Valve addresses confusion over Steam banning AI-generated games

A new statement from Valve after the apparent banning of AI-generated content in games submitted to Steam aims to clear the air.

Valve has come forward after last week’s news that a developer had their game rejected from Steam over AI-generated content.

Found on Reddit, the user claimed that only a few assets were generated by AI. Their intentions were to submit the game to Steam and then proceed to fix up certain parts later.

Speaking with VGC, Valve stated:

“The introduction of AI can sometimes make it harder to show a developer has sufficient rights in using AI to create assets, including images, text, and music.”

The owners of Steam have made it clear that they’re still “continuing to learn about AI” in game development. With the recent boom in AI being relatively new for platform holders and online stores like Steam, Valve has yet to determine a proper policy.

Valve has also stated that the intent isn’t to “discourage” AI in building games, but is instead protecting itself and developers from potential copyright issues:

“The introduction of AI can sometimes make it harder to show a developer has sufficient rights in using AI to create assets, including images, text, and music.”

Valve doesn’t want to “discourage” AI in game development

Valve

The banning of AI is simply down to the “reflection of current copyright law and policies, not an added layer of our opinion.”

AI models are trained on reams of data, that unless gathered and sourced by the developer themselves, can’t often be traced back to a particular source. For instance, with image generator, Adobe Firefly, users can rarely trace back the original creators of where it pulled the images from.

Clarifying the company’s position on the matter, a spokesperson told VGC:

“We welcome and encourage innovation, and AI technology is bound to create new and exciting experiences in gaming.

“While developers can use these AI technologies in their work with appropriate commercial licenses, they can not infringe on existing copyrights.”

While it’s interesting to track the development of AI and its uses by various companies, Valve not outright banning games that use AI-generated assets is an interesting wrinkle, and is likely to be a hotbed for debate in the games industry.