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Update, July 3rd, 2023: Valve responded to questions from IGN regarding AI-generated content in games submitted Steam. Here is their official response:
“We are continuing to learn about AI, the ways it can be used in game development, and how to factor it in to our process for reviewing games submitted for distribution on Steam,” Valve said in a statement to IGN. “Our priority, as always, is to try to ship as many of the titles we receive as we can. The introduction of AI can sometimes make it harder to show a developer has sufficient rights in using AI to create assets, including images, text, and music. In particular, there is some legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models. It is the developer’s responsibility to make sure they have the appropriate rights to ship their game.
“We know it is a constantly evolving tech, and our goal is not to discourage the use of it on Steam; instead, we’re working through how to integrate it into our already-existing review policies. Stated plainly, our review process is a reflection of current copyright law and policies, not an added layer of our opinion. As these laws and policies evolve over time, so will our process.
“We welcome and encourage innovation, and AI technology is bound to create new and exciting experiences in gaming. While developers can use these AI technologies in their work with appropriate commercial licenses, they can not infringe on existing copyrights.”
It’s a relief to hear that Valve aren’t banning games developed with any AI content, and that it’s only clamping down on content generated of which the rights can’t be confirmed.
Original Story, June 30th, 2023: A game developer posted their exchange with Valve, in which the gaming giants have appeared to reject a submission due to the “unclear” nature of “legal ownership of such AI-generated art.”
Valve’s rejection message begins by stating that they cannot “ship games for which the developer does not have all of the necessary rights,” though the game developer claimed to have “improved those pieces by hand” leaving no obvious trace of AI.
Despite rejecting the developer, Valve were seemingly sympathetic to their cause. The company gave the developer “one opportunity to remove all content that [they] do not have the rights to,” though it was rejected once again. Here’s the snippet from the second rejection which explains Valve’s approach to AI:
“At this time, we are declining to distribute your game since it’s unclear if the underlying AI tech used to create the assets has sufficient rights to the training data.”
While many might think that Valve’s clampdown on AI-generated game content is harsh, we’re going to go ahead and support their decision. Our approach to artificial intelligence is complex. While on one hand, we are creative individuals constantly at risk of our jobs being replaced by the next LLM, it’s also hard to ignore the snowballing popularity and utility of the technology. Finding a balance is hard, though we firmly believe that there are ways to benefit from AI using your own content. Valve’s rejection of AI content empowers this belief – not rejecting AI-generated games simply for being AI-generated, but rejecting them because the developers do not have the rights to publish said generated content.
If you own a set of data or assets, using a tool such as artificial intelligence is well within your rights. If you don’t, using it commercially is plagiarism and theft – which we can’t condone.
Responses to the rejection have been split. Some on Twitter have said they wonder if Steam will be “willing to die on this hill if AI powered content in games takes off,” while others have said that it’s “deserved and more people should take a stand against theft to train AI.” While Valve’s stance regarding AI content is definitely respectable, we are also interested in learning their methods to determine whether or not content is artificially generated or not. Like the issues with students wrongfully being flagged for plagiarism in school by AI content detectors, how are Valve determining what is or isn’t generated by AI?
The recent explosion of AI within the tech world has impacted all industries. Music, writing, food, healthcare, and now, gaming. Unity recently announced Muse AI, which assists with generative 3D modelling, while Ubisoft launched Ghostwriter earlier this year, which generates “barks” for games. There’s no denying that AI will change the future of game development, for better or worse. If Valve, who own arguably the largest and most popular game distribution platform, is rejecting generative games – it’s really, really good to see a tech company finally reject the attractive advances of artificial intelligence.
