Steam updates its policy to allow games with AI content under some conditions.
Steam updates its policy to allow games with AI content under some conditions.
Back in June, we shared that while our goal continues to be shipping as many games as possible on Steam, we needed some time to learn about the fast-moving and legally murky space of AI technology, especially given Steam's worldwide reach. Today, after spending the last few months learning more abou...
Well... Who's ready for an endless stream of low quality AI asset flips?
We've already seen what AI-generated books have done to platforms like Amazon. I suspect that this will eventually be the end of "open" uncurated digital storefronts, since AI will eventually allow for crappy content to be produced at a faster rate than it can be consumed and it'll become impossible to discover anything worthwhile.
There are also good stuff done with AI, for example there is this game called Suck Up where you are a vampire and you go door to door trying to get people to let you in. People you are trying to convince are basically chatbots and it works a lot better than you'd expect
haha! I'm def going to try this game out
This sounds awesome. Wishlisted!
I am not sure whether AI will make the creation of asset flips much easier though, given that store bought assets are already being dropped into a 'game' already.
There are only a finite number of easily purchasable game dev assets out there, but in theory there is a nearly infinite of assets that can be generated by AI.
Mark my words, soon we're gonna be inundated with lot of really shitty, mostly AI-generated games by con artists trying to make a quick buck.
AI is okay to use if you make it do the chores, not in creative part. Otherwise it would be an insult to people who create original content.
As if anyone trying to make a quick buck cares if they are insulting anyone?
I meant Valve for allowing AI. Hope they can make it right. It's a gray area in my opinion.
It's cool that we might see titles like "Suck Up" on Steam.
*its policy
oh, thank you! I didn't notice :)
I don’t see people talking about AI in games enough. It is indeed a tool but it’s one that I’m very excited about.
So long as the people who record lines are adequately compensated and the tool is used correctly, I’m very excited about its use. It allows games to feel more unique and random without a huge tax on developers.
It’s possible that instead of generic quests in the form of radiant garbage quests, we can get generated quests and storylines in open world games.
What do the artists do? Well, their writing is still imperative to what the AI says. Rather than writing line by line dialog for NPCs, they can focus so much more on world building and characterization of NPCs.
However, I expect this use to be rare and far out. In the meantime, we’re about to see a mountain of garbage. Lots of indie games are going to use this to great effect though I would bet.
If anyone is interested Corridor Digital has been doing experiments with AI and games, and has documented it on their YouTube channel Corridor Crew. It's definitely worth checking out if it interests anyone.
Lotta commenters in there citing laws that don't exist.
That sucks.
Overall a good idea. Yeah, there are potential legal issues that could potentially come up if court cases go against the AI gen companies, but that's the bridge that will get crossed if (not necessarily when) it comes to it.
One thing I don't get though is the whole "guardrail" thing on live-gens. There is no system that is 100% preventable from someone getting it to say problematic stuff.
If Anthropic and OpenAI can't screw it down all the way, how can some game company do it? In practice, this'll mean that basically no game will come with a live service AI. This is like tying people saying stuff in voice chat to the company running the multiplayer servers.
Well-intentioned idea, but not gonna actually work.
Yeah I can't get too all fired about this honestly. I think llms and the like could be a great tool in a game designer's belt provided it's used well.
And you CAN use it well. Don't believe the hype. If you're a programmer or designer, play with this stuff yourself, preferably using open source models run on your own machine (it's falling off a log easy now with tools like Ollama, even have AMD GPU support these days!).
Of course AI generated drivel is corrosive and horrible, and we should consistently downvote it and educate people about it so it stops being profitable.
For an alternative and erudite take on why all this AI generated crap may not actually spell doom, give this a read if you feel like it.
Ima need an AI filter. I don't want that shit in my games. If it starts being in every game, I'll just dig my old Xbox up. 🤷