Valve Doubles Down on Steam's AI-Generated Content Rules, Epic Games' Tim Sweeney Responds

Valve has updated the AI disclosure form that developers are required to fill out when submitting a game to the Steam storefront, and, once again, Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney decided to comment.

In late November last year, Epic Games’ founder and CEO, Tim Sweeney, was absolutely dragged online for his comments regarding Steam’s content disclosure warnings for AI-generated content.

If you scroll to the bottom of a game’s page on the Steam storefront, you may find a section titled “AI Generated Content Disclosure.” If the devs disclosed that their game features AI-generated content, the specifics regarding said content will be displayed there.

Sweeney, however, agreed with another user on Twitter who stated that “Steam and all digital marketplaces need to drop” their AI-disclosure labels. Why? Sweeney explained that he believes that it “makes no sense for game stores” because he believes that “AI will be involved in nearly all future production.”

The internet immediately dogpiled on him for his stance, and good on them for doing so, but PC Gamer’s Tyler Wilde made a very good point in their article detailing Sweeney’s take; AI-assisted tools exist in almost every computer program and development tool that could feasibly be used to create a video game.

“Does it count if you used Photoshop's generative fill tool while making concept art that was never intended for the public eye? Or if you used Claude to generate a few code snippets?” Wilde asked in their write-up.

The updated AI disclosure form in question, Valve

In light of this, it seems that Valve has decided to tighten its definition of AI-generated content recently.

As spotted by user GameDiscoverCo on Bluesky, the AI disclosure form that devs have to complete when submitting a game to Steam has been updated.

The form now outright states that Valve is "aware" of the fact “that many modern game development environments have AI powered tools built into them” and that said tools are "not the focus" of their AI content disclosure form.

Sweeney replied to a Tweet asking “umm did we win?” by… making another joke about shampoo. This is a callback to the equally unfunny joke Sweeney originally made back in November.

“Why stop at AI use? We could have mandatory disclosures for what shampoo brand the developer uses. Customers deserve to know lol,” stated Sweeney.

Yeah, sick comeback, dude. You really got them.

Hm, gee… I wonder, could Valve’s consumer-friendly practices have anything to do with the Epic Games Store's laughably poor third-party game revenue stats?

Maybe you should focus on creating a storefront that people actually want to use before criticising the storefront that made more in December alone than you did in all of 2023, Tim. Just a thought.