People have been complaining about too many games years before AI, but most don't remember when steam was such a gatekeeper that they didn't even allow visual novels on the store. I think having a way to filter AI generated game assets is enough.
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Dear Steam,
Please put a filter tool in so that we, the player, can choose to filter out AI slop.
Thank you.
They should just surface the reviews more prominently, and let me buy a Steam Frame. The last part is key.
That's fine and I like that. We, the gamers, we can decide and it should be like that. We just need Valve's assistance by helping us with thorough AI disclosures. We can do the rest by controlling slop and clones with our wallets and filters.
I think we're reaching a point where there is going to be so much stuff around be it games, tv, movies, music, etc all made by AI and all just garbage, that it will make curating a huge deal. Like we'll need to have services whose sole purpose is to sift through the marketplaces and find quality stuff to then present to people. So you'll have a two tiered system where on one hand you can browse "everything" and it's just a deluge of stuff and then on the other hand you can go to a curated marketplace that only lists stuff that is known to be high quality. But it's going to take time for those curated places to pop up, and in the mean time we are gonna be swimming in slop.
Like in the pre-search-engine internet you would have indexes, or whatever they were called, listing useful websites.
Yikes. On the one hand, curated lists sound like a breath of fresh air right now. On the other, that's AI setting us back 30 years.
My search engine even labels AI slop websites, that it pulls from open-source lists like https://github.com/alvi-se/ai-ublock-blacklist. So yeah every day I feel like the need for curated lists is getting stronger even for "useful websites". Too much noise these days.
Rotten Tomatoes -> Bots and Tomatoes. Is it AI slop or hot?
Pretty much this. I am reminded of when reality TV first came up, it was thought that it would be a passing fad lasting maybe a year or two. People get exited by it at first, then get bored of it craving something with more substance. It never happened. Turns out the slop machine hit a level good enough that many would lap it up. Survivor is going into it 51st season right now.
But while this stuff can be produced (be it text, TV, software), you can curate it. Those curated lists will become the new social treasure like how some movie critics could become minor celebrities in themselves. Yeah there will be AI bots trying to do that as well, but if they fall flat, so to will their respect.
Neal Stephenson explores these ideas in a few of his books. Basically that there is so much false information online that the biggest advantage you can have is good software for sifting through it.
I can't believe the sentiment in the comments here.
...Y'all think spammers are going to label themselves as "AI generated" if that's detrimental? They will not, and it's not something that can be objectively detected.
Getting customers to moderate this is self defeating, as the whole point of spam is to get in front of buyers' eyeballs.
Valve needs to hire staff to cull this junk, they can afford to, but they don't want to. That's the crux of the issue.
There's also a practical element, where Steam is not in a position to vet every game and developer. They could have the community do it, but that then opens up a whole bunch of abuse risks.
There's also an argument that it wouldn't stop some of the issues in the article. Where do you draw the line with asset flip, or AI generated? If the developer used AI to make placeholders in the early access of a game, and then swapped it with removed it later on, is the game still AI generated? What if they used assets that were unknowingly AI generated, like stock sound effects?
Or if someone is ESL and used a translator that turned out to be AI powered/they just write with a similar style.
It also won't stop people doing it.maliciously. if you're threatening to clone someone's game off a demo, and release it before they do, you're probably not going to stop because you need to put a little "AI generated" flag on your game, if the rest of it didn't stop you.
Well, I’m not advocating for LLM assisted game development to be banned, or those with a but if diffusion. That’s what the tag is supposed to be for.
I’m strictly talking spam and clones. Clearly dysfunctional games, misleadingly advertised.
Valve makes $billions in revenue every year. If they make 30% off every developer’s sales, I think they can afford to apply some basic vetting to each one.
Enforce an AI label, abusers get delisted and not allowed to be on steam for 3-5 years. Allow users to block AI labeled games.
Edit: I think the ban should affect the developer and publisher too. That way the publisher makes efforts to prevent release of slop too.
100% this.
if using AI in your product adds so much value to your product, then why are you hiding it??
No need to be gatekeepers, just let me blacklist entire genres, publishers and studios.
You can. Add tags/genres to your ignored list, and you won't see any games marked with them.
The tag system has been so badly abused that you can’t do this without collateral damage though. It’s not fit for purpose. I have mixed feelings about Valve curating games… but I think they should absolutely curate the tags.
Been blocking EA games for years.
Add a "AI Slop" feature in the reviews to track that. Let publishers flag games built on their IP. Give the store front some feature options for both.
The flag one should probably have a verification system and trust system to prevent IP trolling though. Reviews should probably also have rep system to weight reviews to tbh
This is the exact same attitude they had to the deluge of unity store asset flips (well they actually tried to blame unity for that, but I digress)
Steam gets their money either way.
And that's what Lord GabeN needs to buy another super yacht for himself, and more Aston Martins for his son to race.
- Require AI tool disclosure
- Enforce that. Spot check.
- 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?
You don't have to tell developers anything except that they need to disclose AI use, and then you need to give customers the ability to filter them. For the sake of your platform. Because nobody wants to go through Next Fest and scroll through piles of slop or be duped into buying a sloppy game over and over.
They can tell them to let us gatekeep. Ai needs to be labeled.
Hey Valve, could you use AI to port all of your own old Intel versions of Mac games to Apple Silicon?
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