Steam, the video game storefront used by over a hundred million gamers every month, requires that developers disclose if their products use AI-generated content.<\/p>\n
Someone at Valve, however, apparently forgot to ask Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney if he\u2019d be okay with this policy first.<\/p>\n
In a discussion on social media, Sweeney \u2014 whose company makes the megahit game Fortnite and is a major rival to Valve with a gaming marketplace of its own \u2014 fumed about Steam\u2019s AI content disclosures, and agreed with a post calling for Valve to drop the feature because AI use \u201cdoesn\u2019t matter anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe AI tag is relevant to art exhibits for authorship disclosure, and to digital content licensing marketplaces where buyers need to understand the rights situation,\u201d Sweeney wrote<\/a> last week. \u201cIt makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production.\u201d<\/p>\n Gamers across the site mocked Sweeney\u2019s take, and it clearly got under his skin.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy stop at AI use?\u201d he doubled down<\/a>. \u201cWe could have mandatory disclosures for what shampoo brand the developer uses.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCustomers deserve to know lol,\u201d he added, mocking the idea.<\/p>\n Sweeney\u2019s sounding off\u00a0shows just how controversial generative AI use remains in the arts and entertainment industry. Huge concerns swirl over the tech\u2019s ability to wipe out jobs, not to mention churn out soulless dreck instead of carefully handcrafted work.\u00a0Voice actors went on strike against the video games industry for a year<\/a> to fight for stronger protections, and have been among the most outspoken critics<\/a> of the tech\u2019s rapid creep into the industry. Like the tech industry at large, game developers themselves have been besieged with brutal layoffs. Meanwhile, behemoths like Google and Microsoft brag that over a quarter of their code is now written with AI. Epic, it\u2019s also worth noting, has rolled out an AI assistant<\/a> for its widely used Unreal game engine.<\/p>\n Valve has taken a notably cautious stance on AI where others have embraced it or turned a blind eye. In 2023, it reportedly rejected games containing AI-generated assets<\/a>, telling developers that the \u201clegal ownership of such AI-generated art is unclear.\u201d<\/p>\n Next year, it officially opened the door to AI content<\/a>, but with a major catch: going forward, developers would need to disclose if their products contained any assets, including art and music, that were created with the help of AI. For any \u201clive-generated\u201d AI content made while the game is running, the developer would also need to explain what guardrails it was instating to prevent the generation of illegal copyrighted content. Notable titles that have disclosed AI usage this way include the new extraction shooter Arc Raiders, which used AI to generate new lines of dialog using the voices of actors who were hired for the job.<\/p>\n In response to the same post Sweeney was agreeing with which called for Valve to drop the AI disclosures, a Valve employee defended the company\u2019s policy.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is like saying food products shouldn\u2019t have their ingredients list,\u201d Ayi Sanchez, an artist who\u2019s worked on titles like Counter-Strike 2, responded<\/a>. \u201cConsumers should have the information to decide if they want to buy something or not depending on its content. The only ppl afraid of this are the ones that know their product is low effort.\u201d<\/p>\n