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…
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.
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?
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.
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?