Steam requires AI game disclosures Epic's CEO says theyre meaningless

Date:
Wed, 03 Dec 2025 01:15:00 +0000

Description:
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says AI labels on games are pointless, but players and developers are split over whether disclosure builds trust or just adds stigma.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Steam currently requires developers to disclose any use of generative AI in their games Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney wants Steam to stop labeling games that use AI Critics argue that removing AI tags would reduce transparency for players who care how games are made

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney is calling on video game storefronts like Steam
to ditch their Made with AI tags, arguing theyre outdated before theyve even finished rolling out.

AI will be involved in nearly all future production, he wrote in a post on X, insisting that labeling games that use it is pointless. It makes no sense. Steam, for now, disagrees.

Valves popular digital storefront introduced a policy earlier this year requiring developers to disclose if generative AI was used in the making of a game. That might be in the writing, artwork, code, or anything else. The goal is to let players know what theyre downloading. Thats the part Sweeney takes issue with, suggesting that flagging AI in 2025 is like putting a warning sticker on games that use 3D graphics or autocomplete in code. Agreed. The AI tag is relevant to art exhibits for authorship disclosure, and to digital content licensing marketplaces where buyers need to understand the rights situation. It makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production. November 26, 2025

But it turns out people do care. And not just in an abstract way. For an increasing number of players, developers, and digital storefronts, knowing
how a game was made, especially in a world awash with generative AI tools, is part of the purchase decision. And what Sweeney sees as inevitable, others
see as the start of a much bigger problem: games full of outsourced, flavorless, AI-slop.

It's important to say that few object to a developer using autocomplete while writing code. AI coding assistance is practically standard now. But
generative art, AI-written dialogue, and AI-composited trailers are where the conversation gets tricky.

To the average player scrolling through Steams indie section, this isnt hypothetical. You'll see plenty of generative AI assets, often poorly vetted ones like character portraits with too many fingers or dialogue trees written like Wikipedia entries.

Steams Next Fest this year had multiple games built almost entirely out of AI-generated content, and players noticed. Some studios were called out for recycling the same image prompts or slapping together assets with no real design cohesion. AI gaming

To Sweeneys credit, hes thinking about small developers. I just hate to see Valve confiscate ever more opportunity from small developers, he wrote in a follow-up post, arguing that AI tags stigmatize indie games that use the
tools ethically.

Thats a fair concern. Nobody wants a world where one-person studios are penalized for using Midjourney to sketch out background art or ChatGPT to brainstorm quest descriptions. But the reverse is also true: players dont
want to feel tricked into buying games that outsourced all their creative
soul to a neural net.

The broader concern here isnt about AI, its about trust. Steams disclosure policy gives players the option to care. Maybe you dont. Maybe youre just looking for a chill deck-builder or another farming sim to unwind with. But
if someone does care, because theyre an artist, theyve had their work
scraped, or they just want to support fully human-made work, then the AI tag is valid. Its not a scarlet letter. Its a filter.

Sweeneys proposal to eliminate AI tags entirely would leave players guessing. It would also remove a key mechanism for accountability. If a developer releases a game with AI-generated assets, the current policy says: just say so. Thats not censorship. Thats information.

After all, not all AI content is created equal. A developer who uses AI to brainstorm mechanics and then spends six months refining them by hand is in a different category than one who tells a text-to-game engine to make a vampire dating sim and publishes whatever comes out. And while the Made with AI tag doesnt explain that nuance, it opens the door to asking.

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/steam-requires-ai-game-discl osures-epics-ceo-says-theyre-meaningless


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