how dependent the quality of AI content is on having real, human generated content to input to train the model.
How does this model collapse thing still get spread around? It’s not true. Synthetic data has actually helped bots get smarter, not dumber. And if you think that all Gemini3 does is recycle idk what to tell you
“The people who advocate for AI” are literally running around claiming that AI is Jesus and it is sacrilege to stand against it.
And by literally, I mean Peter Thiel is giving talks actually claiming this. This is not an exaggeration, this is not hyperbole.
They are trying to recruit techno-cultists.
Ironically, one of the defining features of the techno-cultists in Warhammer 40k is that they changed the acronym to mean “Abominable Intelligence” and not a single machine runs on anything more advanced than a calculator.
Recycling sounds suspiciously like what “AAA” studios already do
I think the grey area is what if you’re an indie dev and did the entire story line and artwork yourself, but have the ai handle more complex coding.
It is to our eyes entirely original but used AI. Where do you draw the line?
Disclose the AI usage and how it was used. Let people decide. There will always be “no AI at all, ever” types that won’t touch the game, but others will see that it was used as a tool rather than a replacement for creativity and will give it a chance.
The line, imo, is: are you creating it yourself, and just using AI to help you make it faster/more convenient, or is AI the primary thing that is creating your content in the first place.
Using AI for convenience is absolutely valid imo, I routinely use chatGPT to do things like debugging code I wrote, or rewriting data sets in different formats, instead of doing to by hand, or using it for more complex search and replace jobs, if I can’t be fucked to figure out a regex to cover it.
For these kind of jobs, I think AI is a great tool.
I definitely agree but I think that case would still get caught in the steam AI usage badge?
I actually would kind of like ai in games. Not slop visuals though. What I really would love would be in a VR game, going up to an NPC, and getting a feel for different cultures of the world I’m in through talking. Maybe you have to have a certain type of conversation to find out the plot for a side quest, or talk to a guard at a bar and work your way to find out the shift rotation as he gets drunk or something so you can infiltrate the castle.
I feel like ai could be useful like that…but getting rid of artists in favor of ai slop is just the worst way to implement this AI thing.
Avoiding slopification seems to be the main priority, and you would have to have the AI be incorporated into a game it would have to do something that AI is already passable at, otherwise it wont pass that barrier and will get shunned like the rest of the slop.
For example, you could have an LLM act as a character or have a neural net incorporated into the game-ai like how tool assisted DOTA2 competitions work.
I see three main problems, first is that you would need the hardware to run it locally, which may be a hard sell to some people depending on what the game it is, only online expirenes should endebt themselves to AWS, if its single player, its going to lose a ton of sales there. Two, its really hard to convince audiences electrons have feelings, remember Final Fantasy (2001)? Thats what happened last time someone tried to personify a digital construct, and well… It went swimmingly (Microsofts Tay, does not count). Lastly, impact, would a narrative focused title have the same impact of an AI wrote the script? How would you feel after playing through a title like “Papers, please” and when the credits roll it says “script generated by CoPilot”? I feel like it would ring hollow, the feelings would be cheapened by it…
I would be interested to see how this plays out, but im content to support the titles and studios that do things the traditional way.
They don’t need to court developers, they need to court consumers. The games will be sold wherever people are buying.
Consumers have already decided mobile gambling slop is the most successful investment in the gaming industry. I don‘t trust consumers to know what‘s best for them.
I think the studies showing how certain minds can be targeted and manipulated by dark gambling patterns made me think differently about gambling. I’m less likely to blame the victims now - in many ways it can be difficult or near-impossible for them to control those impulses. I’d at least like lootbox gambling slop to be regulated the same as casinos.
Look how popular fantasy sports is now. It’s basically just the casino industry seeking out new avenues to cheat the definition of “Playing odds to win cash”.
Yeah that shit is like selling heroine specifically to vulnerable people in depressing phases of their life. But wth gambling ads and dark patterns in video games we somehow accept it. 😕
Well yeah gambling is addicting, the mobile slop companies know that so they try to get people addicted to it. It’s really sad what’s happened to the mobile gaming space, as it’s so heavily dominated by gambling. Hell the entire world is being run over by gambling companies now. It’s a major problem that will have to be addressed at some point soon.
consumers
This is very much a pet peeve, but be careful about how you use “consumer” versus “customer”. They each imply completely different power dynamics.
This guy thinks he’s a “customer”
Maybe some people, who are an ocean away from me, have been gaslit into thinking they can’t be anything other than consumers. I know it can be difficult to grasp the concept, but you can refuse a service if the terms are unacceptable. It is possible to go into a transaction with open eyes and full knowledge of the rights granted to you by law and responsibilities demanded of you by the contract.
That’s why I say “customer”. It’s a reminder to myself that I should demand equitable treatment, even if the chances are slim unless the courts get involved. You don’t have to jump into the meat grinder willingly.
I just didn’t realize the distinction. TIL, thanks.
It’s very much consumer these days, people buy literally anything marketed to them.
Then you should hold yourself to higher standards than “people”.
I like to think I hold myself to a higher standard or at least just a standard. General consumption, I’m not sure, but for video games, people standards have dropped significantly, the masses accept a lot of bullshit and even defend it.
Steam already sells enough slop without AI.
But you know for sure the moment Gaben sees all the money from AI games, that shit will be pushed to the max.
You have no idea why Steam dominates the market if you truly think this.
Yes, yes, we get it. Everything is bad, nothing is good.
It’s all they had to say for me to continue ignoring Epic.
The ethics and utility (or lack thereof) of AI is an important discussion in it’s own right. In terms of Steam though, I really don’t think it’s relevant. Players want the disclosures, that’s it, that’s all that should really matter. Am I missing some nuance here?
The nuance is that Tim doesn’t give a shit what players want, him and his cronies don’t want it because it’s harder to convince someone to play AI slop when they know it’s AI slop before they even try it 😂
It might make players demand lower prices if some cheap AI slop is used in the game. That’s the thing publishers want to avoid. They want to sell cheap slop for full price and pocket the difference. That’s what it’s about in the end.
I haven’t really seen demands for lower prices on AI slop, but I’ve seen a lot of outright refusal to buy at any price, and returns when the disclosure came later.
I don’t think the epic guy is making an argument for slop, he’s just saying that gen ai is at the point where avoiding using it is as much of a choice as deciding to. Generating the basis for digital art using something like flux then converting that into a 3d asset, with or without help from other AIs, would count, but could be made to look just as nice as something that didn’t use those tools, but took significantly longer. I understand that argument. What it fails to understand is that for the foreseeable future that is not how this tech is going to be used. It will be used by relative amateurs who push out garbage as quickly as possible. Maybe in five years there’s an argument to be made here, but even then I doubt it. People just won’t care about good utilization of AI because they’ll never even notice it. They’ll still hate the slop but that will inevitably become less sloppy. They’ll be able to tell the difference just based on the quality of the other aspects of the game.
They want it? I don’t know, the review score of Black Ops 7 begs to differ.
Personally I’ll give money to a hard working indie dev that may use AI to help in their work spiradically over a big company shoving AI in everything to replace workers.
Perhaps they meant players want AI disclosures.
Oh yes that is what I meant. Edited for clarity.
Thanks, I thought it meant people want AI slop garbage 🤣
I posted this in another comment but I think the nuance is really in what did they use the AI for. Are they using Claude code for the programming but did the entire artwork by hand? How many really care about that?
Compared to someone who tried to one shot a slop game with full AI assets and is just trying to make a quick buck.
Disclose the exact uses and let customers decide
The reality is, that it’s often stated that generative AI is an inevitability, that regardless of how people feel about it, it’s going to happen and become ubiquitous in every facet of our lives.
That’s only true if it turns out to be worth it. If the cost of using it is lower than the alternative, and the market willing to buy it is the same. If the current cloud hosted tools cease to be massively subsidized, and consumers choose to avoid it, then it’s inevitably a historical footnote, like turbine powered cars, Web 3.0, and laser disk.
Those heavily invested in it, ether literally through shares of Nvidia, or figuratively through the potential to deskill and shift power away from skilled workers at their companies don’t want that to be a possibility, they need to prevent consumers from having a choice.
If it was an inevitability in it’s own right, if it was just as good and easily substitutable, why would they care about consumers knowing before they payed for it?
relevant article https://www.theringer.com/2025/11/04/tech/ai-bubble-burst-popping-explained-collapse-or-not-chatgpt
AI storytelling is an amalgam of several different narratives, including:
Inevitability: AI is the future; its eventual supremacy is both imminent and certain, and therefore anyone who doesn’t want to be left behind had better embrace the technology. See Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, insisting earlier this year that every job in the world will be impacted by AI “immediately.”
Functionality: AI performs miracles, and the AI products that have been released to the public wildly outperform the products they aim to replace. To believe this requires us to ignore the evidence obtained with our own eyes and ears, which tells us in many cases that the products barely work at all, but it’s the premise of every TV ad you watch out of the corner of your eye during a sports telecast.
Grandiosity: The world will never be the same; AI will change everything. This is the biggest and most important story AI companies tell, and as with the other two narratives, big tech seems determined to repeat it so insistently that we come to believe it without looking for any evidence that it’s true.
As far as I can make out, the scheme is essentially: Keep the ship floating for as long as possible, keep inhaling as much capital as possible, and maybe the tech will get somewhere that justifies the absurd valuations, or maybe we’ll worm our way so far into the government that it’ll have to bail us out, or maybe some other paradigm-altering development will fall from the sky. And the way to keep the ship floating is to keep peddling the vision and to seem more confident that the dream is inevitable the less it appears to be coming true.
speaking for myself, MS can thank AI for being the thing that made me finally completely ditch windows after using it 30+ years
Don’t forget, “Turns out it was a losing bet to back DEI and Trans people”.
This is something scared, pathetic, loser, feral, spineless, sociopathic, moronic fascists come up with to try to win a crowd larger than an elevator; Assume the outcome as a foregone conclusion and try to talk around it, or claim it’s already happened.
Respond directly. “What? That’s ridiculous. I’ve never even seen ANY AI that I liked. Who told you it was going to pervade everything?”
That reminds me how McDonald’s and other gaat food chains are struggling. People figure it’s too expensive for what you get after prices going up and quality going down for years. They forgot that people buy if the price and quality are good. Same with AI. It’s all fun if it’s free or dirt cheap, but people don’t buy expensive slop.
MIT, like two years out from a study saying there is no tangible business benefit to implementing AI, just released a study saying it is now capable of taking over more than 10% of jobs. Maybe that’s hyperbolic but you can see that it would require a massssssive amount of cost to make that not be worth it. And we’re still pretty much just starting out.
If the cost of using it is lower than the alternative, and the market willing to buy it is the same. If the current cloud hosted tools cease to be massively subsidized, and consumers choose to avoid it, then it’s inevitably a historical footnote, like turbine powered cars, Web 3.0, and laser disk.
There’s another scenario: Turns out that if Big AI doesn’t buy up all the available stock of DRAM and GPUs, running local AI models on your own PC will become more realistic.
I run local AI stuff all the time from image generation to code assistance. My GPU fans spin up for a bit as the power consumed by my PC increases but other than that, it’s not much of an impact on anything.
I believe this is the future: Local AI models will eventually take over just like PCs took over from mainframes. There’s a few thresholds that need to be met for that to happen but it seems inevitable. It’s already happening for image generation where the local AI tools are so vastly superior to the cloud stuff there’s no contest.
Based Ayi Sanchez
