Steam Next Fest sees 1 in 5 demos tagged with AI disclosure as controversy intensifies

Steam Next Fest's top played games include only 1 of over 500 demos with an AI disclosure

Anime, friendslop and relaxed offroading are the highlights, but seriously Valve: give us an AI filter. Valve has revealed the ten most played Steam Next Fest demos, and based on the hours I've spent browsing the more than 4,000 demos, I'm not super surprised by the results. Bandai Namco's forthcoming Sword Art Online RPG, Echoes of Aincrad, is grabbing a lot of expected attention, and so is the offroading sim by the creators of Art of Rally. There's a Soulslike extraction RPG, a new 6v6 Titanfall-like by the Splitgate studio, and a cheerful looking dollop of friendslop. Here's the full list, which is provided in no meaningful order: * Echoes of Aincrad - Anime third-person ARPG set in the Sword Art Online world * Mistfall Hunter - An extraction RPG, supplanting the usual shooting with Soulslike third-person combat * over the hill - Chill but gruelling offroad adventuring by the Art of Rally devs * IRON NEST: Heavy Turret Simulator - A heavy turret simulator * EMPULSE - A 6v6 shooter by the creators of Splitgate that kinda looks like Mirror's Edge blended with Titanfall * Dust Front RTS - A vintage-looking RTS for '90s PC gaming heads * The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu - Four-player co-op about scouring a dangerous, slightly sci-fi jungle for treasure * Embers of the Uncrowned - Nexon's next big dark fantasy MMORPG * BOMBANANA! - Whimsical friendslop about monkeys defusing bombs * Casualties: Unknown - A survival platformer about exploring a murky, dangerous subterranea There's some decent stuff in there: I'm especially keen to try Casualties: Unknown and Over the Hill. Mortal Shell 2's absence is notable, and I'm surprised that Valor Mortis -- the new first-person Soulslike by Ghostrunner devs -- isn't listed. Half of these games are multiplayer, and only one of the games listed have an AI disclosure. That one's Embers of the Uncrowned, the next Nexon MMO which, ironically, appears to have the biggest budget of the lot. "During the development and live service of the game, AI-based tools may be utilized to support in-game visual content creation, marketing materials, live chat translation features, and partial in-game dialogue and script localization," reads the disclosure. "In all such cases and regardless of the workflow, the final product is a reflection of our own development team's creativity and artistic expression." The latest Next Fest has plenty of games with AI disclosures. Of the 4,397 products listed as Next Fest demos on SteamDB, 551 have the AI Content Disclosed user tag attached. Of course, user tags on Steam can be exploited, but assuming there's not some widespread concerted effort to tarnish non-AI games with the AI tag, that's a very high figure. Last week over 300 games were released on Steam, and 120 of them had AI disclosures. The floodgates are open but that doesn't mean we're wilfully drowning. I think a new Nexon MMO -- or any big budget MMO, really -- is going to attract a lot of curiosity no matter how it was made. But I've noticed this week while browsing Next Fest that I've fallen into the habit of scrolling directly to where the AI disclosure normally sits on a Steam store page, without reading the description, watching the start of the trailer, or looking at a screenshot. It's not a brilliant user experience, and given how common antipathy towards AI in games seems to be, it's probably about time Steam included a filter.

1694 games in the Steam Next Fest feature a generative AI disclosure, as controversy around the tech rages on

Steam Next Fest is back on the PC's largest gaming store, offering a vast selection of demos for upcoming games. And many of these, it turns out, have generative AI disclosures present. SteamDB, a stat-tracking database, allows you to filter the full list of Steam Next Fest games using various tags. With this, we can see there are 8700 games participating in the Steam Next Fest event, and 1704 of those have the generative AI tag attached, as of the time of writing. That's roughly 20 percent of the games taking part. Steam as a storefront has been steadfast in requiring games to declare their use of generative AI during development, only altering it slightly to allow for AI-enabled "efficiency gains" to go undeclared. Even then, it stressed that the technology's use must be declared to players. This mandatory declaration for AI has forced some developers into hot water. Only recently, Sega had to clarify how generative AI was used in the new Crazy Taxi game. First, it was said that generative AI was used to create background assets. Then, at Summer Game Fest, this changed to only being used as a reference. The technology remains controversial among gaming enthusiasts. It is at the heart of the current computer hardware price spike, as components used for consoles and gaming computers are in shorter supply. Still, that has not stopped big releases from using it, such as Crimson Desert, and from companies such as Arc Raiders developer Embark supporting it.

Steam Next Fest sees one in five demos labeled for generative AI

Nearly one in five demos listed for the latest Steam Next Fest include a generative AI disclosure, according to figures found on SteamDB. Eurogamer found that 1,704 of the 8,700 titles listed as participants in the event were tagged as having used generative AI. That works out to 19.5 percent of the games included in the showcase. The figure stands out because several released games have faced player backlash after generative AI materials were discovered. Some indie game leaders have also taken a cautious stance on when and how AI should be used in development. Valve updated its guidelines for AI use in games sold on Steam in 2024. The change allowed broader use of the technology, but required developers to tell players when generative AI had been applied. Valve now allows "efficiency gains" to avoid triggering the AI label. That could explain why one common issue for developers has involved AI-generated assets that were not replaced before launch. The same issue happened with Crimson Desert earlier this year. Some games that openly used AI from the start have also reduced their reliance on the technology in recent months. Arc Raiders was cited as one example.

Steam Next Fest Is Flooded With AI Games And It Sucks

I usually have a good time digging through the demos in Valve's recurring Steam Next Fest event. I enjoy finding hidden gems and wild games that I often end up wishlisting. But this time around, now that I have a tool installed that warns me if a game or demo includes generative AI content, Steam Next Fest has become a very depressing experience, one in which more than half the games I checked out featured an AI content disclaimer. When I opened the main hub page for Steam Next Fest earlier today, right after my email inbox was flooded by PR messages reminding me that the event had started, I was excited to go exploring. But as I did, I started running into numerous games that feature disclaimers from the devs confirming the use of generative AI tools for various parts of the game or its marketing. It happened so many times that I became curious about the event's hub page, filled with game demos being advertised to me algorithmically based on past things I had played and liked in the past. How much of that main page, I wondered, would contain AI-generated warnings? Turns out a lot. I clicked on 16 different games featured on the Steam Next Fest main hub page, and 10 of them triggered my extension and warned me of generative AI disclaimers. Of course, this will vary from user to user, as many of the hub's slots are algorithmically driven. Still, my reaction is: Yikes. And scanning the most popular demos, I continued to run into AI warnings, so it's not just my algo serving up slop. Reading some of these disclaimers, it's clear that some smaller teams and solo devs are trying to claim that their lack of resources is a viable excuse for using generative AI. I almost get the sense from some of these warnings that they want me to feel bad for them and look the other way, just this once, and not mind the AI slop cover art, visuals, or textures. Other warnings try very hard to insist that genAI tools are only being used for very small, specific parts of development, and all content is reviewed and edited by a human before the game (or demo) reaches the player. But as we've seen time and time again, so often genAI content that's allegedly created with the intention of being replaced later still finds its way into games, leading to apologies and updates replacing the slop. I sympathize with indie devs trying to create something cool and then having to dedicate even more of their limited time and resources to making a demo that might not even get seen because Steam is flooded with new games every hour. It sucks. The allure of genAI in that situation is proving harder and harder for some devs to resist. And even if you get a job at a big studio, the odds are increasingly high that you'll also be forced to use or at least stomach genAI tools while you watch co-workers get laid off. The whole situation just makes me sad. I don't want devs to suffer for their art, yet I am dreading a future in which it's practically impossible to play a game, big or small, that was made only by humans. If the flood of AI warnings popping up as I browse Steam Next Fest are an indication of what's to come, I guess I'm happy I have a massive backlog.