Valve has revealed they will now accept games that use AI on their Steam platform, under specific conditions.
As reported by Techraptor, Valve explained that they have reached this decision after talking to the developers using this technology for the past few months. In specific, they have added rules that don’t allow these games to include ‘illegal or infringing’ content.
We had reported last year that Valve was banning games that used generative AI inconsistently, as we discovered one game that was allowed to stick around on the platform. A month after that, Gabe Newell revealed in an interview that they are not against using generative AI or AI for making video games on principle.
Rather, they noticed that the first devs making AI games were clearly infringing on copyrights, and they wanted to avoid getting involved in that. And so, their new policies that they will start enforcing now.
Developers who want get their games on Steam will now have to fill out a survey with an AI disclosure section. They have provided definitions for pre-generated and live-generated AI content as well:
- 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.
Now some fans may be unhappy with Valve’s decision, but this is a matter of balancing the needs and desires of the users and the developers. Valve will of course change these rules again when something else comes up, but this seems to be an acknowledgement that a general ban on generative AI will disqualify too many developers from getting onto Steam.
Of course, copyright is not the only issue raised by generative AI. There are concerns of the quality of the games that use such technology, and also if this will adversely affect how many people can work in the industry, and the conditions under which they can be employed.
We don’t have all the answers to that now, but if companies like Valve do not engage with such technologies, we won’t be able to discover and figure these issues out. If companies like Valve approach this in good faith, we can avert it from becoming the disaster to gaming and other creative enterprises that we are worried it will become. The possible undesirable alternative is for these technologies to develop independently, and then take over these industries, overtaking its existing gatekeepers.
So maybe some skepticism is warranted, but we also shouldn’t dismiss this move instantly. We have yet to see how this technology will really be used, or if it will even really have a future itself.
