Valve have reportedly rewritten Steam’s AI disclosure form, essentially a declaration of a game’s generative AI usage that developers and publishers must complete to sell on the platform. The new form, shared by consultant Simon Carless, now specifies that while the presence of in-game GenAI content must still be divulged, including on the game’s store page, the usage of AI-based production tools for “efficiency gains” does not require disclosure.
“We are aware that many modern game development environments have AI powered tools built into them,” the update form reads. “Efficiency gains through the use of these tools is not 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.”
The changed wording makes it explicit that developers don’t need to disclose time-saving tactics like using generative AI for concept art (or, as Divinity developers Larian put it, “concept art exploration”), nor the practice known as vibe coding: describing the intended purpose of code to an AI helper that then generates it, instead of writing that code oneself. If it’s not something that players see, hear, read, or otherwise interact with during the course of the game, it’s all gravy as far as Valve are concerned.
The rewrite makes a kind of sense, if you’re a stressed producer trying to figure out whether you should list every time a level designer used Gemini to write an email for them. Even game engines like Unreal now come with built-in AI chatbots, and it’s no secret that game development is often under top-down managerial pressure to use these tools, regardless of whether they produce tangible game assets. Or, indeed, any meaningful benefit whatsoever.
That said, I’m not sure it’s much of an overall change, let alone a positive one. Valve’s previous disclosure form never actually asked outright for information on so-called “efficiency” tool usage – just as the current form does, it only ever requested info on GenAI assets that might be found within the game.
In this sense, the new form also fails to address the biggest problem with Steam’s disclosure rules: that devs and publishers can describe their game’s GenAI content in broad, vague terms, leaving ambiguity over whether what you see while playing has been crafted by a human or farted out by a bot. And while Valve evidently see a distinction between ‘helping hand’ AI dev tools and the more insidious fake-art stuff, the reality is that machine slop – which may well have been intended to act as a temporary production shortcut – has a nasty habit of enduring into the finished product. 2025 critical darlings The Alters and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 both launched with GenAI assets left in, allegedly by accident.
Unintentional or otherwise, Valve permitting developers to think less about their tools sounds like a good way to let even more undisclosed GenAI slip through the cracks. It may not be a full surrender to mad CEOs who want Steam’s disclosures gone entirely, but this rewrite hardly better serves the intended purpose of keeping players informed.
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