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Valve admits Steam has an AI slop and cloning problem, but says 'we don't want to be gatekeepers telling developers which tools they should or shouldn't use' (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 3 days ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 205 points 3 days ago* (16 children)
  1. Require AI tool disclosure
  2. Enforce that. Spot check.
  3. Give us a filter to show/hide AI-flagged items

For cloning, I'm not sure of the best solution. Allowing the owner and users to report it is nice. But what happens when people are coincidentally working on a very similar game and release around the same time, even without knowledge of each other?

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  • [–] 31 points 3 days ago (5 children)

    When you say cloning are you meaning like how there's now 200 different versions of lethal company on steam now?

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  • [–] 66 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    Some needle-in-a-haystack game came out and got cloned to death is what I'm seeing in the news. People can't differentiate the original one vs the clones and it's hurt sales. Some companies are stopping open betas and other things as well to avoid it being cloned before they go to full release.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Yeah out of 100 vibe coded games. Iv come across like 3 that were legitimately good.

    Those three where actually very very good games But they were tiny little things clearly made because the guy who made them WANTED to play them.

    While the rest where just asset flips or clearly just attempting to make a cheap quick buck.

    It's just a great example of the problem. AI by itself doesn't cause an issue. We already had this problem. Asset flips low-called a crash grabs have always been a thing.

    Problem AI caused is now it's a thousand times easier for literally every lazy f*** to do this.

    Banning AI games should not happen. It is possible to make something legitimately fun and worthwhile playing with nothing but AI.

    We need to solve the fact that every d****** can just s*** onto the steam store with no effort and leave something half built and abandoned.

    Disclosure at a minimum. Better filtering harsher vote waiting.

    My problem is every other idea I can think of unfairly smacks legitimate AI games or legitimate games that use AI as an actual proper tool as opposed to just a lazy way to asset flip.

    Is not a lot of good ways to do this. To be fair, if there were we wouldn't have asset flips in low quality cash crabs either.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 days ago

    People were mad at the Steam Greenlight system, so when Valve listened and opened the doors to pre-AI slop, then they started whining about their games being buried in a sea of shit. I can't blame Valve for taking a cautious approach.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago

    This is what they need to do. Give people the choice.

    If it's not technically doable, then we'll do it ourselves, we'll fight over which game is and isn't full of slop. And, we'll be wrong sometimes, but increasingly right. Because, soon ALL media will be full of slop, including games.

    The only way to avoid it will be to play old games. Which is fine by me, but there's always the next generation of gamers coming up who won't be so picky.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    Steam already has the first two, and I'm pretty sure it has the third because it's illegal. It's just a matter of effort and volume. So many generated games can be put on Steam that it's almost impossible to keep up. If they don't disclose generative AI usage then it takes time to discover, and that time can steal the spotlight from the legitimate games.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (4 children)

    In what world would adding a UI filter to hide games that use AI would it be illegal? Cite a law. Explain why all the other filters are not?

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  • [–] 0 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    I think you misread what I wrote. It's already illegal to steal someone's work. If you're making a game and releases a demo and then someone copies it, that's copyright infringement. It's not a rule that Valve needs to add because it's an implicit rule because it's illegal.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

    Ah, so not the "first two" as in bullet points 1 and 2 in my list.

    So, a few things here:

    1. Some things are covered by trademark. This can vary by jurisdiction
    2. Some things are covered by copyright. Also, this varies by jurisdiction
    3. Properly going through all the paperwork first is the safest, requires time and money, only applies in relevant jurisdictions, and requires time and effort again to enforce for only what it covers.
    4. Assuming the creator has the time and effort to go through 3 (if not, some stuff is arguably prior art but requires more time and money to prove), they have to be aware that anyone has created a clone of their work that would, at least in that jurisdiction, infringe.
    5. After they have found it, they need to contact valve and whomever else.
    6. If they're not happy stopping there, then there's the whole legal process (costing more time and money)

    Edit: this is also not even the exhaustive version of the list.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (1 child)

    Yes, that's why my first comment talks about effort, compared to the amount of slop that can be made. You aren't allowed to steal people's work, and you're also required to tag if your game uses gen-AI. It's just prohibitive to keep up with all of it now.

    The legal process though is a formal requirement to sue them. Valve doesn't need to go through that. They could (and I think do) have a system for developers to claim that a game has stolen its work and request for it to be taken down. You don't need to go to court for a private company to enforce that. It's just that, again, it's impossible to keep up with it now. It's too easy to create a clone so, even if it's taken down, another one can appear in its place trivially.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago

    . They could (and I think do) have a system for developers to claim that a game has stolen its work and request for it to be taken down.

    I agree with this. Something like community notes on other social media might help on identification and alerting other users, but making sure that's not gamed by bots and the like is a separate issue.

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