Steam Will Now Conditionally Allow Games That Use AI On Steam

gameranx.com:

Valve has revealed they will now accept games that use AI on their Steam platform, under specific conditions.

As reported by Techraptor, Valve explained that they have reached this decision after talking to the developers using this technology for the past few months. In specific, they have added rules that don’t allow these games to include ‘illegal or infringing’ content.

We had reported last year that Valve was banning games that used generative AI inconsistently, as we discovered one game that was allowed to stick around on the platform. A month after that, Gabe Newell revealed in an interview that they are not against using generative AI or AI for making video games on principle.

Rather, they noticed that the first devs making AI games were clearly infringing on copyrights, and they wanted to avoid getting involved in that. And so, their new policies that they will start enforcing now.

Developers who want get their games on Steam will now have to fill out a survey with an AI disclosure section. They have provided definitions for pre-generated and live-generated AI content as well:

Now some fans may be unhappy with Valve’s decision, but this is a matter of balancing the needs and desires of the users and the developers. Valve will of course change these rules again when something else comes up, but this seems to be an acknowledgement that a general ban on generative AI will disqualify too many developers from getting onto Steam.

Of course, copyright is not the only issue raised by generative AI. There are concerns of the quality of the games that use such technology, and also if this will adversely affect how many people can work in the industry, and the conditions under which they can be employed.

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