Valve rejects AI-tool bans on Steam, betting instead on better discovery
The company acknowledged that generative AI has made cloning easier, but said it would tackle visibility and recommendation problems rather than become a gatekeeper.
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Valve told developers it would not ban particular generative-AI tools or tighten Steam’s publishing rules in response to game cloning, setting out a strategy centred on improving discovery rather than policing how games are made.
At Steam Indie Connect in South Korea, Valve’s Tom Giardino said the company did not want to be “gatekeepers telling developers which tools they should or shouldn’t use.” He said a smarter, more dynamic Steam was preferable to limiting developers’ access to tools.
The gathering was co-hosted by Valve, the Busan Indie Connect Festival Organizing Committee and the Korea Creative Content Agency. Developers raised concerns about rising numbers of low-quality games and AI-assisted clones, including copies made from early footage or demos before the original project had launched.
Giardino acknowledged that cloning long predated generative AI, but said the technology had made it significantly easier. He advised studios to keep developing their games with features, personality and creativity rooted in their own perspective, while building communities and regularly updating players, rather than relying on a mechanic that can be readily replicated.
One developer described receiving an email threatening to release an AI-generated copy ahead of the original unless the studio paid. Giardino said such extortion was closer to a law-enforcement matter than one for a games platform, but said Valve would investigate reported cases and help where it could.
Valve’s immediate focus is Steam Next Fest’s visibility system. The company said the event presents demos largely at random during its first two days, both to give every participant a chance to be seen and to prevent developers from reverse-engineering the recommendation system. Recommendations then become personalised using players’ buying and playing activity.
Wilkinson acknowledged the cost of that approach: random exposure also promotes some low-quality projects. Valve said it was aware of the problem and that staff were considering solutions, but it made no commitment to a particular change in the ranking system.
The scale of the issue has grown with Next Fest. Valve said the event had expanded from roughly 50 to 100 titles three years earlier to thousands of participants. The festival discussed at the gathering hosted more than 8,000 demos; about 17% of demos in the previous year’s event had disclosed generative-AI use, and the company expected that proportion to rise.
The discussion follows our Oct. 25 report that Epic chief Tim Sweeney attacked Steam’s existing generative-AI disclosure labels as politically motivated. Valve has already required developers to disclose generative-AI content, while the current debate turns on whether labels and storefront filters could reduce visibility for low-effort work without also suppressing games that use generative tools and are well received.
Valve’s approach also extends an earlier position on curation. The company said it had answered past concerns around Steam Greenlight and Steam Direct by improving the shopping and discovery experience instead of pre-screening games or excluding categories. In 2018, Valve said it would allow everything on Steam except material it judged illegal or “straight up trolling.”