A Valve artist has defended AI disclosures on storefronts like Steam, saying they only scare those with “low effort” products.
good response from Valve
Nobody who wants to hide information from you has your best interests at heart. Sweeney is a creep.
Stop it, Valve! I can only get so erect!
Good shit, I hope we keep seeing headlines like this nonstop, because you know for sure those AI assholes have bots spamming inboxes with the opposite message.
But I thought ai users love ai why wouldn’t they want people to know? (:
Maybe because of all the brigading/harassment campaigns? If it weren’t for that I’d think this is totally fine, since it’s good for people to be able to know more about what they’re buying.
Many people say AI sucks and they hate it? Must be an organized campaign and not just a widely held opinion!
People are literally murdered IRL for being LGBTQ+. I haven’t seen that be brought up as an argument against having a LGBTQ+ tag on Steam. I think AI users will be OK
I have recently found a really cool youtube video talking about a reason to not use AI and why some people hate it
Using AI is obviously not nearly deserving of harassment, but, unfortunately, some people on the internet dont know that
Surely ai users know how frequently the technology is used in bad faith and for nefarious purposes
I think having a problem with the backlash is not a valid reason to avoid disclosing ai use.
They should be mature and self aware and have a problem with the people and developers obviously misusing the technology so much instead
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Unity doesn’t work by hoovering up the collected works of humanity, mixing it all up, and extruding it as a paste as a response to a sentence or two prompt (yes, image generation is more complicated to prompt but it is still roughly a paragraph of text).
Look, if you personally don’t see the issue with AI, I still have a hard time believing that you haven’t seen plenty of varied arguments against it. Ignoring all the varied reasons to pretend it’s only some needless hand-wringing at this point just feels like bad faith.
And either way, we’re talking about a tag/label. I see no issues with games having a tab/label/etc on their store page indicating the engine they’re built off of. Some people don’t like horror, puzzles, always online, forced PvP, or a particular art style. Some people don’t like generative AI. I don’t think there’s a strong argument to be made that usage of generative AI should be a special case here. If no one’s harassing people, I see no reason to prevent people from making informed decisions on what they purchase.
If your counterargument is that AI is just a tool, and we don’t tag whether the artists used a mouse or a drawing tablet, I’d counter with this: hand drawn art is a selling point due to the increased workload to create it (and implied extra quality). Now “no generative AI” can be the same. An indicator that things were done “the hard way”, with an implication (but no guarantee) of higher quality.
I don’t think using AI to help make a videogame is in any way nefarious or misuse, especially for smaller developers who wouldn’t have the resources to make the game they had in mind otherwise. They don’t deserve to get review bombed or have nasty messages left on all their social media by organized discord groups just because of that, and it’s understandable they’d be worried about it.
Frankly devs are more likely to get review bombed about ai usage if they tried to hide it. If they’re up front about it then that’s on the users going in to be aware of. Many people don’t like gen ai use at all, but they really hate it when they find out after the fact that it’s been used after thinking otherwise.
I think it is nefarious to use AI and developers who use it should be ashamed. No one is organizing hate campaigns, AI literally is so disliked people will rally against it organically.
Indie gamedev existed for years before AI. You can just sit down and make a game. And if you don’t care enough to actually work on it, why would people even spend their money on “your” product?
Games used to be programmed in low level code, if you don’t care enough to hand code your game and instead rely on machines to “compile” it for you, why even spend money on “your” product that’s all high level machine generated code?
Because these people do not understand the concept of craft nor care about the process of creating, they are soulless goons looking to grift people. It’s not their fault that society is so fucked that it’s necessary to trick and rob people so they can eat…
Yeah, they don’t understand that the process of learning, of making mistakes and hitting dead-ends as you create your work of art is fucking important! Failures can lead to unexpected changes to your initial idea, and they might improve your work or at least make it iconic (the classic example of the fog in Silent Hill that was added to offset a technical limitation). You can’t have that if the entire process of creating a piece is automated.
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Even today, people value photos differently than paintings, at least in part due to the amount of effort that goes into each.
There’s no reasonable argument to preventing people from having the information up front to make the same sort of value decision about a game.
You’re free to use AI, just declare it. The purchasing public is free to decide if that changes how much they’re willing to pay for your game.
We aren’t entitled to your time, but you aren’t entitle to sales. If your use of AI is losing you sales, you’re perfectly free to decide to stop or keep using it.
Games bring together a lot of different mediums and require a diverse set of skills. So for instance someone might be great at drawing, and have a great idea for a game that uses their art, but they have a hard time with coding, and use AI to simplify that part of it for them in a way that’s more flexible than some other more restrictive solution like RPG Maker, which might make it closer to their vision for the kind of game they wanted to make. I think such a game could be worth playing, assuming the person making it cares about what they are making and puts their own work into it.
That’s kinda fallacious as an argument. AI cannot create good code, it CAN be used to create code, but requires.expert to fix the tons of mistakes and simply bad coding solutions it comes up with. If you don’t have the skills it’s better to use a tool made to help you with that with its limitations (rpg maker in your example) rather than use a tool made to aid already expert users (that even they say it actually creates more work for them lol). I write code myself and LLMs simply suck at coding. They can create “art” but it’s all the same and you can spot it on their steam page when they do. Honestly, I’m not even angry at them for thinking the same way as you do: it’s just that those coding solutions are advertised as such, and people are simply ignoring the expert in the field that tell them they can’t actually do that. If you try that road you will either create something that doesn’t work or something that will put its users at risk (by creating trojan backdoors in theor system or sharing sensitive information) and that’s something I can’t simply condone.
You’re kind of right, in that it’s not a total solution right now and you probably won’t be able to vibe code a whole game (except a really simple one maybe) with no knowledge. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t lower the skill floor for someone. I’m assuming the person in my scenario would be also using an engine like Unity or Godot, maybe asking the AI to walk them through how to do what they want, write simple scripts and explain/suggest syntax. That shouldn’t have too much risk of generating inadvertent backdoors, and I think LLMs are pretty good at explaining basic code. Game engines already enforce the basic design structure, which will make it easier to avoid big unfixable mistakes and do everything in small pieces a LLM is less likely to fuck up.
The same is true with using it for art; you’re right that a lot of AI art on Steam is obvious and looks the same, but really good AI assisted art isn’t. The amount of skill and effort required for that is not zero, but is less than it might be otherwise. There are probably a lot of games out there where you just can’t tell, and because there’s so much fear of backlash it just isn’t disclosed.
I don’t know a single self-respecting artist who would use AI though. Artists are literally the most harmed people by the LLMs lol.
Other than that, I agree with what @[email protected] said - if you don’t know how to code, LLMs will generate the most unplayable game in existence.
Or, like in the past, people figure out solutions to the limitations and make something new. The fog in silent Hill is an example.
I’d rather pay for a game that looks shittier and handmade than ai garbage.
Silent Hill was made by a huge studio with large financial backing.
I’d rather pay for a game made by a solo Indie dev who used AI to help them over evil corpo garbage.
I’d rather pay for neither.
And some people even outsource their defense of AI slop to AI.
I promise you, none of what I write here is AI, I’m against doing that
Strongly disagree. You’re basically saying smaller developers shouldn’t be punished for theft just because they can’t afford to pay artists.
Ai use, as the article outlined, is based on cultural laundering and IP theft.
So yeah, if you can’t make a game without stealing art, don’t make a game. And if you make a game with stolen art, you absolutely deserve to be review bombed.
And before you say ai generated art isn’t theft, the models are absolutely trained on stolen art
theft
???
Please show me where the material goods were stolen.
Piracy is not theft, taking ideas and concepts is not theft. Stop defending corporations and the capitalist system through spreading their propaganda.
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Respectfully, fuck right off.
Indie games compete all the time, they make millions. Games are an artform. Any developers using AI are in it for a quick buck and people dont want to reward that versus traditional hardwork.
Indies have been wildly successful for decades before AI has even existed, so dont suddenly pretend its a crutch they need now. And you are down right disrespecting any legitimate artists by defending AI use. It’s disgusting.
It’s the AAA devs that are going to use AI to pump out more garbage, not the honest indie developers.
the models are absolutely trained on stolen art
Downloading isn’t stealing, and in this case the law doesn’t agree with you either, nor does Steam; games developed with AI are legal and allowed. You’re entitled to your opinion about the ethics of it, and I think it’s fine if people want to only buy games without AI, but this is an incredibly petty way to rationalize organized harassment against people with no ill intent trying to realize their dreams. The only reason anyone goes after them is because they are softer targets than any of the billionaires and corporations doing actually questionable things with the technology.
Downloading isn’t stealing
Plagiarism is.
And let’s be perfectly clear: we’ve heard from megacorporations for decades now that downloading is theft. But suddenly it isn’t now that they benefit from it? Fuck that. When Lars Ulrich himself emerges from his greasy crust and admits that downloading isn’t theft, then maybe - maybe we can talk about AI scraping everyone’s hard work not being theft. Until then, you have the entire public domain to use, just like everyone else. If you don’t think that’s enough, then maybe the megacorps shouldn’t have spent most of a century robbing humanity of a robust public domain.
Downloading isn’t stealing??? Are you delusional? It is in this case. Just because the law doesn’t recognise it is irrelevant, I’m not talking about legality, I’m talking about the ethics of ripping off small, underpaid artists.
Download a game, or a movie, or an album without the required license. That’s piracy.
If I download a Disney movie, and use clips of it in my game, how do you think a court case would go?
Or if I download idk, a Taylor Swift album and use that in my game without a license, do you think the law would agree with me or Taylor Swift?
And my only excuse is “I couldn’t afford to make my own music so I used yours”?
Using ai is no different. You’re taking someone else’s work, not paying for it, and using it in your training model without permission.
Just because they may have no ill intent is irrelevant, it only speaks to their ignorance on the matter.
“I’m sorry officer I didn’t mean to speed, I had no ill intent”. Ok, you’re still getting a ticket. Ignorance is no excuse.
dbzer0 users out here defending the capitalist system 😎
I’m talking about the ethics
You’re talking about your supposed right to enforce your idea of ethics on people who don’t agree with you, in a situation where there is no universal consensus, there is no law backing you up, and all supposed harms are abstract, indirect, and essentially a dispute about market competition.
Just because they may have no ill intent is irrelevant, it only speaks to their ignorance on the matter.
“I’m sorry officer I didn’t mean to speed, I had no ill intent”. Ok, you’re still getting a ticket. Ignorance is no excuse.
It matters because it’s one clear reason why the people harassing them are assholes. Pretty different from a situation where someone has violated an established law very closely linked to putting people at risk of direct physical harm and that law is being enforced.
Plenty of smaller developers don’t use AI too and we can simply disagree on whether replacing people with ai just so you can make your video game is misuse.
Like is that really even an excuse? I don’t think it’s ok to harass people but if you want to use ai it seems you should accept the social consequences of review bombing given many people do in fact validly see its use as harmful.
Especially when other small developers don’t use it to make games
Well to be fair for quite a few people it’s either them and AI creates a game, or no AI and no game. Though if it were me, I’d use AI art, put it in early access and use the money on art commissions to eventually replace it. Then again, in this situation I wouldn’t be agaisnt an AI disclaimer.
You dont need to be good at art to make a video game that looks good. You can also find art assets online
I have had a harder time making up for not being good at making music, but there are songs online you can use for free
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There’s been so much art and so many game produced every year before ChatGPT became big. If not using AI meant that we’ll only get slightly more indie games each year instead several times more indie games each year, I think we’ll manage without.
There’s already more art available than any human could consume in their lifetime. We don’t have to push out slop to keep people entertained
True, honestly I’m no game dev, but I’d assume it would be hard to get anything “custom” for free. A lot of people don’t wanna have to spend much on a game that might just not work out. To be fair in this sotuation you could also just use free assets and replace them later. I’m just not a fan of the lemmy “black and white” AI is evil approach.
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I’m a one man team making a game.
It’s a management game and indirectly you control characters, which you don’t see as in-game models because instead you control the ships they’re in or you order them to work in specific positions in the space station.
I would like to actually have distinct recognizable characters with their own voices so that players can identify with them, like them and not want to lose them.
So I would like to have character cards with portraits and as much as possible unique character voices, and given that the game’s visuals are toward the realistic side, the portraits would be in a realistic style.
This means around 100+ realistic portraits and distinct voices.
As a one man team I can’t actually do this without AI - not enough funds for hiring 100 voice actors, not enough skill to do that kind of design or funds to hire somebody who will do 100 realistic distinct portraits.
So either I seriously trim down that feature (say, their speech is text only, and they have no portraits at all) or I use AI image generation and voice generation.
It’s simply not possible to do certain features at a certain level if you’re a small indie - unlike a big games company, I neither have the skill to do it myself (or in the case of the multiple voices, physically can’t), the employees to do it for me or the funds to pay for freelancers to do it, given how much work that involves.
I’ll probably try multiple options and see which works best. Maybe I’ll use AI for it, maybe I’ll cut down that feature to the point that all you have is an name and written text (essentially making the whole idea of players liking some characters nonviable), maybe I’ll find some middle way that avoids AI.
That said, I support disclosing that AI was used in making the game, ideally if it lets me list where an how it was used.
As a customer, I feel I should be able to make an informed decision when buying something, so it’s only fair that the same applies to my potential customers. As I see it, it should be up to gamers to decide if and how much they care about AI having been used in making a game.
That’s not the point. People fall in love with poorly drawn characters, bad voice acting, and even some times poorly written stories. It’s all about how creative you are. You only rob yourself of the ability to improve or tell an honest story.
Stop the lies. People would not fall in love with every character having the same voice.
all you have is an name and written text (essentially making the whole idea of players liking some characters nonviable)
People have favourite characters in books and text-only games all the time - don’t sell yourself short on your ability to write compelling characters before you’ve tried and failed
You can’t? It’s impossible? I can think of three ways, off the dome, you could do this without AI.
1- stock photo images and vocaloid voices, using an audio overlay so it sounds like it’s just a weird interference.
2- literally use friends, family, and their friends and family for the project. Random people from the Internet who would have fun with it. Anyone who needs to pad their portfolio for acting, headshots, and voicework. Network your solution.
3- do a patrion or go fund me or whatever and one of the tiers, or the lowest tier, is that you get to be in the game.
Hell, for bonus ideas that are things you thought of already, just draw em and do so the voices and it’ll be crappy but that’s fun, actually bite the bullet and pay people, or like you said, do without.
Using AI is giving up. All those games where part of the appeal was the effort they put into it would be nothingburgers if they used AI. Cuphead took off because it was all hand animated, and if they used regular computer animation people wouldn’t have cared half as much, and now it’s got it’s own cartoon and people are still buying merch for it.
So yeah, if you wanna cut corners and use AI, go right ahead, but people will know you decided to waste a huge amount of energy and water to make a lower end product.
Or… you could always figure something else out and let people see the effort you put into this project you care about, and let that effort be part of the selling point. We want games people put effort into, so please don’t water down your grand idea with slop.
vocaloid voices
“Dont use an LLM, instead use machine generated voices!” ???
Despite all the “OK idea guy”, “you just want to exploit artists”, and “you’ll get so much more creative control if you do it all alone” being thrown at anyone looking for a team, it’s much easier to find people willing to cooperate with you than you think.
So, use AI, it’ll be listed as such on steam and there’s nothing wrong with that. Its just stating the truth. Doesn’t mean your project is crap, just means you used it and the store says so.
The problem they’re solving is that for some reason, devs want to hide that they’re using AI. Why would they feel the need to keep it secret?
Yes, that’s what I’m considering and that’s my point of view.
As I wrote at the end of my post, I totally agree with full disclosure as I think buyers are entitled to make an informed decision and many people feel that the use of AI in making a game is something that makes a difference in their purchasing decision.
I’m not so sure it’s devs wanting to hide that they’re using AI. I think is more of a mix of AI use having become an ideological subject for some people (for understandable reasons given the veritable shitshow of speculative investment, fraud and deceit around it, not to mention that many AI models - especially the corporate ones - are trained on other people’s work against the will of those people) and some are absolutist about it to the point of irrationality (that part is less understandable), and many if not most of those making and selling games not wanting to lose a single sale not matter what.
Whilst I hold the principle that buyers should know what they’re getting before they buy it (and I try to be fair on it rather than wanting it for myself alone, so that means that principle also applies to my potential customers and I’m willing to lose sales for that), mine is a one-person Indie, so the company is me and follows my principles. Some in the industry do not hold such principles or just work in or lead companies which they do not own, so instead they push for the option that maximizes profit, and that’s getting the upsides on both sides - one one side using AI to reduce manpower costs AND on the other not losing the sales of customers who are against AI use like that, which would happen if they were informed about it, so they don’t want mandatory disclosure.
If it’s ideological, wouldn’t it be worse if someone buys the game only to later find out that you used generative ai to make it?
I’m gonna be that guy and say don’t use it then. The AI imigies are purely based on stolen art; you’d be profiting off stolen art. I don’t care how legal it is, it’s someone’s hard work being undermined just so your life can be easier. It’s just another way giant mega corps take power from the people. Instead of commissioning some artist or voice actor, you’re giving money to some giant mega corp that can lobby the government to place data centers that poison people’s water supply and increase people’s energy bills.
You could write the base game without AI, then add the extended AI resources as a DLC pack
That’s actually a very interesting way to tackle the whole thing and opens up an even broader scope than it seems at first sight.
The base game has simple text-only character “speech” with no portraits.
AI generated character portraits with AI-generated voices is a free DLC released alongside the game.
For my specific case there would be no gameplay differences in having or not the DLC installed, only a simpler or fancier version of character interaction.
Also given that some of that stuff is going to be a lot of voice recordings, it makes the base game much smaller.
Its give gamers a choice, which is as it should be IMHO, and it also gives me feedback on how many people would rather have a less fancy version without AI generated elements over having a fancier version with AI generated elements.
This is definitely a good way to go; not only does it decouple the AI generated assets from the game, but in doing so lets you get a picture of how important they are to your players. It might be that everyone grabs the DLC despite it being AI generated, or it might be that a large chunk avoid it because of that. That would be useful information for your next game.
I’m sure there are stock images of actual people you could get access to, for a fee. That plus some image editing to get the style you want might be a way to avoid using AI for the portraits. I totally understand wanting to use AI for the voices though, that seems fair.
I don’t think there are that many futuristic portrait photos in a consistent visual style available as stock images, unless we’re talking about existing IPs (say, people in Star Wars outfits), which is something I obviously cannot use.
Photo editing exists brochacho
And that’s fair. No one is saying you can’t use it just that it should be listed.
Also, if I read something like your post on the description of a game, I wouldn’t hold it against it. LLMs as a tool to make working class people’s lives easier is great. I’m against it when greedy fucks use it to exclude workers from the process.
lemmy perfectly proving the point of why devs don’t want people to know what tools they use.
First of all, they’re not intelligent enough to come to any sort of rational conclusion on the matter, so there’s that
I look at the same way I look at game engines. It’s a tool, which if used in the production of the game should be disclosed and let people decide if they want to buy that product or not.
I’d much rather buy a game made with Godot than Unity. So yeah, list the ingredients
Or UE5, since it’s an unoptimized mess
Yes, we should celebrate transparency. Even if every game includes Ai in development in some shape or form, its good to know what exactly was done. In some cases its even a little less harmless or even acceptable (like generating meaningless terrain) than in other cases.
Check out demos, read reviews. If it’s good it’s good, if it’s bad it’s bad. What does it matter how it was made?
Which demos? Those are long dead on Steam. Demos are now basically paid early access releases…
It’s one of the quality indicators. Just like the game engine. E.g. I know Bethesda games will have shit performance and be bug ridden because they use Creation Engine.
Actually I’ve found the opposite, it feels like industry moved away from demos for quite awhile. But steam has been recently showcasing games with demos and encouraging them? (Probably not true of AAA)
I guess the situation is a bit better since their 2024 overhaul, but it’s mostly limited to indie devs not like before demos were used by every single studio and publisher as a marketing tool to allow people actually playtest the game not only to see if the game is interesting but also it’s performance on your machine.
itch.io still beats Steam into ground in this area.
Ok. I admit I’m not really into the scene and so I’m talking generically. But I see my daughter watch hours of YouTube of other people playing new games and commenting (rather moronically) on them. Seems like a pretty it should be pretty easy to see if the game is worth your money before you buy.
Many of those Youtubers get paid to play those games, and the ones catering to younger audiences are particularly bad at providing those disclaimers
And the disclosure wouldn’t change anything for those that do research for their purchaces outside the store page, but it would have an impact on people that don’t.
But why should it matter at all? They don’t list whether the game was written in c++ or c# because it makes no difference. What matters is the game play. If it’s good, it’s good.
They don’t list whether the game was written in c++ or c# because it makes no difference.
Sure they do. That’s what game engine disclosure does.
Do they really? And do you care? I mean I understand if they tell you it’s based on Unity or what other framework systems, because that would dictate a certain look and feel area, but the programming language?
Because AI-gened voices and graphics are terrible in their own right. They’re super unnatural and casually wander into Uncanny Valley.
Also I’m not paying for a product that wasn’t human-made. I don’t want to support those who waste their time talking to a chatbot like a moron.
They are terrible now, but they will get better and better. The code will be at least AI-assist generated regardless.
I don’t think LLMs will survive for so long
Is there an asset flip disclosure?
So pretty much every shop/job simulator?
Nearly all games use assets, would be pointless.
Asset flips refers to low quality project that use all store-bought assets without providing any uniqueness whatsoever on gameplay.
yes, but how do we define an asset flip? whatever definition is used will be something avoided by scummy developers or will apply to all games on steam.
Problem is there are legitimately good games that do this, usually ones that focus exclusively on writing but still. At that point it’s better to let the reviews handle it.
Like what?
Early access version of ATOM RPG was pretty damned close. I’m talking way back when it was the first world map or so when going to death tunnel would crash my game if I entered and exited it enough because of an infinitely respawning rat.
Mind you that was pretty early in it’s development but it very well could’ve stayed in polished form of that and still been good.
I said “low quality project”, that means games with “focus exclusively on writing” are not belongs to this category.
Huge chunk of RPG Maker games are using generic reusable assets provided by RPG Maker yet still cool af, as they focus on writings.
Sure but the problem is that distinguishing between a shitty asset flip and a proper game that is just using generic assets is moreso a matter of effort. There is basically no way to distinguish the two short of actually playing it, which is different from tracking say AI which is pretty objective in it’s separation. The only tag that could work is a “strong usage of generic asset” but that doesn’t really distinguish between say a shitty asset flip and a game that is a generic asset flip in everything but it’s writing.
Okay, so, complex projects having a small part you didn’t make doesn’t matter?
it’s not that it doesn’t matter at all but what problem does it solve if nearly every game on steam has it? It wouldn’t even help identify actual asset flips.
Okay, so, every game on Steam having some generated asset wouldn’t matter?
No. It’s a lot easier to define that and restrict it.
Tim sure is an odd dog. I just don’t get where this unearned confidence to shit talk comes from.
Money. Money is where it comes from.
“I am rich, therefore my opinion is valid and you should listen to me”
EXTREMELY LOUD ‘INCORRECT’ BUZZER
Yes but
pays the buzzer guy to play the “correct” sound effect
old-timey bicycle horn
BrikoX, this is unsponsored opinions, change the title.
It’s not seen often that Valve reacts to public comments.
Valve hasn’t reacted.
It’s a Valve employee.
“Opinions are my own” - his Twitter bio. Which shouldn’t need to be said, but here we are.
So we should ignore that he works at Valve?
in the sense that valve has nothing to do with this… yes
I can’t imagine the other artists and eccentrics that work at Valve would disagree with this guy tho.
I do not agree. While it was not an official statement, he still works at Valve. So his opinion is connected to Valve. We should not ignore that. He is not ANY developer. The only thing is, I should have made that more clear in my initial reply, but I think its not really needed because we know the context he is a developer on his own private account. But I would not ignore that.
I would bet that the steam client has at least 1 line of ai generated code in it.
Where’s their disclosure?
Why would it? The client has been around for ages and hasn’t changed in all that time. So your getting mad about a hypothetical. Your weird.
The client is constantly getting updates. Maybe the visual store layout hasn’t changed to you, but hasn’t updated in years is comical. The client beta has one from Nov 25th.
Why would you disclose one line of AI code. It’s unidentifiable and meaningless. Like saying you don’t want code where auto complete was used and every character must be written by a human finger.
Kind of like using AI to place one single pixel in an image.
Because their forcing their clients to disclose any use of AI for any kind of content including, art, sound and code.
That would include 1 line.
Let’s not kid ourselves that that’s the limit that must not be crossed. Art, sound and code is more than one line for anyone that has written even a hello world program on any popular game engine. This is a bad faith argument with no purpose other than to muddy the waters.
The point is, I guarantee you valve has ai generate code in their platform. It’s widely used. And unless you’ve gone and like vibe coded the whole thing it’s pointless to require declaring it.
Where do you draw the line? A function? A class? An optimized algorithm? A feature? A test suite?
Steams policy on this (edit: on code) is bad.
You only need do disclose what could ever potentially be identified as AI. Otherwise it’s unenforceable. Even saying it’s used for code is debatable. You can’t tell once it’s compiled and can’t tell the difference between one developer breaking the companies policy or a policy that short snippets or auto complete are fine
Sounds like they should just remove it then. Having an unenforceble policy is a bad policy.
You want them to declare that the NPCs use an LLM to interact with you sure, that’s different, but this code part of the policy is bad.
Maybe you should write to Valve about it, rather than giving slippery-slope arguments to people who have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
You’ve said your piece. Arguing about it further is not helping anyone. It’s fermenting hostility for no benefit.
You’ve got slippery slope backwards lol.
Slippery slope is I can’t let you do ABC because if you do you’ll do XYZ.
This is you can’t do ABC, XYZ, 123, QWERTY, but if you do XYZ, 123, QWERTY you shouldn’t tell us because it’s actually okay and we didn’t really mean all those other things.
Valves policy if anything is the bad policy because it’s the strict policy you put in place because you’re implementing it due being worried about slippery slope.
Edit: And were literally in a thread where someone from VALVE is defending this bad policy, so this is the exact place to say my piece on it.
edit: Just to note, Valve will let you do it, they just stick you with a declaration that has a negative connotation to much of the community, such as the developer replying here, which is harmful to the game developer, while those who lie and did the exact same thing benefit from a shiny decal declaring their false purity
I did yes. But I figure either could work!
I expect devs to disclose when they use photoshop, IDEs with autocomplete, and store-bought assets as well. Starting to sound silly? That’s because it is
Silly? No I would love that, imagine if all games listed all the tools used in its creation, it would be so informative!
Because store bought assets are still quality assets and are human made. The only reason it sounds silly is because you went out of your way to make it silly.
Inb4 asset stores become >90% AI generated
Hence the need for the AI tag.
