The October 2026 edition of Steam Next Fest started on October 19, allowing users to explore Steam’s massive catalog of games with free playable demos. Millions of PC gamers logged on but on…
If you’re proud of your use of LLMs, you’d want to promote it. The only legitimate reason to conceal it is you consider it problematic.
LLMs are a competency solvent and credibility chipper. It’s bad enough if you can afford sacrificing some slack, but a lobotomy it’s catastrophic if you haven’t.
The only legitimate reason to conceal it is you consider it problematic.
I get what you mean, and agree that the AI slop is bad and should be declared… But I’d argue that "considering it problematic isn’t the only reason to conceal it.
There obvious financial motives. If you don’t think it’s problematic, but think it’ll hurt sales then that is a “legitimate” reason. It’s a morally shitty reason, but it makes sense.
I just used gemini to make a mod for Total War, Warhammer 3, because the mod I wanted was not available anywhere.
It had to have been the most annoying modding I have ever done. I thought it would save time, it ended up just being me telling the llm that it was making shit up 80% of the time. I finally got working code after what felt like 6 hours of supervising the dumbest programming intern on the floor. My take away, is that I could beg for code better next time, but it did not improve my own ability by much at all. In fairness it would have probably taken me the same amount of time or longer, but the integrity of the code would be higher. I have to believe Claude or GPT are better for this task.
I disclosed that I used AI to make the mod, and for the artwork. I feel like I put an unnecessary target on my back with the declaration considering like 99.999999% of the billion mods for this game are AI slop and AI assisted and do not make similar disclosures though AI use is obvious.
Thanks for providing valuable training data to AI corporations. Your labour will never be acknowledged or compensated and your resources will be stolen.
I recently used one of the heavier ChatGPT models to make a mod pack for Minecraft, fixing some of the things that prevent me from playing the game (usually I lose interest quickly after starting a new world). I had it stitch a bunch of pre-existing mods together and test that they didn’t conflict or make the game too easy. And I had it make a new mod which added custom villagers to villages who point you to destinations full of tough scary monsters guarding a prize that’s needed to beat a final boss. The villagers only give directions if you use one of the expanded food mods to cook a complex recipe for them. If you defeat the bosses scattered around the world, there’s a distant Mordor-style volcano you can then travel to and defeat the final boss. And the biomes are arranged in a spiral with the size of the biomes increasing the further you get away from spawn. I also had it leave tips and instructions around loot chests around the map to teach me how to use the mods and remind me how to build automated farms. This combination of conditions actually motivates me to play the game because there’s a real goal now and a progression that keeps the game engaging all the way through. I don’t plan on releasing it anywhere because I’ve heard a lot of anecdotes from people who made mods with AI and got yelled at for it. Still cool that I can ask for a complex custom mod pack one evening and start actively playing it the next morning.
If you make more mods using AI, I would definitely recommend utilizing one of the heavier GPT or Claude models to limit the amount of rework. I did give it full access to a laptop I have dedicated to AI agent use so it could test and iterate things without my involvement. Completely understandable to not want to give an AI model that level of control. I have to imagine that if I were running the tests myself, I would have had to hand-hold it quite a lot more than I did. Your mileage may vary.
It’s about context. I’m working on a game right now, an idea I’ve had for decades but has always been out of reach. AI has helped me a lot to develop it quickly while also working a full time job. And I’m also working hard to avoid disclosing the AI use - not because I don’t want people to know but because of the deserved stigma around AI slop.
Steam’s current stance (last time I checked) is that if the AI makes assets the player sees, hears, reads or otherwise experiences first-hand, then you must disclose it. But if the AI is used as a tool to produce the code that runs the game, it does not require disclosure. I personally agree with this and have tried to adhere to these rules.
In practice, it means that rather than having some generative tool make my in-game textures, I instead had AI create code that procedurally looks at 3D assets and defines how an artist would draw lines to represent that object if they saw it in real life. And when it comes to audio, I’m doing my own Foley work. For all of the dialogue in the game, I’m writing it myself, which is going to amount to hundreds of hours of work.
But it’s worth it to produce a game with a human touch to it, which doesn’t need to disclose use of AI-created assets. If there was a requirement to disclose use of an LLM in producing the backend code, I gladly would. AI has saved me countless hours by writing the game’s source code, which would easily have taken a year or more for me to write and debug by hand. I just don’t want my game to be lumped in with games that are churned out from an AI without an eye for quality, completeness, or a unique look and feel to the assets. I’ve put too much work into this game for someone to take one look at an AI tag and decide that it’s low-quality slop.
So, based on how you describe it, you’re trying to avoid having to make a required disclosure by generating code that makes the visuals rather than generating the visuals directly? To put it in the way I see it: you’re willfully trying to find and abuse a loophole in the disclosure policy because you know having that disclosure makes your game less desirable to a potential audience?
This is why there’s very little trust for anyone who uses genAI. Rather than recognize that its use is creatively bankrupt, ethically questionable, and disrespectful towards the art form it’s emulating, they’ll use any little loophole or technicality to justify deceiving their audience.
Respectfully, I get that you have a worthwhile story to tell and are putting a lot of work into the writing, but either make the game with the help of genAI and make the disclosure, or tell the story in a medium using the skills you have without resorting to genAI. Trying to weasel your way out of making the disclosure is, in my opinion, more disrespectful than the low quality spam.
I don’t particularly agree with that stance. In terms of what I’m dealing with in the game, there’s really no difference between the developer asking an AI to make an asset filter and them knowing they need to Google kuwahara image abstraction .
When it comes to making an asset, I care that someone thought about what it should look like. Having it generate the asset is just hitting shuffle until you stop. Having it build the filter or tool is no different than finding a tool or filter and then using it to make the asset.
It’s not a loophole. It is the actual intent of the AI disclosure rule. Generative AI uses inference to produce visuals. I am using AI to create procedural code that draws lines in the way I want them drawn. Using the curves and styles I have defined. You can argue that you want AI usage in backend code to be disclosed as well, which I would probably agree with. But I don’t agree that building logic to define how 2D lines get rendered is the same as prompting an AI for an image and using that image as an asset in a game. They are completely different ways of producing graphics and look entirely different from one another. I do not want to make a game where the art style looks AI-generated. And mine does not look that way, because the art is not made by AI. Still, I respect and appreciate your opinion on the topic and would be interested in hearing further feedback on the process I’m using.
As much as I agree that there is a difference, it still feels like trying to skirt around the disclosure. Clever way to avoid looking generated at least, I’ll give you that. Agree to disagree on this.
I’m very staunchly against using genAI for anything in the games I play, so if I find out a game uses it in any way my opinion of it and its maker quickly shifts negative. If I played a game that doesn’t disclose any genAI use and later find out genAI was used, I will go out of my way to avoid any further games made by the same people and leave a negative review citing the genAI use as the primary reason.
In my actual opinion, creatives using genAI to do work in the mediums they don’t work in is a betrayal of, and voluntary isolation from, people who should be your peers. I would definitely choose to stop associating with someone I know if they tried to utilize genAI as a part of something creative.
Not everyone has that negative an opinion, or even cares if all the code is generated given they’ll never see or know. It’s a hard-line stance coming from a need I feel to oppose genAI regardless of what it’s generating. Generated code is not something that’s particularly enforceable when it comes to disclosure, anyway.
If you’re following the rules as written then I guess you’re welcome to not disclose genAI use and all I can do is cope.
Making the backend does not make you a good game dev, you also have to make a fking game thats enjoyable to play, sht so many games don’t require coding to make, I see no difference between that and directing an ai on the backend. Or do you hate no code engines meant for ppl to make games easily?
Not necessarily true. The legitimate reason to hide it is irrational stigma. Why voluntarily paint a target on your back, if there’s no downside to not doing so? Just refuse to engage in the AI tagging, and all anyone has are unverifiable accusations.
Again, if you’re proud of your use of the grey goo extrusion sphincter, you’ll be able to defend it.
If you care so little about your creative abilities, and choose to abdicate the responsibility to develop them, why would you care what others have to say?
Is that how it works? Here I was thinking I was just a realist, who saw what was coming and got ahead of the curve by getting my MSc in Machine Learning before the future became the present, so I could hold on to a viable career for as long as possible. I’m sure you know better, though.
I literally don’t care. All is (probably) lost, and I’m just surviving as long as possible. I’ve often said, to ridicule although I still still stand by it: the climate is so far gone that if we are to have any solutions it will either come from the culmination of all mankind’s knowledge (AI), or from extraterrestrials. And I’m not seeing any ETs.
Honestly, I’m truly sorry you’ve committed so much personal effort to a pseudoscientific field, but on the bright side, that exact field is the current hotness, and usefully ignorant clowns are ripe to extract a career from if you apply yourself. Just look at economists who have been pulling it off for decades.
Hell, maybe you’ll actually discover something that can legitimately be mistaken for an intelligent system, and make me look like a blathering fool.
Wouldn’t that be cool! But no. I only spend about five percent of my time developing systems that use AI. The rest of the time I’m using AI directly in software development. I’d probably really enjoy a job in the Artificial Intelligence industry, and it would probably pay multiple times more than I’m making now, but I have too cushy of a job to consider it. Set my own hours, set my own priorities, friends with all my coworkers - answering to a manager, working with strangers, and having to work a set shift isn’t worth the money. Thanks for the kind thoughts, though.
Thank you for acknowledging the validity of my assessment, even when we disagree on the call to action. I’m afraid, with regards to your own struggles, that your current sole reply is quite correct. It is literally impossible to detect it, as every developer is a literal black box. In the near future the developer themselves could be AI. Instructed to ignore AI disclosures…
If you’re proud of your use of LLMs, you’d want to promote it. The only legitimate reason to conceal it is you consider it problematic.
LLMs are a competency solvent and credibility chipper. It’s bad enough if you can afford sacrificing some slack, but a lobotomy it’s catastrophic if you haven’t.
I get what you mean, and agree that the AI slop is bad and should be declared… But I’d argue that "considering it problematic isn’t the only reason to conceal it.
There obvious financial motives. If you don’t think it’s problematic, but think it’ll hurt sales then that is a “legitimate” reason. It’s a morally shitty reason, but it makes sense.
Distinction sans difference, it’s still considered problematic.
If anything, including a financial element in the calculation makes it more problematic.
Hurting sales is the only problem that corporations care about.
Tech management types are, by and large, moral and ethical vacuums. They see artists going broke as a Good Thing.
Does it count if I’m not proud of my use of LLMs?
I just used gemini to make a mod for Total War, Warhammer 3, because the mod I wanted was not available anywhere. It had to have been the most annoying modding I have ever done. I thought it would save time, it ended up just being me telling the llm that it was making shit up 80% of the time. I finally got working code after what felt like 6 hours of supervising the dumbest programming intern on the floor. My take away, is that I could beg for code better next time, but it did not improve my own ability by much at all. In fairness it would have probably taken me the same amount of time or longer, but the integrity of the code would be higher. I have to believe Claude or GPT are better for this task.
I disclosed that I used AI to make the mod, and for the artwork. I feel like I put an unnecessary target on my back with the declaration considering like 99.999999% of the billion mods for this game are AI slop and AI assisted and do not make similar disclosures though AI use is obvious.
Thanks for providing valuable training data to AI corporations. Your labour will never be acknowledged or compensated and your resources will be stolen.
I recently used one of the heavier ChatGPT models to make a mod pack for Minecraft, fixing some of the things that prevent me from playing the game (usually I lose interest quickly after starting a new world). I had it stitch a bunch of pre-existing mods together and test that they didn’t conflict or make the game too easy. And I had it make a new mod which added custom villagers to villages who point you to destinations full of tough scary monsters guarding a prize that’s needed to beat a final boss. The villagers only give directions if you use one of the expanded food mods to cook a complex recipe for them. If you defeat the bosses scattered around the world, there’s a distant Mordor-style volcano you can then travel to and defeat the final boss. And the biomes are arranged in a spiral with the size of the biomes increasing the further you get away from spawn. I also had it leave tips and instructions around loot chests around the map to teach me how to use the mods and remind me how to build automated farms. This combination of conditions actually motivates me to play the game because there’s a real goal now and a progression that keeps the game engaging all the way through. I don’t plan on releasing it anywhere because I’ve heard a lot of anecdotes from people who made mods with AI and got yelled at for it. Still cool that I can ask for a complex custom mod pack one evening and start actively playing it the next morning.
If you make more mods using AI, I would definitely recommend utilizing one of the heavier GPT or Claude models to limit the amount of rework. I did give it full access to a laptop I have dedicated to AI agent use so it could test and iterate things without my involvement. Completely understandable to not want to give an AI model that level of control. I have to imagine that if I were running the tests myself, I would have had to hand-hold it quite a lot more than I did. Your mileage may vary.
It’s about context. I’m working on a game right now, an idea I’ve had for decades but has always been out of reach. AI has helped me a lot to develop it quickly while also working a full time job. And I’m also working hard to avoid disclosing the AI use - not because I don’t want people to know but because of the deserved stigma around AI slop.
Steam’s current stance (last time I checked) is that if the AI makes assets the player sees, hears, reads or otherwise experiences first-hand, then you must disclose it. But if the AI is used as a tool to produce the code that runs the game, it does not require disclosure. I personally agree with this and have tried to adhere to these rules.
In practice, it means that rather than having some generative tool make my in-game textures, I instead had AI create code that procedurally looks at 3D assets and defines how an artist would draw lines to represent that object if they saw it in real life. And when it comes to audio, I’m doing my own Foley work. For all of the dialogue in the game, I’m writing it myself, which is going to amount to hundreds of hours of work.
But it’s worth it to produce a game with a human touch to it, which doesn’t need to disclose use of AI-created assets. If there was a requirement to disclose use of an LLM in producing the backend code, I gladly would. AI has saved me countless hours by writing the game’s source code, which would easily have taken a year or more for me to write and debug by hand. I just don’t want my game to be lumped in with games that are churned out from an AI without an eye for quality, completeness, or a unique look and feel to the assets. I’ve put too much work into this game for someone to take one look at an AI tag and decide that it’s low-quality slop.
So, based on how you describe it, you’re trying to avoid having to make a required disclosure by generating code that makes the visuals rather than generating the visuals directly? To put it in the way I see it: you’re willfully trying to find and abuse a loophole in the disclosure policy because you know having that disclosure makes your game less desirable to a potential audience?
This is why there’s very little trust for anyone who uses genAI. Rather than recognize that its use is creatively bankrupt, ethically questionable, and disrespectful towards the art form it’s emulating, they’ll use any little loophole or technicality to justify deceiving their audience.
Respectfully, I get that you have a worthwhile story to tell and are putting a lot of work into the writing, but either make the game with the help of genAI and make the disclosure, or tell the story in a medium using the skills you have without resorting to genAI. Trying to weasel your way out of making the disclosure is, in my opinion, more disrespectful than the low quality spam.
Thanks for an intelligent take in a thread full of slop logic.
I don’t particularly agree with that stance. In terms of what I’m dealing with in the game, there’s really no difference between the developer asking an AI to make an asset filter and them knowing they need to Google kuwahara image abstraction .
When it comes to making an asset, I care that someone thought about what it should look like. Having it generate the asset is just hitting shuffle until you stop. Having it build the filter or tool is no different than finding a tool or filter and then using it to make the asset.
It’s not a loophole. It is the actual intent of the AI disclosure rule. Generative AI uses inference to produce visuals. I am using AI to create procedural code that draws lines in the way I want them drawn. Using the curves and styles I have defined. You can argue that you want AI usage in backend code to be disclosed as well, which I would probably agree with. But I don’t agree that building logic to define how 2D lines get rendered is the same as prompting an AI for an image and using that image as an asset in a game. They are completely different ways of producing graphics and look entirely different from one another. I do not want to make a game where the art style looks AI-generated. And mine does not look that way, because the art is not made by AI. Still, I respect and appreciate your opinion on the topic and would be interested in hearing further feedback on the process I’m using.
As much as I agree that there is a difference, it still feels like trying to skirt around the disclosure. Clever way to avoid looking generated at least, I’ll give you that. Agree to disagree on this.
I’m very staunchly against using genAI for anything in the games I play, so if I find out a game uses it in any way my opinion of it and its maker quickly shifts negative. If I played a game that doesn’t disclose any genAI use and later find out genAI was used, I will go out of my way to avoid any further games made by the same people and leave a negative review citing the genAI use as the primary reason.
In my actual opinion, creatives using genAI to do work in the mediums they don’t work in is a betrayal of, and voluntary isolation from, people who should be your peers. I would definitely choose to stop associating with someone I know if they tried to utilize genAI as a part of something creative.
Not everyone has that negative an opinion, or even cares if all the code is generated given they’ll never see or know. It’s a hard-line stance coming from a need I feel to oppose genAI regardless of what it’s generating. Generated code is not something that’s particularly enforceable when it comes to disclosure, anyway.
If you’re following the rules as written then I guess you’re welcome to not disclose genAI use and all I can do is cope.
Making the backend does not make you a good game dev, you also have to make a fking game thats enjoyable to play, sht so many games don’t require coding to make, I see no difference between that and directing an ai on the backend. Or do you hate no code engines meant for ppl to make games easily?
Fucksticks attacking you is a reason t want to hide it
Not necessarily true. The legitimate reason to hide it is irrational stigma. Why voluntarily paint a target on your back, if there’s no downside to not doing so? Just refuse to engage in the AI tagging, and all anyone has are unverifiable accusations.
Again, if you’re proud of your use of the grey goo extrusion sphincter, you’ll be able to defend it.
If you care so little about your creative abilities, and choose to abdicate the responsibility to develop them, why would you care what others have to say?
Is that how it works? Here I was thinking I was just a realist, who saw what was coming and got ahead of the curve by getting my MSc in Machine Learning before the future became the present, so I could hold on to a viable career for as long as possible. I’m sure you know better, though.
I literally don’t care. All is (probably) lost, and I’m just surviving as long as possible. I’ve often said, to ridicule although I still still stand by it: the climate is so far gone that if we are to have any solutions it will either come from the culmination of all mankind’s knowledge (AI), or from extraterrestrials. And I’m not seeing any ETs.
Honestly, I’m truly sorry you’ve committed so much personal effort to a pseudoscientific field, but on the bright side, that exact field is the current hotness, and usefully ignorant clowns are ripe to extract a career from if you apply yourself. Just look at economists who have been pulling it off for decades.
Hell, maybe you’ll actually discover something that can legitimately be mistaken for an intelligent system, and make me look like a blathering fool.
Wouldn’t that be cool! But no. I only spend about five percent of my time developing systems that use AI. The rest of the time I’m using AI directly in software development. I’d probably really enjoy a job in the Artificial Intelligence industry, and it would probably pay multiple times more than I’m making now, but I have too cushy of a job to consider it. Set my own hours, set my own priorities, friends with all my coworkers - answering to a manager, working with strangers, and having to work a set shift isn’t worth the money. Thanks for the kind thoughts, though.
The climate crisis is caused by machines and automation. I very much doubt it can be solved by more machines and automation…
The climate crisis is caused my capitalism, of which machines and automation are but a fraction.
While this comment has the wrong essence, it does raise a valid concern. There should be some way to detect and ban AI deterministically.
This is impossible.
Thank you for acknowledging the validity of my assessment, even when we disagree on the call to action. I’m afraid, with regards to your own struggles, that your current sole reply is quite correct. It is literally impossible to detect it, as every developer is a literal black box. In the near future the developer themselves could be AI. Instructed to ignore AI disclosures…