Valve confirms that it is not banning games with AI-generated content

by Danny Craig  · 
Valve confirms that it is not banning games with AI-generated content
Valve

Following reports of Valve taking a stance against titles featuring AI-generated content on Steam, the company has stated that this is not the case, with previous actions being related to copyright law.

The details:

  • In a Reddit post last week, a developer claimed that they had submitted an early version of their game with "fairly obviously AI-generated" assets with the intent of replacing them later, which Valve rejected. The company responded that it couldn't ship the game until the developer could "affirmatively confirm that [they] own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in [the] game," leading them to believe that Valve would no longer accept AI-generated game content in the future.
  • In a statement to VGC following the news, Valve clarified that its "goal is not to discourage the use of [games built with AI] on Steam" and that the aforementioned action was a "reflection of current copyright law and policies, not an added layer of our opinion." It went on to say that it is "continuing to learn about AI" in game development and that 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," causing "legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models.”
  • AI has sparked debate across industries, with some praising its use for automating mundane tasks and assisting with heavy workloads, while others have criticized its use as a "replacement" for things like human-made art and music, with the software scraping the internet to use people's work in its algorithms without permission. As a result, Elon Musk's Twitter set a temporary viewing limit to prevent scraping, and Universal Music Group removed music from streaming services that featured AI vocals that sounded like hit musicians Drake and The Weeknd.

More gaming news:

Following reports of Valve taking a stance against titles featuring AI-generated content on Steam, the company has stated that this is not the case, with previous actions being related to copyright law.

The details:

  • In a Reddit post last week, a developer claimed that they had submitted an early version of their game with "fairly obviously AI-generated" assets with the intent of replacing them later, which Valve rejected. The company responded that it couldn't ship the game until the developer could "affirmatively confirm that [they] own the rights to all of the IP used in the data set that trained the AI to create the assets in [the] game," leading them to believe that Valve would no longer accept AI-generated game content in the future.
  • In a statement to VGC following the news, Valve clarified that its "goal is not to discourage the use of [games built with AI] on Steam" and that the aforementioned action was a "reflection of current copyright law and policies, not an added layer of our opinion." It went on to say that it is "continuing to learn about AI" in game development and that 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," causing "legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models.”
  • AI has sparked debate across industries, with some praising its use for automating mundane tasks and assisting with heavy workloads, while others have criticized its use as a "replacement" for things like human-made art and music, with the software scraping the internet to use people's work in its algorithms without permission. As a result, Elon Musk's Twitter set a temporary viewing limit to prevent scraping, and Universal Music Group removed music from streaming services that featured AI vocals that sounded like hit musicians Drake and The Weeknd.

More gaming news:

Latest News