For two days straight, Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney has been posting non-stop about Steam AI disclosures — again. He calls it an "anti-technology smear campaign", and claims that it's akin to Valve forcing developers to list their political affiliation, i.e. whether they vote Republican or Democrat. Hour after hour, Sweeney sits on his phone hammering away at how the "hate mob" is "burning down the businesses of good developers."

It's all a bit silly. AI disclosures are no different than developers naming what engine they use, or disclosing anti-cheat software, copyright attributions, and third-party software licenses. If you order a pie, you don't want mystery meat, you want to know what exactly you're chowing down on. Sweeney's argument, however, is that AI helps indie developers with low-funding to finish their games, and that these disclosures only serve to bombard them with backlash, as we've seen during the recent Steam Next Fest.

Only, that isn't how Steam's disclosures work. Valve doesn't require developers to disclose AI-assisted development in writing or debugging code, or even early concept art. Efficiency gains are "not the focus." The disclosure is intended to reveal AI-generated artwork, textures, models, voice lines, music, dialogue, or marketing assets. Things that people will notice anyway when they buy the game, as evident by Total War: Shogun 2 — Complete Edition, which incurred plenty of backlash without the help of a disclosure.

" He even laments that Valve is "taking a potentially even larger fraction of developers' revenue and livelihood by undermining their business with these AI hate campaigns" than the 30% cut it already takes.

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