{"id":666219,"date":"2026-10-26T22:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T22:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/666219\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T22:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T22:26:12","slug":"epic-boss-tim-sweeney-calls-steams-ai-declarations-political-and-abhorrent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/666219\/","title":{"rendered":"Epic Boss Tim Sweeney Calls Steam’s AI Declarations ‘Political’ And ‘Abhorrent’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tim Sweeney Stop Saying Stuff Challenge has been lost once again, as the Epic boss took to his X account over the weekend (thanks, IGN<\/a>) to once again<\/a> make clear his position that AI content disclosures on Steam are \u201cabhorrent\u201d and a forced \u201cpolitical statement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sweeney recently attempted to take a swipe at Valve by releasing an updated, vibe-coded version of the god-awful Epic Games Store that he claimed ran so much faster than Steam, only for Steam to preemptively roll out its own update that already beat it. That was very funny. Now\u2019s he back, this time expressing outrage at Valve\u2019s requirement that developers announce if genAI was used in the production of a game. He has a dog in this fight: Just this month Sweeney horrified his own staff (well, those who remain after a thousand of them were fired<\/a>) by declaring they had to pivot to AI-first development<\/a> for a forthcoming Disney shooter.<\/p>\n

On Friday, AI bro Matt Workman posted to his X account that \u201cthe premise of an AI Generated Content Disclosure is ABSURD in 2026,\u201d calling it \u201ctruly embarrassing for a Valve and Steam.\u201d Sweeney enthusiastically replied.<\/p>\n

Forcing developers to write a political statement to be used against them by the hate mob they\u2019re helping organize is abhorrent.<\/p>\n

Forcing developers to write a political statement to be used against them by the hate mob they\u2019re helping organize is abhorrent.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) October 23, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Calling things a \u201cpolitical statement\u201d is a fun game played by those who like to suggest that anything with which they disagree must by necessity be some wack-a-doo extreme political position. Presumably Sweeney also considers the listing of ingredients on a food wrapper to be a \u201cpolitical statement,\u201d forced by the wokies who demand consumers know if their dinner contains anthrax or worms.<\/p>\n

This invective becomes more farcical when you recognize that Valve has been quietly watering down its own requirements for the AI declaration, this year removing the need<\/a> to mention if AI was used when creating code. It instead only demands developers make clear if genAI was used for asset creation, voiceover, or translation and the like. And why? Because a lot of people don\u2019t want to endorse the use of this environment-destroying, plagiarism-driven technology in games containing regurgitated slop based on the work of unpaid masses, in order to leave masses more unpaid. And those that don\u2019t care can go ahead and buy it anyway.<\/p>\n

Sweeney is suggesting that the required AI disclosures are causing \u201chate mobs\u201d to go after developers who post them, adding later<\/a> that \u201cthere is a real economic cost to Valve\u2019s foray into forced political disclosures. Beside taking 30%, they\u2019re also taking a potentially even larger fraction of developers\u2019 revenues and livelihood by undermining their businesses with these AI hate campaigns.\u201d For important context, Steam\u2019s AI declarations are buried at the bottom of a store page in small text, alongside any content warnings. The word \u201cpotentially\u201d is doing an awful lot of work in that statement.<\/p>\n

Of course, if you\u2019re someone who\u2019s loudly promoting and pushing for the use of the slop, those who object on any grounds are far easier to dismiss as having a \u201cpolitical\u201d objection rather than a \u201cmoral\u201d one. It\u2019s much more comfortable to declare yourself \u201capolitical\u201d than \u201camoral.\u201d Also, if you\u2019re someone who has spent vast fortunes attempting to establish a rival PC gaming store only for barely anyone to have ever heard of it, let alone use it, you probably feel a bit miffed.<\/p>\n

This is only more frustrating because of how desperately the world needs a valid and successful rival to Steam, given the monopoly it has and the outrageous gouging of developers\u2019 income<\/a> it can therefore get away with. The Epic Games Store wasn\u2019t it, despite laudable policies like taking no cut at all until a game sells a million dollars\u2019 worth, and then taking only 12 percent, compared to Valve\u2019s 30 percent from day one. It\u2019s a clumsy and clunky piece of software that doesn\u2019t offer a fraction of the appeal or pragmatism of Steam, and has failed to meaningfully improve over many years.<\/p>\n

P.S. It was also very funny when someone else pointed out to Sweeney that his own Fab tech requires AI use disclosures, to which his response was, and I quote, \u201cUm, um, that\u2019s different, shut up, um, I\u2019m telling your mom.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a business to business marketplace. Many Fab customers are operating under contracts that require them to understand the providence of all content in their game (including Steam\u2019s own contract that I\u2019ve complained about) and they cannot buy assets without this info.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) October 25, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tim Sweeney Stop Saying Stuff Challenge has been lost once again, as the Epic boss took to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,45908,42293,61,60,80,128677],"class_list":["post-666219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-epic","tag-epic-games-store","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology","tag-tim-sweeney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}