As the gaming industry begins to grapple with the advent of AI tools and AI-generated content, one question has emerged in recent weeks: Would Valve, which operates Steam – the largest and most liberal online game store – publish games made? with AI?
The question seemed answered by a post on the aigamedev subreddit several weeks ago, which has surfaced and been widely reported. The reddit user said they submitted a game to Steam with some “obviously AI generated” placeholders, and it was rejected. “We are refusing to distribute your game because it is unclear whether the underlying AI technology used to create the assets has sufficient rights to the training data,” Valve reportedly said in an email to the developer after they released the game. had improved (but not replaced). art in question.
So, is Valve against using AI in game making? No, not exactly – as you’d expect from a company that often takes a neutral, not to say libertarian, stance on the content it distributes through Steam.
In a statement to Polygon, a Valve spokesperson clarified that the company does not want to discourage the use of AI in game development and indeed sees great potential in it. But it’s concerned about the legal status of AI-generated art assets – as the AI that created them may have been trained on data, including copyrighted artwork, that doesn’t belong to the creator of the game. “Basically, our review process is a reflection of current copyright laws and policies, not an added layer of our opinion,” Valve said. “As these laws and policies evolve over time, so will our process.”
Here’s the full statement from Valve:
We continue to learn about AI, the ways it can be used in game development, and how to factor it into our process of reviewing games submitted for distribution on Steam. Our priority, as always, is to try and ship as many of the titles we receive as possible. The introduction of AI can sometimes make it more difficult to prove that a developer has sufficient rights to use AI to create assets, including images, text and music. In particular, there is some legal uncertainty regarding data used to train AI models. It is the developer’s responsibility to ensure they have the correct permissions to submit their game.
We know it’s a constantly evolving technology, and our goal is not to discourage its use on Steam; instead, we are working on how to integrate it into our already existing review policy. To put it plainly, our review process is a reflection of current copyright laws 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 will undoubtedly create new and exciting experiences in gaming. While developers can use these AI technologies in their work with appropriate commercial licenses, they cannot infringe existing copyrights.
Finally, while app submission credits are usually non-refundable, we are happy to offer them in these cases as we continue to work on our review process.
While Valve sounds encouraging about the long-term future of AI-generated content, this answer – from probably the most open-minded distributor in games – shows how difficult it will be to use AI tools to create commercial art. As Valve says, developers can find it difficult to show they own the rights to the assets in their games, as AI tools have generated assets based on countless other works. And while Valve says “it’s the developer’s responsibility to make sure they have the proper permissions,” in reality, this burden will pass from developers to the companies that make the AI tools they use. If the AI companies are going to provide developers with the “appropriate commercial licenses” that Valve needs, they will have to prove ownership of the datasets behind the AI themselves. Which could be nearly impossible.
In other words, until there is new copyright law that clarifies the legal status of AI-generated content, no publisher or distributor will want to go anywhere near it. Not even Valve.