For the last six months, Valve has kept a tight grip on the release of "AI games"--or more accurately games developed using some aspect of machine learning--being released on Steam. Not anymore.
In July 2023, Valve said that games made using machine learning content were being denied a spot on the store mostly because "there is some legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models". In other words, there are huge legal uncertainties surrounding the data used to train AI models, since so much of it was scraped from copyrighted work without the artist's (or owner's) knowledge or consent.
Despite those uncertainties being far from resolved--indeed they've been in the headlines just this week when OpenAI said "it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials"--Valve have today decided to say fuck it and just let most of the games be released anyway.
In a blog post, the company says they "needed some time to learn about the fast-moving and legally murky space of AI technology", and over those months have learned that...it's fine? Or fine enough for Valve to start making money off games made using machine learning content, at least?
Here are the most important part of the blog, covering the rules Valve have implemented to try to cover their asses:
...we are updating the Content Survey that developers fill out when submitting to Steam. The survey now includes a new AI disclosure section, where you'll need to describe how you are using AI in the development and execution of your game. It separates AI usage in games into two broad categories:
- Pre-Generated: Any kind of content (art/code/sound/etc) created with the help of AI tools during development. Under the Steam Distribution Agreement, you promise Valve that your game will not include illegal or infringing content, and that your game will be consistent with your marketing materials. In our pre-release review, we will evaluate the output of AI generated content in your game the same way we evaluate all non-AI content - including a check that your game meets those promises.
- Live-Generated: Any kind of content created with the help of AI tools while the game is running. In addition to following the same rules as Pre-Generated AI content, this comes with an additional requirement: in the Content Survey, you'll need to tell us what kind of guardrails you're putting on your AI to ensure it's not generating illegal content.
Valve will use this disclosure in our review of your game prior to release. We will also include much of your disclosure on the Steam store page for your game, so customers can also understand how the game uses AI.
Second, we're releasing a new system on Steam that allows players to report illegal content inside games that contain Live-Generated AI content. Using the in-game overlay, players can easily submit a report when they encounter content that they believe should have been caught by appropriate guardrails on AI generation.
Who are they kidding with this? Valve's existing moderation is questionable at best; at time of posting one of the store's most prominent sellers is a game about fucking your aunt and cousins, while another is an Alex Jones platformer (UPDATE: to be precise, the former was #4 and the latter #6 in Steam's "New & Trending" section at time of publishing). And we're expected to believe that just because developers have to "promise" not to include machine-generated content they're going to adhere to that, and Valve are going to catch the offenders?
And how is that reporting system even going to work while the legal uncertainties surrounding this tech remain? I think every single piece of machine-generated imagery in existence should be reported as "illegal content", am I supposed to just mash that button until it dissolves into dust?
If you thought that Hawken reboot was bad, wait until every second-rate management, exploration, survival and strategy game is full to the brim with machine-generated models and artwork, and you're talking to characters spewing machine-generated lines back at you. Just like machine-generated imagery itself, in 6-18 months we're going to be up to our eyeballs in soulless, derivative games full of crud smooshed together by a computerised casserole dish. Whatever floor we'd settled on with "asset flips" we're going to blast straight under it. It's going to suck.
