Valve’s Steam Business Team took to the stage at the Steam Indie Connect event in Korea and took questions from an audience of game developers. During the chat, the issue of Steam being flooded with generative AI slop games and knockoff AI clones came up, and Valve said it’s still trying to figure out how to navigate this new world.

Last year, roughly 17% of Steam Next Fest demos disclosed the use of generative AI, and this year was likely higher as the platform hosted over 8,000 demos during the event. It’s a huge discoverability problem for developers who’ve poured years of their lives into their games, only to get swept up in the slop deluge.

Then there are the AI clones, which are becoming a growing issue. Developers are becoming more and more concerned about showing off their games, as bad actors are using generative AI to clone them from early footage and demos, beating them to the market with a bad copy.

During Steam Indie Connect, Valve’s Tom Giardino addressed concerns around clones, noting that they existed before AI and have only accelerated the process. "We don't want to be gatekeepers telling developers which tools they should or shouldn't use," he said (thanks, InvaGlobal), ruling out Valve outright banning developers who do this.

"Rather than relying on a single mechanic that someone can easily copy, you need to keep growing your game by adding features, personality, and creativity that stem from your own perspective," he added, shifting the onus onto the developer of the original game.

Source link