{"id":681911,"date":"2026-07-09T07:48:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T07:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/681911\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T07:48:33","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T07:48:33","slug":"what-do-steam-fans-really-think-about-ai-in-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/681911\/","title":{"rendered":"What do Steam fans really think about AI in games?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter<\/a> is written by \u2018how people find your game\u2019 expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]<\/p>\n

As we finished prepping this newsletter, we got news that Xbox is planning a ~3,200 person team reduction<\/a> – inc. layoffs centrally, at Id Software & beyond, and spinning off 4 studios: Compulsion, Double Fine, Ninja Theory & Undead Labs, with Arkane also likely to go. It\u2019s a big change, but largely expected after recent leaks\u2026<\/p>\n

One notable quote from Asha Sharma\u2019s internal memo<\/a>, though: \u201cPlatform teams are 40% larger than they were at the start of this generation, even as our player base and playtime have declined.\u201d So expect a lot of structure simplification – \u201ca flatter organization\u201d – for Xbox as a platform going forward.<\/p>\n

Some housekeeping: we have holiday coming up, so the next newsletter will be on Tuesday, July 14th (we\u2019re skipping this Friday.) Also: the GameDiscoverCo Show will be on hiatus for a couple of weeks, back Tuesday, July 21st. Also also: our very own Matt Styles<\/a> will be at Develop in the UK<\/a> next week, ping him<\/a> to chat Pro & more\u2026<\/p>\n

[THE DEEPEST PC\/CONSOLE DATA? You can get a free demo of our GameDiscoverCo Pro company-wide \u2018Steam deep dive\u2019 & console data by reaching out today<\/a> – >100 orgs have it. Or, signing up to GDCo Plus<\/a> gets the rest of this newsletter and Discord access, plus more<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

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Let\u2019s kick things off with a whole bunch of game platform and discovery news, shall we? Hey presto:<\/p>\n

GDCo Pro’s ‘trending’ <\/a>unreleased Steam games by<\/a> ‘new wishlists in the last 7 days’<\/a>, June 30th to July 6th is headed by evergreens: co-op bomb defusal game Bombanana!<\/a> (#1), JRPG Persona 6 (#3) and survival horror standout Resident Evil Veronica (#4). And alien Papers, Please-y checker XenoFeels<\/a> (#5) is also thriving.<\/p>\n

But new things? Very Safe Dino Park<\/a> (#2) winningly & wittily jams on the ‘Jurassic Park x friendslop’ space, and Guns Of Eschaton<\/a> (#6) is an apocalyptic Western FPS with art direction by the late Viktor Antonov (Half-Life 2 art director.)<\/p>\n

Nintendo things: Nintendo of Europe has announced that it will stop selling original Switch consoles in early 2027<\/a>, \u201cafter which point retailers won\u2019t be able to order any new stock\u201d; Nintendo\u2019s shareholder Q&A is up<\/a>, with largely anodyne answers, but Shigeru Miyamoto shouting out Pikmin Bloom as a reach-expander<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg has a piece on increasing European government restrictions around games<\/a>, citing the EU\u2019s Digital Fairness Act, the UK\u2019s Online Safety act, and more. More restrictions for minors (esp. around loot boxes) are noted: \u201cGovernmental pressure is mounting as officials have seen mixed results from self-regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

It got easier to see SteamOS\u2019 market share in the monthly Steam hardware chart for June 2026<\/a>, and SteamOS Holo has 0.84% of all surveyed machines, vs. 70% for Windows 11 and 23.5% for Windows 10. (So sure, it\u2019s a tad small, but Mac is only 2.2% across all OSes – when do we think SteamOS will surpass it? Or is that an if?)<\/p>\n

Both PlayStation\u2019s official most-downloaded games in June<\/a> and a reader comment (thx Saty!) remind us that Escape The Backrooms<\/a> released on console at the end of May & topped download charts. (We estimate it at ~1m PlayStation units & way over 10m players multi-platform, inc. Game Pass – perfect timing with the movie<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Microlinks: some more Roblox lessons from the big recent algorithm change<\/a> (whole genres are massively changed in visibility); PlayStation Plus monthly games for July are Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, For the King II, CrossCode<\/a>; some real data from F2P mobile devs<\/a> – $13 eCPI, only 3.5% of installs ever pay $.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not been happening much, but the<\/a> \u2018red line of death\u2019<\/a> is the Steam Machine\u2019s equivalent<\/a> of the Xbox 360\u2019s red ring of death<\/a>, or the classic Windows blue screen of death. In this Steam Machine\u2019s case, \u201cthis particular code signals that the system has detected a GPU failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

GI.biz has a good write-up on why physical game events in the UK aren\u2019t very well<\/a>. Reasons? Lack of big-ticket exhibitors, rising costs for venue hire & more, and the \u2018gravity well\u2019 of Gamescom: \u201cBecause people feel like they have to be there for the B2B side, it makes sense for them to extend their B2C reach at the same event.\u201d<\/p>\n

You may recall that an eInk device as a front panel was used by Valve<\/a> for testing Steam Machine? Well, good guy Valve open-sourced the code for the e-ink faceplate<\/a>, with detailed hardware instructions, also promising \u201ceventually we’ll have an app up on Steam\u201d to control it – there\u2019s an AppImage to use for now.<\/p>\n

Microlinks, Pt. 2: GameFile notes that<\/a> already-released physical PS5 games \u201cwill still be able to place re-orders\u201d after Jan. 2028; here\u2019s a detailed analysis of Epic & Fortnite\u2019s ecosystem & worth<\/a>; new Xbox Game Pass additions include Tony Hawk\u2019s Pro Skater 1+ 2<\/a>, The Planet Crafter, and Palworld 1.0.<\/p>\n

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FirstLook fixes that with Player.gg<\/a>. We\u2019re a community of thousands of players actively looking for their next game to try, and studios get listed in 5 minutes for free.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what that looks like in practice:<\/p>\n

Playtesters requesting access within hours of going live<\/p>\n

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Feedback from players who actually wanted to be there<\/p>\n

Is this an ad? Yes. But it\u2019s a genuine one, because 500+ studios are already using Player.gg<\/a> right now and finding players who care. If you want playtesters without the hustle, set up your free account at FirstLook today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After we launched our Steam Fan Snapshot data in April<\/a> – surveying 10,000 \u2018core Steam fans\u2019 on discovery methods & demographics via giveaways – we ran into a hitch. What if people already gave us their info, but they enter a subsequent giveaway?<\/p>\n

Luckily, we found a good solution – ask them other interesting questions for the newsletter. So after our second cohort (fielded June 25th to July 2nd, 2026) we have ~16k Steam Fan Snapshot participants in GDCo Pro, but also nearly 4k respondents to ask extra stuff about, among other things, AI.<\/p>\n

As always, a caveat: this is \u201ca snapshot of a particular type of Steam player\u201d, more committed than normal. But here\u2019s what ~3,800 of them think re: AI in their games:<\/p>\n

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Firstly, what do the fans think of buying games that show any type of AI disclosure? (PSA: all Steam games have to disclose this<\/a> when they submit.) Well, it\u2019s quite a mixed bag even now, with ~43% of players having no big issues, 26% being neutral, and around 31% viewing it negatively. (With 8% of those saying they just won\u2019t buy\u2026)<\/p>\n

This headline result is still a little concerning for those who want to use AI more extensively in their games, and shows the public are still not that enthused. (It\u2019s not just a handful of outliers\u2026)<\/p>\n

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The actual AI disclosure on Steam pages requires a bit of study, since it\u2019s often one or multiple paragraphs of text. So we wondering – how much do fans self-report as reading it? Turns out 44% say they look in detail, another 45% \u2018glance at it\u2019, and around 11% don\u2019t even try to engage. (This seems just fine to us\u2026)<\/p>\n

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One question that\u2019s come up recently: since Steam games\u2019 AI use info is necessarily self-reported, can we trust it? And yes, there\u2019s public skepticism, not surprising given many recent news stories<\/a>, with only 17% of respondents believing game devs are fully disclosing all audiovisual AI use in games.<\/p>\n

From there, 25% say \u2018many\u2019 disclose AI use, 35% suspect that only \u2018some\u2019 do, and then 16% opt for \u2018not many\u2019 and 4% play the cynical side with \u2018basically none\u2019. Since the biggest answer is only \u2018some\u2019, we def. have a trust issue here. (The negative effects of disclosure probably incent devs to skimp on adding those AI disclaimers, right?)<\/p>\n

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Next, we covered a change back in January<\/a> where: \u201cValve’s making it clearer that ‘AI powered tools’ (like code helpers) do not trigger the need to disclose any use – \u2018Efficiency gains through the use of [AI powered dev tools] is not the focus of this section.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

So we asked players whether they think use of AI coding helpers like Claude Code should be disclosed. A significant 56% said they should be disclosed, and only 8% said they shouldn\u2019t, with 37% in the \u2018neutral\/i don\u2019t care\u2019 category. Of course, if they were, a giant percentage of games would suddenly need disclosure\u2026<\/p>\n

Our final question was just asking players a freeform text question about \u201cthe kind of AI use you are OK with when buying a game on Steam or console, if any.\u201d The results (Claude-analyzed, in part):<\/p>\n

Conditional acceptance is the order of the day: ~51% of the 2,100 analyzable answers accepted AI for some uses but not others, for example: \u201cI’m fine with limited AI use for support tasks, not for replacing human creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the \u2018acceptable\u2019 side, the clear winner is coding\/programming: code helper tools like Claude Code had ~239 mentions as acceptable. This was way more than other categories like prototyping & and placeholder assets (119 mentions), and\/or tedious or repetitive tasks (101 mentions).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all pretty nuanced, and players care about it a lot: the amount of detailed, thoughtful comments we got was striking – we put 5 examples up in a LinkedIn post<\/a> – everything from \u201cI’m OK with AI being used in games as long as there is human review and oversight\u201d to \u201cAI must and should NOT BE USED in GENERATING CREATIVES AT ANY STAGE OR DEVELOPMENT PROCESS.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next: you may recall that Steam\u2019s monthly active users (MAU) are a bit of a mystery in recent years, since the last official Valve announcement<\/a> was an average of 132 million MAU back in 2021. (As a comparison, PlayStation Network – including PS4, PS5, and even some PC\/Steam users – announced 125 million MAU<\/a> as of the end of March 2026.)<\/p>\n

Anyhow, thanks to NobodyInteresting from the SteamDB Discord, we were reminded that if you\u2019re in the European Union, you can see Steam\u2019s Digital Services Act notice here<\/a>, revealing 31.1 million MAUs in the EU in H2 2025 (roughly.) Look:<\/p>\n

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How can we use this regional number to extrapolate worldwide MAU? Well, we do have the Steam bandwidth chart<\/a>, which has a global Steam traffic map for the last 7 days. And look, here\u2019s some GDCo-captured data on region share for the last 3 years:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s interesting to note the rise in South East Asia and the Middle East (from low numbers) and the slight decline of North America & Western Europe\u2026<\/p>\n

In this case, Western Europe + Eastern Europe = 19.2% of the world\u2019s bandwidth on Steam in the last week. Taking away non-EU countries: the UK (2.7%), Norway (0.3%) and misc other non-EU European countries (let\u2019s say 0.5%?) gets us to 15.7%. <\/p>\n

And if 15.7% of Steam bandwidth equates to 31.1 million MAUs, then Steam had 198 million MAU in H2 2025 – and likely a bit more now. Incidentally, that would put China at 48 million Steam MAU and the US at 39.5 million Steam MAU, based on bandwidth extrapolation* alone. (*Due to broadband speed differences, isn\u2019t 100% sound.)<\/p>\n

Another view: Steam does show concurrent on-platform users<\/a>, which have grown from ~25m in 2021 to ~40m in H2 2025. With simple extrapolation of CCU to MAU, this would put Steam\u2019s monthly actives at ~210 million by the end of 2025, not that different on a macro level. And yes, the scale\u2019s impressive: ~2.5% of the world as MAU.<\/p>\n

[We\u2019re GameDiscoverCo<\/a>, an analysis firm based around one simple issue: how do players find, buy and enjoy your PC or console game? We run the newsletter you\u2019re reading, and provide real-time data services for publishers, funds, and other smart game industry folks.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by \u2018how people find your game\u2019 expert & company founder Simon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-681911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}