Valve Clarifies Stance on AI Assets in Steam Titles

Valve, the video game publisher and developer behind the popular PC gaming storefront Steam, explained why certain games were recently rejected from its digital storefront for featuring content generated by artificial intelligence.

In a statement sent to various news outlets Monday, Valve explained that its hasn’t taken a hard stance against the use of AI technology, and is solely trying to avoid any of the copyright issues often associated with the tools.

"We know it is a constantly evolving tech, and our goal is not to discourage the use of it on Steam; instead, we're working through how to integrate it into our already-existing review policies,” a Valve spokesperson said, according to Video Game Chronicle. “Stated plainly, our review process is a reflection of current copyright law and policies, not an added layer of our opinion. As these laws and policies evolve over time, so will our process."

The clarification comes a few weeks after developers on Reddit claimed their applications to have their games listed on Steam were being denied for featuring art assets created with the help of artificial intelligence. The developers said they were using the AI assets as placeholders in order to speed up the development process in lieu of not having a larger team.

Steam’s listed policy on game publishing does not explicitly ban the use of AI tech from games sold on the platform. According to Valve’s responses at the time, the games were being rejected because the developers didn’t have proof that the tools used to create the assets were trained using content they had legal rights to.

Valve was adamant that these games not being allowed on its platform was not a condemnation of AI tools as a whole.

“We welcome and encourage innovation, and AI technology is bound to create new and exciting experiences in gaming,” the spokesperson continued. “While developers can use these AI technologies in their work with appropriate commercial licenses, they can not infringe on existing copyrights.”

A majority of generative AI tools create their content by processing large amounts of related content readily available online. However, these tools rarely distinguish between art that is copyrighted and art that is free to use. This has made the use of AI a legal gray area that the U.S. government and entire art and entertainment industries are still trying to understand.