Valve Has 'Significantly' Rewritten Steam's Rules For How Developers Must Disclose AI Use (videogameschronicle.com)
- Reference: 0180615424
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/26/01/19/1735231/valve-has-significantly-rewritten-steams-rules-for-how-developers-must-disclose-ai-use
- Source link: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/valve-has-significantly-rewritten-steams-rules-for-how-developers-much-disclose-ai-use/
Developers must still disclose two specific categories: AI used to generate in-game content, store page assets, or marketing materials, and AI that creates content like images, audio, or text during gameplay itself. Steam has required AI disclosures since 2024, and an analysis from July 2025 found nearly 8,000 titles released in the first half of that year had disclosed generative AI use, compared to roughly 1,000 for all of 2024. The disclosures remain voluntary, so actual usage is likely higher.
[1] https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/valve-has-significantly-rewritten-steams-rules-for-how-developers-much-disclose-ai-use/
Who cares about the marketing material? (Score:4, Interesting)
I sure don't. I suppose marketeers do, but I'm not convinced that industry has net positive impact on humanity. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I care if any assets were generated.
I've mentioned before, because it's relevant, that I play Bellwright. It's fun. They use AI generated voices as placeholders during EA, but I wouldn't care if that's all they ever did. If a small studio wants to save some cash, let 'em. The results might not be as good, but I say leave those concerns to the studios that can afford a team of voice actors and hundreds of artists.
Re:Who cares about the marketing material? (Score:4, Interesting)
I suspect that AI generated voices will soon replace human voice actors. In part because it's easier for developers to tweak things without having to go and re-record voice lines, but also because audio actually eats up a lot of disk space when there's a lot of it. Fully voice acted games could take up hundreds of gigabytes for dialogue or narrative heavy stories. Games like The Elder Scrolls Oblivion were designed around what could fit on a DVD because it had to ship on consoles. These days those restrictions don't exist to the same extent, but that's also a part of why game sizes have ballooned so much.
Having some kind of AI that runs locally and can reproduce voice from text is going to be the future. Initially it will be mostly used for random NPCs or more mundane things like asking for directions while the important story characters still use voice actors or famous actors, but as the technology improves it will be used everywhere in any games that are really just novels disguised as games. It's an even better fit when you consider than another AI could be generating some of the text that the other program voices. I think we're still maybe a decade away from something like that, but that's where the puck is headed.
Re: (Score:2)
And then you compare even the better "AI sloop" videos on YouTube vs the worse real speakers and realize the extreme loss of engagement that happens.
You know those warnings about cancer? (Score:2)
The ones because of California. Those were really useful at first because you could easily spot dangerous carcinogens in food however lawyers figured out that they could sue people who made products of any kind under the law and force a settlement because of the high cost of litigating those lawsuits. As a result everybody put disclaimers on everything and the law became worthless because absolutely everything tells you that it causes cancer now in order to prevent the lawyers from screwing with you.
I s
Re: (Score:1)
I had a MasterCard once that came with that warning. They've become a joke and nobody pays attention to them.
Sounds sensible (Score:1)
Yes, AI code may also be bad, but insecure or unreliable game code has always been an issue and is one reason why gaming on a separate machine can be a good idea.
Re:Sounds sensible (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that it won't be long before every game has the label on it and everyone ignores them. Even if you're a small developer that truly built everything yourself, you'll still be buried beneath the avalanche of AI games churned out by people who lie about it. The floodgates are opening and there doesn't seem like a good way of stopping what's coming.
Re:Sounds sensible (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, so? Food has labels on it as well. Most people ignore them. I do not, because I find too mich sodium and too much sugar or sugar substitutes quite repulsive.
The bottom line is that labels are not for the ones that ignore them. They are for the minority that looks at them and for giving the rest the freedom to look at them if they so chose. Freedoms do not come with a requirement for them to be used or they stop being freedoms.
Re: (Score:2)
> The problem is that it won't be long before every game has the label on it and everyone ignores them.
The point of food labels isn't that people look at them. It's that people CAN look at them. It enables some of us to look for all of us. It doesn't matter if a majority looks at labels regularly. A minority can look at it and inform the rest of us. And then we can verify what they say by looking ourselves if they say there's something important to be seen.
I also don't think that AI will be so easily ignored. Especially for the areas the label is trying to highlight.