Valve's new Steam AI disclosure cares about what you actually see, stressing that behind-the-scenes dev tools are "not the focus"

As the generative-AI debate rages on unceasing (and likely will for as long as I care to think ahead), Valve has updated the declaration form used by developers submitting their games to Steam to reflect a focus on things that are “consumed by players.” For the most part, that’ll mean anything in-game, from art assets to music or writing, but it also includes the likes of the Steam store page, community assets, and marketing materials. The change takes the emphasis off development tools for “efficiency gains,” which can seemingly be used without the need for a disclosure.

It’s been two years since Valve first introduced the AI disclosure section that must now be filled out when submitting a game to Steam. Things have continued to escalate at a rapid and often terrifying pace in that time, and there’s certainly a soft-acceptance of some use cases. Just look at the huge success of Arc Raiders, which employs text-to-speech tools to generate character voice lines and callouts. Do I feel great about it? No. Is it going to continue to happen? Absolutely, which is why Steam’s requirement to disclose any such content in your game is important.

In its updated declaration, shared via screenshots by GameDiscoverCo on Bluesky, Valve acknowledges that “many modern game development environments have AI-powered tools built into them,” and says that “efficiency gains through the use of these tools is not the focus of this section. Instead, it is concerned with the use of AI in creating content that ships with your game, and is consumed by players.” Among the examples that would need to be declared are “artwork, sound, narrative, localization, etc.”

As before, there’s also a separate check to indicate whether a game uses artificial intelligence “to generate content or code during gameplay.” However, Valve has now expanded on what this means, clarifying that it will give players the ability to report anything that they deem inappropriate or copyright infringing. “It is the responsibility of you, the developer, to implement guard rails that will prevent users from being exposed to inappropriate and illegal content,” it warns. “Failure to do so will result in your app being pulled from the store.”

The line between what’s okay and what isn’t is incredibly blurry, and everyone will naturally set their own standards. The likes of Photoshop auto-fill tools have been widely accepted for a long time, for example. At this point, simply using a Windows PC means you have to actively opt out of certain AI assistants. Most recently, the major backlash to discussions around Larian’s use of gen-AI tools around the office while in the early stages of developing Divinity saw the team set a firm stance that it would not use them even in the concept art stage.

Valve’s new-look disclosure form is a clarification rather than a complete overhaul, but it will allow some AI tools to slip more into the background. However, it will put the attention more squarely on the areas that seem to be of most concern to the general audience. Suffice it to say that conversations about this will continue for the foreseeable future, and I’m certain that we’ll still see things slipping through the net in 2026.